Arts and Humanities Commons^™

The Role Of Westerners In The Conservation Of Legong Dance, Stephen Davies

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

The image of legong-sumtuosly costumed girl dancers crowned with frangiapanis-is the face of Balinese culture. Yet it is only one of twenty dance/drama genres and prominent in only some centers. Legong, a secular court dance, has often been (and still is) in danger of extinction. Balinese are now less interested in legong than ever before and musicians prefer to play other kinds of music.

Since the 1930s, legong has been presented at tourist centers and by ensembles touring overseas. Western expatriates have founded legong groups and generally brokered the relation between Balines and foreigners. Foreign scholars have studied, recorded, and …

Playing With Shadows, Apinan Poshyananda

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

This essay reflects on the practice of the Indonesian artist Heri Dono, whose exhibition in Tokyo in 2000 is the anchor. It probes the cultural contexts in which the contemporary art of Dono plays out, identifying key trajectories that help clarify the concerns of this particular articulation: the locale of Yogyakarta, the mentality of the Javanese, and the device of the puppet presentation or the wayang, which derives from the ancient epics.[1] All this is located within the scheme of an exhibition of contemporary art and rendered in such a way that it conveys a certain aesthetic of hybridity and …

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 …

2011 Yearbook, Risd Archives, Center For Student Involvement (Csi)

RISD Yearbooks

No abstract provided.

Collision, Judith Tannenbaum

Journals

Exhibition Notes, Number 37, 2010. Collision is an experiment in exhibition-making. It began when painter Jackie Saccoccio invited a group of artists (seventeen, including herself) to contribute works of their own choosing to a show in which paintings, sculptures, photographs, drawings, prints, videos, and various hybrid forms would literally collide: butting up against each other, overlapping, and even altering one another in an improvisatory fashion. Depending on their placement in the gallery as determined by the individual artists, the works could become entirely subsumed in the larger communal cacophony.

Most often group exhibitions in museums are conceived and organized by …

Tristin Lowe Under The Influence, Tristin Lowe

Journals

Exhibition Notes, Number 36, 2010. The moon, Earth's only satellite, has been a source of mystery and wonder since the beginning of recorded history, and probably before that as well. Inspired to understand its powerful presence and effects— from gravitational pull, tidal flow, and magnetic fields to its impact on animal and human behavior— artists and writers as well as scientists have studied the moon for centuries.

Using low-tech but labor-intensive methods and materials, sculptor Tristin Lowe has created an interpretation of the moon to fill the Museum's Lower Farago Gallery. Lunacy is an inflatable sphere, about twelve and a …

Office Of Multicultural Affairs (Oma) Annual Report 2009-2010, Intercultural Student Engagement Office, Anthony Johnson

Intercultural Student Engagement (ISE) Annual Reports

The Office of Multicultural Affairs (OMA) Annual Report 2009-2010 is a year in review containing a message from the director, staff updates, community programs, statistics and general report of the work of this office. Our Mission: People from all backgrounds bring value to the art and human conversations held at RISD. The Office of Multicultural Affairs (OMA) assists the RISD community-at-large in shaping a culturally inclusive and supportive environment that enables all its members the opportunity to fully contribute to and benefit from the total RISD experience. OMA coordinates enriching opportunities for cultural awareness, dialogue, and interaction. The office services …

2010 Program Booklet, Kate Cardoza Blackwell

Collection (annual runway show) 2007-2017

Official Collection 2010 Program distributed at the event.

Annual Report Of The Risd Fleet Library 2009-2010, Fleet Library, Carol Terry

Annual Reports

No abstract provided.

Ho Mei Ah = [Good Taste], Renee Chan, Fleet Library, Special Collections, Jan Baker

Food

This book was completed for Jan Baker's artists' book class, Printed Books.

The Magpie's Nest, Catherine Stephens, Fleet Library, Special Collections, Jan Baker

Animals

This book was completed for Jan Baker's artists' book class, Printed Books

The Master's Written Thesis, Anne West, Graduate Studies, Center For Arts & Language

Thesis Writing

91 pages : illus. ; 26 cm; 2nd Edition. "This guide to thesis development is best used in discussion and negotiation with your Graduate Program Director and other thesis advisors. It may also be used as part of a workshop structure to explore in conversation with others the ideas and possibilities most appropriate to your own work." – Anne West, from the Introduction. "This remarkable handbook is a navigational instrument offered to assist each graduate student through the development of an independent, distinctive process of writing about—and with—one’s work." – Patricia C. Phillips, from the introduction. "The first edition of …

A Symposium On Laurent Stern's Interpretive Realism, John Gibson

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

No abstract provided.

Recent Publications

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

No abstract provided.

Response To Critics, Laurent Stern

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

No abstract provided.

