Philosophy Commons^™

Feeling The Environment: Aesthetic Interestedness And Environmental Aesthetics, Roberta Dreon

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

Can aesthetic disinterest represent an adequate strategy to develop a sustainable attitude? While aesthetic disinterest plays a basic role in the Kantian foundation of aesthetics, (dis)interestedness has been a puzzling topic of discussion in the debate on environmental aesthetics and is becoming an increasingly pressing one, given the current worsening of the climate crisis.

The first part of this paper will explore the different meanings of the term as it is used within the debate on environmental aesthetics, either in support of or against the adoption of a disinterested attitude toward the environment. I will suggest drawing a distinction between …

Recovering Landscape And Landscape Beauty In Environmental Aesthetics, Paolo Furia

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

In this article, I will pin down some elements to recover the concept of landscape in the context of environmental aesthetics. Such insertion of landscape in environmental aesthetics entails the questioning of the dualism between nature and culture that still lays at the basis of much literature in environmental aesthetics. My argument will unfold in three steps: first, I will show how the original question of environmental aesthetics, as elaborated by Ronald Hepburn in 1966, presupposes a distinction between nature and culture rooted in the moral contempt for excessive modernization and urbanization. Second, I will criticize some theories, not all …

Landscape Education, Enskilment, And Aesthetics: Complex Skills For Our Time, Alberto L. Siani

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

Environmental education is undoubtedly a pressing need in our time. Landscape education may be seen as something more restricted in scope and necessity, and more disengaged. However, as I will first argue, because of the intrinsically concrete, localized, aesthetic character of landscapes in their difference from environment, landscape education in fact can also be seen as a more complex and challenging concept that can be framed in terms of enskilment. Second, to better clarify this concept and highlight the theoretical and practical difficulties related to it, this paper will then turn to some Wittgensteinian ideas about learning, especially his concept …

No Trace, No Waste? The Art Of Living In Trashscapes, Mădălina Diaconu

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

Humans have always striven to overcome their finitude by leaving traces. The phenomenology and hermeneutics of the twentieth century interpreted traces as meaningful sources for reconstructing the past and disregarded their materiality. This culturalist and retrospective approach nowadays has become untenable, as it is impossible to generate significative traces without producing waste as well. Waste itself forms a special category of trace that is unintentional and partly nocuous. Moreover, a final repository appears to have perversely fulfilled the dream of leaving ineffaceable traces that would survive humanity itself. In this new context, a future-oriented approach, one that would engage collectivities …

Frugality. An Aesthetic Category For A Sustainable Art Of Living, Elisabetta Di Stefano

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

Climate change has necessitated the exploration of new interpretive models and aesthetic categories to understand our relationship with the environment. In response to this, the concept of frugality emerges as a potential paradigm for a sustainable art of living. This paper aims to provide a comprehensive exploration of frugality as an aesthetic category through the lens of the history of ideas, its connection to everyday aesthetics, and its implications for an art of living. By adopting a frugal lifestyle, individuals can establish a harmonious and respectful relationship with the environment, promoting a more sustainable future. This existential model has been …

On The Significance Of Eco-Phenomenology For Theories Of Sustainability, Kira Meyer

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

The Ecosystem Service Approach lays down the several ways in which nature contributes to the welfare of human beings. One important category of this approach is the cultural services that nature offers, which conform to the eudaimonic values in environmental ethics. The cultural services of nature are an important reason in choosing a concept of strong sustainability, as developed by Konrad Ott and Ralf Döring; eco-phenomenology is a method to immerse into these cultural-eudaimonic values and articulate them in nuanced ways. Our overall argument will substantiate the uncommon claim that eco-phenomenology is of focal significance to theories of sustainability.

