On March 2-3, 2018, MIT School of Vedic Sciences Pune has conducted a research workshop on Computational Modelling of Aesthetic Experience based on Indic perspective. A select group of computer scientists and renowned scholars in Indic Sciences of Art, Beauty and Creativity have deliberated via a series of brainstorming sessions over two days.
Attendees
On invitation, the following scholars in various aspects of Indic Aesthetics and computer science have enthusiastically participated in the workshop and presented their insights:
- Pappu Venugopala Rao – one of the foremost experts in Natya shaastra with exposure to modern discourse – Former Director of the American Institute of Indian Studies
- Nagaraj Paturi – an expert in Indian aesthetics, linguistic science, cultural anthropology
- Vinod Vidwans – an expert in computational Hindustani music based on Indic principles of mano dharma – Dean of Faculties, FLAME University
- Rani Sadasiva Murthy – a multi-faceted expert in Indic aesthetics, poet and orator – Professor at RSVP Tirupati – Specializes in Alankaara shastra (Indic theory of poetics)
- Sri K. Dakshinamoorthy – an expert in sthaapatya, a renowned sthapati, and descendant of the famous Sriman Ganapathy Sthapati
- Sunthar Visuvalingam – a software professional in Chicago and an expert in rasa theory, especially on Abhinavagupta’s works
- Shrinivas Varakhedi – an expert in Nyaaya shaastra (lakshana) and VC of Kalidas Samskrit University, Nagpur
- Sucheta Bhide Chapekar – the foremost Bharatanatyam dancer cum guru in Pune and expert in the theory of Indian dance
- Sushruthi Santanam – a performing Carnatic musician and research scholar in Indic musical and craft traditions – Daughter of the famous Carnatic music viduShii Dr. R. Vedavalli
- K. Gopinath – Computer Science Professor at IISc Bangalore, doing inter-disciplinary research on rasa theory
- Organizer: Dr. Sai Susarla – Computer Science researcher with 20 years of industrial R&D experience and Dean of the MIT School of Vedic Sciences
Background
Emotional intelligence is the next frontier in robotics / artificial intelligence. Computer Science researchers are already creating ad hoc models of human emotional states to analyze social media discussions and gauge public sentiment. The area is called sentiment analysis and is an active discipline in big data analytics. The next step is to use such models to create aesthetically pleasing machines. There are several other applications in design, creativity and their evaluation.
But the modern understanding of the human personality and perception of beauty is half-baked at best, and the Indian theory of aesthetics can provide a much more thorough foundation. Unfortunately, the academia hasn’t paid enough attention to the pristine Indic perspective in this light. To help fill this gap, this workshop was organized to explore the precision with which Indic shaastras have described Aesthetic experience (rasa, beauty, creativity) by actually developing a computational model to represent it. As an outcome, we hope to spawn a set of research projects with practical applications of Indic Aesthetics.
The other beneficial result of this exercise is to provide artists the conceptual foundation for a deeper appreciation of their own art form and its ultimate goal, namely, social harmony through preference for beauty and ethics.
Example Applications
Training in Ideal Artistic Performance and Appreciation: Create tools to help performing artists hone their skills with precise models of ideal performance.
Branding, Marketing, Entertainment: Produce aesthetically pleasing messaging and designs by evaluating them against well-researched aesthetics principles.
Emotion sensing in communication: Sense hidden emotional cues in human communication in various domains – corporate interactions, negotiation, counselling, justice, etc.
Robotics: Empathic Robots for healthcare who can understand and respond to emotions of patients.
Workshop: Key Takeaways
Here are the fundamental questions discussed in the workshop and their brief conclusions in italics:
- According to India’s shaastras, does aesthetic experience – i.e., the emotional experience of joy and beauty in its various grades and nuances – and its communication, i.e., its transmission from one to another – have a systematic structure and process amenable to scientific understanding and prediction? YES
- Do the Indic shaastras have a complete and precise enough description of this structure for explicit modelling? YES, if traditional practice is also considered.
- Are there common concepts that recur across various modes of aesthetic communication such as music, dance, sculpture, painting, poetics? YES
- What are the elements of a computational model of aesthetic experience? Naatya shaastra and Alankaara shaastra together provide a precise model for computation.
- Sub-question 1: Can each medium of artistic expression be described as a language, together with its basic alphabet, words, phrases, sentences and discourse? YES, for music, Natya, poetics. The answer was not clear for Sthaapatya – to be investigated.
- Sub-question 2: Is there a commonality in their concepts that will help build a unified language of aesthetic expression with dialects for different genres of art? TBD
- Can such a model enable automated generation and appreciation of aesthetic performance? TBD
- Shaastras describe stylized versions (naaTya-dharmi) of basic expressions/idioms used in the world (loka-dharmi). To apply the deeper aesthetic analysis to the real-world (loka-dharmi) aesthetic expression, we need to map a loka-dharmi expression to its corresponding naaTya-dharmi expression. Is such a mapping feasible for Naatya? TBD, but seems feasible. This can be used to infer moods of participants in a meeting from their gestures.
Recommended Next Steps
This workshop has confirmed the hypothesis that Indic shaastras have described Aesthetic experience (rasa, beauty, creativity) with enough precision to enable modelling it computationally for interesting applications. The areas explored include dance, music, poetics, sculpture and linguistic theory. Based on this observation, the following projects have been identified for execution in the near term:
- Create a canonical specification of the key ingredients of a computational modelling framework by taking concepts from the science of language elucidated in Vaakyapadiiyam.
- Create multi-layered aesthetic model of dance based on Naatya shastra, since it is the most vividly described and available.
- Create a multi-layered model of 8 prasthaanas of poetics
- Create a multi-layered model of sthaapatya.
Once these projects mature, develop a unified model merging common elements of the above models into one universal Indic aesthetics model with flexibility to customize to different art domains as needed.
Later, we shall also develop a multi-layered model of Indian classical music (both north and south Indian).
Acknowledgements
The organizers are grateful to the MIT Group of Institutions’ leadership for generously sponsoring this historic, one-of-a-kind visionary workshop at the right juncture when the need for scientific exploration of aesthetics is starting to be felt. The MIT management and staff have worked extra hard to ensure smooth operation of the workshop. We are grateful for the several renowned scholars who, in spite of their extremely busy schedules, have taken the effort to travel and stay with us for 2 full days out of sheer enthusiasm and good nature to help. Every one of the scholars have shared our vision, and taken keen personal interest and contributed their deep insights with the intent to make positive impact. We thank Prof. K. Gopinath for mooting the idea of such a workshop in the first place, Prof. Nagaraj Paturi and Prof. Vinod Vidwans for guiding the shape and content of the entire workshop and for referring highly accomplished scholars through their individual rapport. We thank Smt. Sushruthi Santanam for suggesting Smt. Sucheta Chapekar to grace the workshop as performing artist. We thank the faculty members of MITSVS for handling all the logistics and ensuring the smooth functioning of the workshop.
About Aesthetics
The goal of aesthetics is to experience bliss and to induce it in fellow human beings through various media such as art or language. There can be up to five aspects in the communication of Aesthetic experience: the original experiencer, the mood or bhaava experienced, the performer expressing it, and the medium of communication and the intended recipient. India offers a sound unified theoretical model of aesthetic experience, its process, forms, grades and nuances, systematic categorization of its aspects and methods to maximize the richness of experience.
