Gaze Information Channel in Van Gogh’s Paintings
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College of Intelligence and Computing, Tianjin University, Yaguan Road 135, Tianjin 300350, China
2
Institute of Informatics and Applications, University of Girona, 17003 Girona, Spain
*
Authors to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Entropy 2020, 22(5), 540; https://doi.org/10.3390/e22050540
Received: 4 April 2020
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Revised: 2 May 2020
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Accepted: 4 May 2020
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Published: 12 May 2020
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Artificial Intelligence and Complexity in Art, Music, Games and Design)
This paper uses quantitative eye tracking indicators to analyze the relationship between images of paintings and human viewing. First, we build the eye tracking fixation sequences through areas of interest (AOIs) into an information channel, the gaze channel. Although this channel can be interpreted as a generalization of a first-order Markov chain, we show that the gaze channel is fully independent of this interpretation, and stands even when first-order Markov chain modeling would no longer fit. The entropy of the equilibrium distribution and the conditional entropy of a Markov chain are extended with additional information-theoretic measures, such as joint entropy, mutual information, and conditional entropy of each area of interest. Then, the gaze information channel is applied to analyze a subset of Van Gogh paintings. Van Gogh artworks, classified by art critics into several periods, have been studied under computational aesthetics measures, which include the use of Kolmogorov complexity and permutation entropy. The gaze information channel paradigm allows the information-theoretic measures to analyze both individual gaze behavior and clustered behavior from observers and paintings. Finally, we show that there is a clear correlation between the gaze information channel quantities that come from direct human observation, and the computational aesthetics measures that do not rely on any human observation at all.
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Keywords:
eye tracking; entropy; gaze information channel; Markov chain; computational aesthetics; Kolmogorov complexity; permutation entropy
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MDPI and ACS Style
Hao, Q.; Ma, L.; Sbert, M.; Feixas, M.; Zhang, J. Gaze Information Channel in Van Gogh’s Paintings. Entropy 2020, 22, 540. https://doi.org/10.3390/e22050540
AMA Style
Hao Q, Ma L, Sbert M, Feixas M, Zhang J. Gaze Information Channel in Van Gogh’s Paintings. Entropy. 2020; 22(5):540. https://doi.org/10.3390/e22050540
Chicago/Turabian StyleHao, Qiaohong, Lijing Ma, Mateu Sbert, Miquel Feixas, and Jiawan Zhang. 2020. "Gaze Information Channel in Van Gogh’s Paintings" Entropy 22, no. 5: 540. https://doi.org/10.3390/e22050540
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