Imaginaries, Scenarios, And Materialities: The Arts As Part Of Ecology, Peter J. Schneemann

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

This contribution seeks to identify some of the methodological implications and challenges for art history as a discipline when confronted with the ecological imperative. There are clear societal expectations to ecological questions, approaches, and attitudes and a new rhetoric by artists and also scientists that anticipates the necessity of an ethical stand. The shift towards notions like sustainability was so fast and so radical, I argue, that we ought to take time to step back and reflect on its implications. I am especially interested in the intersection between the ethical dimension we now apply to artistic production (as a …

Back To Intermittence, Or Rediscovering Web-Materiality: An Artistic Quest For A Sustainable Internet Aesthetics, Diego Mantoan

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

Through the digital and public artwork, Solar Protocol (2020-ongoing), artists and engineers Tega Brain, Alex Nathanson, and Benedetta Piantella kickstarted a solar-powered server network that hosts a web page demonstrating how intermittent energy levels affect its very aesthetics and usability. This small-scale participatory experiment stimulates a wider reflection on the interconnection between economic, environmental, behavioral, and aesthetic features that shape the way the internet is produced and consumed in today’s society. Far from being a mere matter of greening the internet’s power supply, rather the artwork turns a spotlight on the implicit attitudes of web producers and consumers as developed …

An Aesthetics Of Minimal Resources: Affective Ecologies At The Encounter With Environmental Ethics In Alicia Barney’S Artistic Practice, Vanessa Badagliacca

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

The aim of this article is to present the early works created between 1975 and 1982 by Alicia Barney, a pioneer of environmental art in Colombia. The purpose is to highlight her ability to lead us Toward a Sustainable Attitude, the title of a conference held at the University of Venice (October 6-8, 2022), and also to claim how relevant these works remain in the current climate crisis within and beyond contemporary aesthetics debates. Taking on this approach, it will emerge that despite the attempt of the artist in some of her pieces to adopt a detached, scientific attitude …

The Aesthetics Of Animal Companions, Samantha Vice

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

In the philosophical aesthetics literature, domestic animals, and in particular companion animals or pets, are notable for their absence. I examine the few available accounts of the aesthetics of animals, extend them to animal companions, and argue that they are lacking in important respects. An appropriate aesthetics of these animals should recognize their unique status as individual animals in human spaces, imbued with human meanings, and yet essentially other.

Aesthetic Value And Gardens, David Fenner

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

Gardens as an aesthetic form rank high for their capacity to engage aesthetic attenders fully. ‘Full engagement’ may be thought of in terms of an object’s capacity for constituting an aesthetic world a person can temporarily inhabit, a description used by Alan Goldman as he articulates his theory of aesthetic value, one that focuses on depth of perceptual, affective, and cognitive engagement.

Properness And Pluralism In Functional Beauty, Ryan Mitchell Wittingslow Phd

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

In their 2008 monograph, Functional Beauty, Glenn Parsons and Allen Carlson develop a theory of functional beauty account based on a selected effects theory of biological function and apply it to human-made artifacts. This paper contends that their selected effects theory falls short in capturing the inherently pluralistic nature of functional beauty (FB). The paper is structured as follows. First, it provides an overview of Parsons and Carlson’s FB argument, focusing on their attribution of proper function in artifacts. Second, it analyzes how aesthetic dysfunction is conceptualized in Functional Beauty, highlighting what I take to be shortcomings in …

Wild Joy: An Exploration In Queer Spatial Dynamics, Kipper Thomas Reinsmith

Masters Theses

What does it mean to feel represented in a space?

What does a trans space look like?

How can we queer our interior spaces?

Our world is crafted by the many designers that have come before us. These systems, products, and spaces are built upon assumptions of the bodies that will use and occupy them—namely cisgender, able-bodied, straight folks.

