Andrew McCluskey

The Wundt curve shows that overly simple and predictable stimuli provide only neutral hedonic value. Positive hedonic value requires stimuli that are somewhat novel/complex/ambiguous. Too much novelty or complexity, however, leads to negative hedonic value. There is, then, a “sweet spot” for the right amount of stimulus novelty/complexity: slightly... See more

the silence of my bedroom where the only way to escape the invisible yellow caution-tape around my small-town life was on spiral leaf graph-paper.

The lack of specialized knowledge amongst the mainstream audience encourages cultural producers to create and distribute cultural works with minimum changes to pre-existing artistic conventions. The industry perceives mainstream individuals as conservative: They “like what they like” and prefer not to be confronted with radical change.