Month: January 2011

Behold, the legendary Chart of Fantasy Art! (2008)

http://www.timholman.net/posts/the-chart-of-fantasy-art/

Every year we ask our summer intern to do a survey of cover art elements
for the top fantasy novels published in the previous year. This year,
our wonderful intern Jennifer looked at covers from 2009, and compared
them against 2008′s findings. Over the next few days we’ll be releasing
a number of charts that show what she found.

http://www.orbitbooks.net/2010/08/19/the-chart-of-fantasy-art-part-4-title-trends/

http://www.orbitbooks.net/2010/08/19/the-chart-of-fantasy-art-part-3-dragons/

http://www.orbitbooks.net/2010/08/17/the-chart-of-fantasy-art-part-2-urban-fantasy/

http://www.orbitbooks.net/2010/08/16/the-chart-of-fantasy-art-part-one/

Birkhoff:

M = O / C

Where O is the degree of order of the work, C is the degree of complexity, and M is the aesthetic measure.

Gips & Stiny:

E_z<α, β> = L(β) / L(α)

Where <α, β> is an interpretation of a work, L(α) is the length of the input component of the interpretation and L(β) is the length of the output component of the interpretation, and E_z<α, β> is the aesthetic value assigned to the interpretation.

If an empirically oriented aesthetics uses quantitative averages as norms, it unconsciously sides with social conformity. What such an aesthetics classifies as pleasing or painful is never a sensual given of nature but something preformed by society as a whole, by what it sanctions and censors, and this has always been challenged by artistic production.

Theodor Adorno, “Aesthetic Theory”, p.267 (Athlone), p.347 (Continuum).