Designing and creating objects as a trans person is an act of radical nature. To take up space, to design for trans luxury, for the sake of beauty, for joy itself, feels counterintuitive to the narratives we’ve been served: that of …

Emotional Factory, Yukun Cui

Masters Theses

该项目设想将上海一个历史悠久的仓库改造成一个创新的、以情感为主题的联合办公空间，超越传统的办公环境。在工作环境质量深刻影响生产力和幸福感的时代，该项目旨在创造一个协调身体、心理和情绪健康的空间。该设计融合了促进健康的元素，例如健身设施、美食和丰富的绿色植物，确保居住者在整个工作日中保持动力和灵感。该项目涉及个人与其环境之间的动态互动。认识到传统的办公室布局往往会限制移动和空间感知，我们的设计引入了一个固有的动态工作空间。灵活的布局，可调节的家具和可移动的隔板使空间能够适应各种活动和需求。互动元素和视觉刺激全天变化，鼓励探索和互动，而不需要持续的身体运动。使用不同的纹理、颜色和照明方案创造了一种多感官体验，使空间充满活力和不断变化的感觉。通过结合这些元素，该项目旨在重新定义现代工作空间，创造一个不仅能提高生产力，而且能丰富人类工作体验的环境。这种创新方法旨在为全球联合办公空间设定新标准，培养社区意识、创造力和幸福感。最终，该项目旨在创造一个开创性的环境，增强人类的工作体验，展示工作空间设计在广泛影响和改善情绪和心理健康方面的潜力。

Searching For The Hyperobject: Crystals As Transscalar Vehicles, Jay Costello

Masters Theses

When I touch the street outside my house, I'm touching Los Angeles—a contiguous vector of material bisecting a continent. A slab, a stone, dust and oil, a googolplex of tightly packed anisotropic particles... At nightfall, I sneak to the edge of the highway and break off a piece. 'What does it mean for a worm to be aware of the scale of the planet?' Bruno Latour's evocative questioning of scalar jumps prompts an existentialism that places me somewhere between the hyperlocal and the massively distributed. Like a cosmic traveler floating through the universe, I feel adrift. I look around, grasping …

Timeless Teachings & Unbridled Possibilities, Ruijie Tai

Masters Theses

I am looking at is process of TRANSLATING AND BRIDGING.

Qi, traditionally understood as the vital force that flows through and animates living beings and the environment, lies at the edge of our perceptual capabilities.

The notion that what we cannot "see" holds significant influence over our world suggests that there are aspects of reality and forces at play beyond our direct sensory experience. AI, with its capacity for analyzing vast amounts of data and recognizing patterns beyond human capability, offers a unique tool for exploring these unseen forces.

The potential of AI to perceive and understand Qi could open …

“Touching The Untouchable”: Time As Material And The Fragmented Self In The Maximodern Era Shori V. Sims © 2024 Shori V. Sims All Rights Reserved Shorisims., Shori V. Sims

Masters Theses

In the conventional division of disciplines, film/video/moving images and stationary sculpture are categorized as formal and conceptual opposites. In my work and in this thesis, I am arguing that moving images constitute a form of sculpture in the style of assemblage by the manipulation of time around them. Yes, the image is flat and stationary on its own: but the cut of time which it represents exists multi-dimensionally (spatially and temporally) to be combined in a collage-like manner. In my practice, moving images constitute a form of assemblage that manipulates time and space in ways normally attributed to sculpture.

This …

A Thesis, Or Digressions On Sculptural Practice: In Which, Concepts & Influences Thereof Are Explained, Set Forth, Catalogued, Or Divulged By Way Of Commentaries To A Poem, First Conceived By The Artist, Fed Through Chatg.P.T., And Re-Edited By The Artist, To Which Are Added, Annotated References, Impressions And Ruminations Thereof, Also Including Private Thoughts & Personal Accounts Of The Artist, Jaimie An

Masters Theses

This thesis is an exercise in, perhaps a futile, attempt to trace just some of the ideas, stories, and musings I might meander through in my process. It’s not quite a map, nor is it a neat catalogue; it is a haphazard collection of tickets and receipts from a travel abroad, carelessly tossed in a carry-on, only to be stashed upon returning home. These ideas are derived from much greater thinkers and authors than myself; I am a mere collector or a translator, if that, and not a very good one, for much is lost. I do not claim comprehensive …

Winter Solstice, Jingwen Cao

Masters Theses

For a long time, I have been thinking about what contemporary photography is, what its position is, and what the relationship is between artists and audiences. At the same time, I was developing my concepts and photographic directions and trying to make my work and my perspective on photography relevant. Winter Solstice includes a series of essays that locate my thinking and my work. Its title references the longest night of the year.

