Is Beauty in the Age of the Beholder?

Symmetry is a universal concept, its unique importance has made it a topic of research across many different fields. It is often considered as a constant where higher levels of symmetry are preferred in the judgement of faces and even the initial state of the universe is thought to have been in pure symmetry. The same is true in the judgement of auto-generated art, with symmetry often used alongside complexity to generate aesthetically pleasing images; however, these are two of many different aspects contributing to aesthetic judgement, each one of these aspects is also influenced by other aspects, for example, art expertise. These intricacies cause multiple problems such as making it difficult to describe aesthetic preferences and to auto-generate artwork using a high number of these aspects. In this paper, a gamified approach is presented which is used to elicit the preferences of symmetry levels for individuals and further understand how symmetry can be utilised within the context of automatically generating artwork. The gamified approach is implemented within an experiment with participants aged between 13 and 60, providing evidence that symmetry should be kept consistent within an evolutionary art context.