Philosophy Commons^™

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.

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 …

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 …

Notices

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

No abstract provided.

Water And Stone: Contemporary Chinese Art And The Spirit Resonance Of The World, Mary Bittner Wiseman

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

My claim that the new art in China operates at the level of matter and gesture, below that of discourse, is twofold. First, much of the art that is being made exemplifies principles articulated by Hsieh Ho (fifth century) and Shih Tao (seventeenth century) and refracted through the changes wrought by Mao in 1949 and Deng in 1979. Through their art, experimental Chinese artists ask what can art be in a world turned upside down, and what can it be to be artist in such a world and, in particular, to be a Chinese artist.

Second, in the course of …

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 …

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 …

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 …

Recent Publications

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.

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

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 …

Home Life: Cultivating A Domestic Aesthetic, Jessica J. Lee

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

Home Life is an exploration of environmental aesthetics as it applies to the domestic realm. I consider Kevin Melchionne’s argument that through notions of taste, grace, and performance, everyday domestic chores can become heightened artistic practices. I argue that this does not go far enough in overcoming the traditional view of art as aesthetically superior to popular or everyday artefacts and practices; rather, it encourages the limitations of traditional aesthetics values within the domestic setting. Through examples, including Pauliina Rautio’s study on laundry, I consider the possibility that domestic practices are made up of actions that are not performed with …

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 …

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 …

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 …

Editorial

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

No abstract provided.

Interpretations: Deep, Reasonable, And Free, Paul Guyer

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

No abstract provided.

Interpretation, Sincerity & "Theory", John Gibson

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

No abstract provided.

Laurent Stern's Interpretive Reasoning, Mary Wiseman

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

No abstract provided.

The Value Of Fictional Worlds (Or Why 'The Lord Of The Rings' Is Worth Reading), James Harold

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

Some works of fiction are widely held by critics to have little value, yet these works are not only popular but also widely admired in ways that are not always appreciated. In this paper I make use of Kendall Walton’s account of fictional worlds to argue that fictional worlds can and often do have value, including aesthetic value, that is independent of the works that create them. In the process, I critique Walton’s notion of fictional worlds and offer a defense of the study and appreciation of fictional worlds, as distinguished from the works of fiction with which they are …

Musical Presence: Towards A New Philosophy Of Music, Charles Ford

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

Most recent writings about the philosophy of music have taken an analytic or linguistic approach, focusing on terms such as meaning, metaphor, emotions and expression, invariably from the perspective of the individual listener or composer. This essay seeks to develop an alternative, phenomenological framework for thinking about music by avoiding these terms, and by extrapolating from the writings of Hegel, Husserl, and Heidegger. On the basis of discussions of musical time, its multiple levels of matter, and its internal dialectics, the essay presents a particular understanding of “style” as the primary basis for mediation between production and reception. It concludes …

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 …

The Hijab And The Sari: The Strange And The Sexy Between Colonialism And Global Capitalism, Falguni A. Sheth

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

By exploring the “Western” reception of the sari in comparison to the hijab, I hope to illuminate the racial aesthetic that is at work in vilifying the latter while glorifying the former. The history of colonialism and the forced domestication of the sari help to facilitate its reception as an acceptably “sexy” garment. By contrast, the hijab has not been subjected to colonial modification. It has remained unmodified, and is still experienced as culturally, racially, and aesthetically strange by observers. In order to explore the role that political and cultural authority plays in shaping “acceptable” and “unacceptable” racial aesthetics as …

Performance Hero, Craig Derksen, Darren Hudson Hick

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

The Guitar Hero series of video games and their spin-offs have provided millions with a new way to interact with music. These games are not only culturally significant but also philosophically significant. Based on the way that these games allow people to interact with music we must decide that either playing a song in one of these games can be a legitimate performance of that song or that our current accounts of performance are inadequate.

Othering The Other: The Spectacle Of Katrina For Our Racial Entertainment Pleasure, Mariana Ortega

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

The following essay examines visual representations of hurricane Katrina in popular media in order to show how photography continues to be enlisted in the production of the racial spectacle, the transformation of the plight of people of color into entertainment. The essay also analyzes how such a use of the visual serves to solidify the understanding of people of color by way of a black-white binary that does not do justice to current U.S. demographics. The essay provides a glimpse into the intertwining between the visual and racial thinking.

Integrative And Disintegrative Art, Ossi Naukkarinen

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

This article compares and analyzes two seemingly opposite approaches to visual arts that can be called integrative and disintegrative. They are usually seen to be contradictory, and the latter is often favored in contemporary art discourse. The article suggests, however, that the integrative approach can still be quite as favorable to art as the disintegrative one. Both views are useful for certain purposes and in the context of individual art works they are often actually intertwining. Especially from the perspective of art education, it is easy to understand the different implications of these views. This is because in that context …

Notices

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

No abstract provided.

Recent Publications

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

No abstract provided.