The position of photography has changed significantly over the past few decades. The way people read photos is also changing. Perhaps because of reverence for art and …

I Am Becoming., Dai Asano

Masters Theses

This is a collection of essays documenting my grappling with the idea that time is always in motion. When you say now, it is not now anymore, but we are still in now, a new now. How can I stay in the now without being swept away by the current of time? Describing a film by Ozu Yasujiro, Deleuze writes, “The vase in Late Spring is interposed between the daughter’s half smile and the beginning of her tears. There is becoming, change, passage. But the form of what changes does not itself change does not pass on. This is time, …

Embodied Abstractions: Identity And Representation In The Digital Era, Srikar Hari

Masters Theses

The digital image is a copy in motion. As it accelerates, it deteriorates.

It is a ghost of an image, a preview, a thumbnail, squeezed through

digital connections, resized, uploaded, downloaded, reformatted

and re-edited.

- Adapted from “In defense of the Poor Image” by Hito Steryel

With today’s digital technology, the image is no longer a stable

representation of the world, but a programmable database that

is updated in real time. It is not only part of a program, but it

contains its own operating code: the image is a program in itself.

Consequently, the image’s rhetoric has taken on …

V.1 Spring 2024, Center For Arts & Language, Students Of Risd, Risd Archives

All Student Newspapers

v.1 is a publishing platform for the ongoing work, ideas, discussions, debates, and aspirations of students at the Rhode Island School of Design. The Spring 2024 issue contains articles on rewilding in Southern Africa, digital folklore, the RISD Musem exhibition on Nancy Elizabeth Prophet "I Will Not Bend an Inch," student musings on Indian identity, queering domesticity and gender in China and Taiwan, interviews of RISD students, the second Black Biennial, displaced ceremonial objects, the defunct student club RISD Quickies and interdisciplinarity at RISD, a student's queer identity, and flirting with GPTs, along with student creative writing.

Kant's Maiden, Alejandro Nodarse Jammal

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

No abstract provided.

Enlivening And Deadening Green And Gray Spaces: An Exploratino Of Christopher Alexander's Features Of Living Design, Isis Brook

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

The evidence that green spaces in urban areas contribute to human wellbeing is well established and supported by theories such as the evolutionary hypothesis, biophilia, psychological countertransference, and phyto-resonance. The rise in hard landscaping, especially in places that were previously green spaces, would appear to be a very bad development in urban living. However, the architect Christopher Alexander claims that good design can impart an aliveness to objects. This presents the possibility that gray spaces (those dominated by hard landscaping) could also be alive and similarly contribute to human wellbeing. Alexander’s proposed structural features are examined in the context of …

World Spirit And The Apotheosis Of Artificial Superintelligence: A Speculative Design Proposal, Ian Gonsher

Scholarly Research

This essay puts forth a speculative design proposal for a device with affordances for talking to, and receiving responses from, God. We begin with an analysis and critique of the concept of God, framing this concept within an understanding of Hegelian Spirit (Geist) and technological evolution. In this context, Spirit, or World Spirit (Weltgeist), can be characterized as the aggregate consciousness of all people - as human consciousness itself: In the simplest terms, this immanent framing of the “mind of God” is culturally and socially constituted as the communication that people engage in with each other, in all the diverse …

V.1 Winter 2024, Center For Arts & Language, Students Of Risd, Risd Archives

All Student Newspapers

v.1 is a publishing platform for the ongoing work, ideas, discussions, debates, and aspirations of students at the Rhode Island School of Design. The Winter 2024 issue is formatted as a calendar featuring images of current RISD students recreating scenes from historical photos taken at RISD.

Recent Publications, Editorial Office

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

No abstract provided.

Toward A Sustainable Attitude: Aeathetics, The Arts, And The Environment, Roberta Dreon, Diego Mantoan

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

Preface to the Special Issue 2024 of Contemporary Aesthetics.

Editorial, Yuriko Saito

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

No abstract provided.

Notices, Editorial Office

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

No abstract provided.