Index,
2011
Louisiana State University
Index
1650-1850: Ideas, Aesthetics, and Inquiries in the Early Modern Era
No abstract provided.
Book Reviews,
2011
Louisiana State University
Book Reviews
1650-1850: Ideas, Aesthetics, and Inquiries in the Early Modern Era
No abstract provided.
Pretense Theory And The Imported Background,
2011
James Madison University
Pretense Theory And The Imported Background, Jeffrey C. Goodman
Faculty Scholarship
Kendall Walton’s pretense theory, like its rivals, says that what’s true in a fiction F depends in part on the importation of background propositions into F. The aim of this paper is to present, explain, and defend a brief yet straightforward argument – one which exploits the specific mechanism by which the pretense theory says propositions are imported into fictions – for the falsity of the pretense theory.
Editorial,
2011
Rhode Island School of Design
A New Problem For Aesthetics,
2011
Rhode Island School of Design
A New Problem For Aesthetics, Kevin Melchionne
Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)
The essay introduces the problem of aesthetic unreliability, the variety of ways in which it is difficult to grasp our aesthetic experience and the consequent confusion and unreliability of what we take as our taste.
Politics Of Beauty,
2011
Rhode Island School of Design
Politics Of Beauty, Ken-Ichi Sasaki
Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)
I look back at the history of modern aesthetics to grasp its current situation and to propose its possibilities for the future. The early modern period, during which aesthetics came into being, was a great historical turning point for civilization. Our contemporary period shares this character, and it is worthwhile for us to consult its history in order to reflect on our civilization. Aesthetics began with Baumgarten’s proposal, which consisted in a triple subject: sensibility, beauty, and art. His idea was accepted because it responded to the fundamental problems of the period. Sensibility was the only form of cognition of …
Stories In Pictures (And Non-Pictorial Objects): A Narratological And Cognitive Psychological Approach,
2011
Lund University
Stories In Pictures (And Non-Pictorial Objects): A Narratological And Cognitive Psychological Approach, Michael Ranta
Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)
Narratological studies have frequently focused upon linguistic structures, considered to be paradigmatic cases of narrativity, while pictorial signs, such as icons and symbols or indices, have received comparably much less attention. In this paper, however, some basic and regularly occurring narrative aspects of pictures and non-pictorial objects will be presented and discussed.
Affirming Difference: Everyday Aesthetic Experience After Phenomenology,
2011
Goldsmiths, University of London
Affirming Difference: Everyday Aesthetic Experience After Phenomenology, Wood Roberdeau
Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)
This article explores the complex relationships among two different types of critique, the socio-temporal zone known as "everyday life" and the moment of the encounter by those who are encountering art works. It proceeds with a close study of the phenomenology of Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Mikel Dufrenne, and tests their key concepts against generalized contemporary art practices that question a model of the traditional aesthetic experience by suggesting the possibility that within the expanse of postmodernity such a paradigm has shifted, (although it is not completely irretrievable). The paper argues that this shift has been achieved by remobilizing readymade objects …
Video Games As Mass Art,
2011
Lincoln University
Video Games As Mass Art, Grant Tavinor
Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)
Videogames are one of the most significant developments in the mass arts of recent times. In commercial terms, they are now among the most prominent of the mass arts worldwide. This commercial and cultural success does not exhaust the interest in videogames as a mass art phenomenon because games such as Grand Theft Auto IV and Fallout 3 are structurally radically different from previous forms of mass art. In particular, the ontology of videogames, the nature and identity of their works, and how they are instanced and evaluated is a departure from the familiar mass arts of film and popular …
Disgust And Ugliness: A Kantian Perspective,
2011
Central European University, Budapest, Hungary
Disgust And Ugliness: A Kantian Perspective, Mojca Kuplen
Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)
Contemporary discussions of the problem of ugliness in Kant’s aesthetic theory have, to my knowledge, left unexplored the relation of disgust to ugliness. At most, they have explained away disgust as merely an extreme form of ugliness or displeasure, as Guyer did in his interpretation of ugliness in Kant’s aesthetic theory,[1] and by that strayed from the phenomenological and conceptual uniqueness of disgust in comparison to ugliness, while Kant, as I argue, did not. As a matter of fact, careful investigation of the concept of disgust in Kant’s writing will reveal the distinctive and multifaceted character that he ascribed …
Virtual Dance And Motion-Capture,
2011
Université du Québec à Montréal
Virtual Dance And Motion-Capture, Marc Boucher
Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)
A general view of various ways in which virtual dance can be understood is presented in the first part of this article. It then appraises the uses of the term “virtual” in previous studies of digital dance. A more in-depth view of virtual dance as it relates to motion-capture is offered, and key issues are discussed regarding computer animation, digital imaging, motion signature, virtual reality and interactivity. The paper proposes that some forms of virtual dance be defined in relation to both digital technologies and contemporary theories of virtuality.