Allowing The Accidental; The Interplay Between Intentionality And Realism In Photographic Art, Katrina Mitcheson

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

We experience photographs both as intentional and as prone to the accidental. The photograph is both capable of being an artwork with its own, constructed world and of drawing our attention to the reality of the objects used in creating it. In this article I employ the insights contained in the concepts of Barthes’ studium and punctum in order to explore how the artist’s intentions and the realism of photography interact aesthetically. I advance the idea that a unique aesthetics of photography can be rooted in the tension between the intentional, culturally coded message of a photograph and the emanation …

The Aesthetics Of Magnetic Resonance Imaging (Mri): From The Scientific Laboratory To An Artwork, Silvia Casini

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

This article investigates the aesthetic potential of Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI), a medical imaging technique, both inside the laboratory and in the arts. By combining Rancière’s understanding of aesthetics with Merleau-Ponty’s notion of embodied perception, it argues that an image-generating technique conceived in the scientific field can successfully migrate into the realm of fine art, opening up new aesthetic and perceptual possibilities. Although aesthetic qualities are already present in the laboratory, they remain hidden by the necessity of reading the image-data obtained according to the interpretative framework of the medical discourse. Two paths are covered: the first goes from the …

A Functional Model Of The Aesthetic Response, Daniel Conrad

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

In a process of somatic evolution, the brain semi-randomly generates initially-unstable neural circuits that are selectively stabilized if they succeed in making sense out of raw sensory input. The human aesthetic response serves the function of stabilizing the circuits that successfully mediate perception and interpretation, making those faculties more agile, conferring selective advantage. It is triggered by structures in art and nature that provoke the making of sense. Art is deliberate human action aimed at triggering the aesthetic response in others; thus, if successful, it serves the same function of making perception and interpretation more agile. These few principles initiate …

2010-2011 Risd Course Announcement, Risd Registrar's Office, Risd Archives

RISD Course Catalogs / Announcements

No abstract provided.

2010 Risd Wintersession Schedule Of Courses, Risd Registrar's Office, Risd Archives

RISD Course Catalogs / Announcements

No abstract provided.

Notices

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

No abstract provided.

Report: The Xviiith International Congress Of Aesthetics- "Diversities In Aesthetics" (Peking University, Beijing, China, 9-13 August 2010), Michael Ranta

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

No abstract provided.

Why Beauty Still Cannot Be Measured, Ossi Naukkarinen

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

This article focuses on the question of whether the latest results achieved in sciences such as evolution studies and brain research can help us understand the nature of aesthetic judgments. It suggests that such approaches may offer interesting insights for understanding many problems in aesthetics, but for clarifying aesthetic judgments one needs a philosophical point of view. Aesthetic judgments cannot be proven right or wrong by scientific methods, and beauty or other aesthetic qualities cannot be directly measured. The “method” of both making and analyzing aesthetic judgments is discussion, and the article clarifies why this is still the case, even …

The Third Tear In Everyday Aesthetics, Katya Mandoki

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

Although totally overlooked by mainstream aesthetic theory, various paths were nevertheless left open for addressing everyday aesthetics, a natural yet surprisingly controversial topic. Why they were never taken until recently, when the theme of everyday aesthetics is now becoming fashionable, can be explained not only by the obvious fact of philosophical aesthetics’ restrictive focal point on art but, among other reasons, by a kind of fetishism that demands an object of recognized value for legitimating an aesthetic inquiry. This new popularity entails, however, certain theoretical risks such as clinging to traditional art-centric and beauty-centric categories to explain the everyday and …

Laurent Stern's Interpretive Reasoning, Mary Wiseman

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

No abstract provided.

Interpretations: Deep, Reasonable, And Free, Paul Guyer

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

No abstract provided.

Nightwatch, Justin Winkler

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

In this essay I examine the features of night, in particular, urban night. I try to highlight the epistemological divide between day and night, light and darkness. Even as light-based experiencing, acting, and thinking, and their cultural tools colonize urban night, nocturnal elements relate dialectically to our daytime reasoning. I conclude with the question of whether a kind of half-tone thinking contained in a trialectic of light, twilight, and darkness would be capable of appreciating the peculiar qualities of night.

The reveries of the weak light guide into the innermost recesses of the familiar. It looks as if there are …

Another One Bites The Dust!, Gabriela Salazar

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

The contemporary landscape is rife with ruins, from circumscribed tourist attractions to urban decay and demolition sites. When examined, our aesthetic experience of these sites ranges from historical distancing to the sublime and, when found in our local communities (e.g., Providence, RI), to discomfort, displacement, and horror. In particular, this paper is interested in how certain forms of demolition, from slow and messy to explosively dramatic, can be understood as compressed and heightened experiences of the traditional sublime ruin. Additionally, as contemporary artists often use the vernacular of the ruin in their work, this paper considers how three artists, Gordon …

The Curatorial Muse, Michael J. Kowalski

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

An appreciation of the tension between the predicate, "to curate," and the subject, "the curator," is essential to understanding the convergence of creation, criticism, and administration in the graphic arts of our time. Curators were ideally positioned to step to the fore when the idea-versus-object dichotomy began to collapse in the work of Duchamp. The roots of activist curating can be found in Western Classical culture. The prevalence of conceptual art at the end of the twentieth century, combined with the explicit denigration of physical craft by artists, created a void into which activist curators moved. The curator's role as …

Sailing The Seas Of Cheese, Erik Anderson

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

Memphis Elvis is cool; Vegas Elvis is cheesy. How come? To call something cheesy is, ostensibly, to disparage it, and yet cheesy acts are some of the most popular in popular culture today. How is this possible? The concepts of cheese, cheesy, and cheesiness play an important and increasingly ubiquitous role in popular culture today. I offer an analysis of these concepts, distinguishing them from nearby concepts like kitchy and campy. Along the way I draw attention to the important roles of cultural/historical context, background knowledge, and especially artist’s intentions as they are relevant to aesthetic assessments involving cheese and …