I studied photography and sculpture, and initially the only thing that made any difference to whether I enjoyed a piece of art was interpretation by someone who's seen a lot of art. There were only two or three people who could do this effectively for me. Eventually, after talking to them a lot and seeing a lot of art, and thinking about it deeply, you start to develop your own tastes, and realise what kinds of things speak to you.
This project seems under the misapprehension that there's some kind of "perennial philosophy" of art that can be uncovered by asking enough people about randomly generated images. For one thing, this is absolutely not what I (and, I would argue, pretty much anyone who's spent time thinking about it) consider to be "art". Also, the experience of art is not just pretty pictures, but all of the past experiences that you bring with you when looking at a piece of art. Even people who like what I would consider to be twee pictures do so because of what they're bringing to the aesthetic experience.
If statistically significant results come out of this, I'd argue that any information it generates is going to be extremely shallow. It's like a kind of statistical fetish.
This project seems under the misapprehension that there's some kind of "perennial philosophy" of art that can be uncovered by asking enough people about randomly generated images. For one thing, this is absolutely not what I (and, I would argue, pretty much anyone who's spent time thinking about it) consider to be "art". Also, the experience of art is not just pretty pictures, but all of the past experiences that you bring with you when looking at a piece of art. Even people who like what I would consider to be twee pictures do so because of what they're bringing to the aesthetic experience.
If statistically significant results come out of this, I'd argue that any information it generates is going to be extremely shallow. It's like a kind of statistical fetish.