[ScotterC]

Right on. In my experience across different art fields, I’d say the only generalizable facet of ‘good’ art/music/etc is the “it sits just outside of what we expect”.

These days I liken it more to the idea of ‘surprise’ in information entropy which denotes an informative signal then to revealing any sort of objective truth.

[klik99]

You might like the book Emotion and Meaning in Music - it starts from some outdated psychological ideas (that emotions are only intensity and that we assign positive/negative valence post-hoc) but ties that to early information theory and makes a really compelling theory of music that's all about the interplay between expectation and surprise, across both the physical harmonic ratio stuff this paper talks about and the cultural associations too.

[rebolek]

While I agree that "good" art "sits just outside of what we expect", I must play devil's advocate here and say that the uncanny valley of CGI/AI/... also "sits just outside of what we expect".

So there must be more to it.

[BoingBoomTschak]

Eh, turning that uncanny valley to 11 can be an artform in itself: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TGIvO4eh190

[rebolek]

By human? I don't doubt that.