City Walks And Tactile Experiences,
2011
Institute of Philosophy at the University of Vienna
City Walks And Tactile Experiences, Mădălina Diaconu
Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)
This paper is an attempt to develop categories of the pedestrian’s tactile and kinaesthetic experience of the city. The beginning emphasizes the haptic qualities of surfaces and textures, which can be “palpated” visually or experienced by walking. Also the lived city is three-dimensional; its corporeal depth is discussed here in relation to the invisible sewers, protuberant profiles, and the formal diversity of roofscapes. A central role is ascribed in the present analysis to the formal similarities between the representation of the city by walking through it and the representation of the tactile form of objects. Additional aspects of the “tactile” …
Notices,
2011
Rhode Island School of Design
The Border Mural In The Electronic Age: Xican@ Literacy As Rhetorical Agency,
2011
University of Texas at El Paso
The Border Mural In The Electronic Age: Xican@ Literacy As Rhetorical Agency, José Angel Maldonado
Open Access Theses & Dissertations
The Border Mural in the Electronic Age is a project that responds to blanket statements, not only about a people's literacy (or illiteracy), but to the ways in which we define and measure literacy in the electronic age. In this study, literacy is located on the US-México border, and this specific location serves as the social, political, and economic grounds on which to study the types of literacies used by the local population. A cultural ecology approach is necessary when studying niche literacies, and in today's world, traditional literacies coexist among emergent forms of literacy most likely attributed to technological …
Kandinsky's Nonrepresentational Art: Finding Meaning Through Aesthetic Experience,
2011
University of Texas at El Paso
Kandinsky's Nonrepresentational Art: Finding Meaning Through Aesthetic Experience, Kandice Nikkole Diaz
Open Access Theses & Dissertations
The art world is not one in which much scholarship has been conducted from a communication perspective. As such, this study attempts to add to the very little body of work that exists in the realms of both art and visual rhetoric. Abstract art, such as that of Wassily Kandinsky, is full of meaning despite the fact that it is nonobjective, and therefore considered meaningless. Using a rhetorical method, I argue that by examining the artwork of Wassily Kandinsky in certain contexts, it is possible to discover the meaning embedded in his abstract paintings, in particular his Compositions and Improvisations.
Nothing But A Pack Of Cards: Semi-Fictitious Persons And Flopping Jellyfish In Elizabeth Bowen,
2011
Wayne State University
Nothing But A Pack Of Cards: Semi-Fictitious Persons And Flopping Jellyfish In Elizabeth Bowen, Renée C. Hoogland
English Faculty Research Publications
Taking the wildly conflicting critical evaluations of Elizabeth Bowen's final novel, Eva Trout, or Changing Scenes (1969) as its starting-point, this essay argues against 'interpreting' both the novel and its 'monstrous' heroine in conventional representational terms, to argue, instead, for an appreciation, or experience, of both novel and protagonist as instantiations of a process of becoming along Deleuzian lines. Rather than seeing Bowen's final novel as a (failed) attempt to do what the Anglo-Irish writer's previous work would have suggested this text to do as well, the novel and its eponymous heroine are approached as Bowen's rigorously ethical effort to, …
Recent Publications,
2011
Rhode Island School of Design
Philosophical Hermeneutics And The Ethical Function Of Architecture,
2011
Seattle University
Philosophical Hermeneutics And The Ethical Function Of Architecture, Paul Kidder
Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)
Karsten Harries’ book, The Ethical Function of Architecture, raises the question of how architecture can be interpretive of and for our time. Part of Harries’ pursuit of this question is done in dialogue with the philosophy of Martin Heidegger, whose evocatively expressed ontology of building and dwelling recovered, in philosophical and poetic terms, the power of buildings to symbolize and interpret the most fundamental truths of being and human existence. The present essay identifies contributions to this hermeneutic and ontological approach to architecture drawn from the philosophy of Hans-Georg Gadamer, emphasizing Gadamer’s notions of play (Spiel), symbol, and the …
Taking Art Personally: Austin, Performatives And Art,
2011
Denison University
Taking Art Personally: Austin, Performatives And Art, David Goldblatt
Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)
This paper is an attempt to apply speech act theory to aesthetics. In particular, it purports to be a contribution to reception theory by drawing attention to certain similarities between the contextual structure of performatives and the structure of the reception of art. It hopes to locate the auditor or spectator of artworks in what J. L. Austin calls “the total context” to help explain how certain aspects of artworks can be taken personally, somehow being about and seemingly directed at “me.” It is one way the so-called paradox of fiction can be by-passed by showing how the emotive aspects …
Aura, Self, And Aesthetic Experience,
2011
Grand Valley State University
Aura, Self, And Aesthetic Experience, Marshall Battani
Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)
Aesthetic experiences are generated in encounters with cultural objects and such experiences are marked by the free play of cognitive and numinous experience unstructured by concepts. Kant’s famous three types of pleasure, made infamous in social theory by Pierre Bourdieu, are examined in relation to the critical theoretical concept of aura, the social psychology of “flow,” and cognitive explanations of perception to explain experience in aesthetic fields. Theories of aesthetic experience developed at the crossroad of critical social thought and cognitive science hold promise for a social analysis able to avoid the usual sociological pitfalls of either ignoring aesthetics or …
