Aesthetics Commons^™

Keeping Score: Some Lessons For Artists From The Later Wittgenstein, Nickolas Calabrese

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

This text rounds up a few lessons fashioned after the idea of keeping score as it relates to the later work of Ludwig Wittgenstein. These lessons are emphatically related to the production of art, so this text might be at its best in the hands of an artist. They all loosely demonstrate the normative dimension of aesthetic production, which amounts to the claim that one is committed, by the act of production, to a communal endorsement for why an artwork ought to exist at all. The final part of this text will expand on this principle of normativity, but it …

Temembe And Sven: The Ethics Of Racist Mirth, Stephen Wilke

Masters Theses

You walk past a crowd of people at a bar, grouped around one person. He’s in the middle of telling a joke, the kind you wouldn’t tell your parents but is often told in the amenable company of close friends. You realize that the butt of the joke, the punchline, assumes that people of color are lazy and entitled. This is not an assumption you agree wit, but you find yourself with a feeling of mirth while scoffing at the comedian. His timing is well executed, and the turn of phrase is witty. The joke was racist, and yet emotionally …

Reconstructing Heritage: Places, Values, Attachment, Lisa Giombini

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

As natural catastrophes alter the environment, historical towns and other sites of heritage significance are at risk of being damaged, if not disrupted altogether. How should we confront the prospect of these disasters? And how are we to cope with the reconstructions that will be needed as these phenomena occur?

In this paper, I explore philosophical tools for thinking more deeply about the choices surrounding heritage conservation. Recent work in environmental psychology has investigated people’s emotional bond to places and how changes in a place’s structure may pose a threat to individual and social cohesion. Similarly, everyday aestheticians emphasize the …

De La Gravure Scientifique À La Gravure Artistique : Le Burin De Pierre Lyonet Et De Cécile Reims, Hélène Laulan, Caroline Anthérieu-Yagbasan

The Goose

Comment l’image peut-elle nous faire habiter le monde ? Pour répondre à cette problématique, nous cherchons ici à interroger la tension peut-être trop tranchée entre images scientifiques et images artistiques, pour construire un questionnement ontologique sur l’image. Cette réflexion s’appuiera sur la pratique de deux graveurs, l'un dit « scientifique », et l'autre « artiste ».

Floating Gardens In The Urban Landscape, Victor Rivera-Diaz

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

No abstract provided.

On Japanese Minimalism, Paul Haimes

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

Shibumi, a Japanese term referring to a subtle elegance, but at times suggestive of austerity or even bitterness, captures a certain sense of restraint that is reflected in much traditional Japanese design. Although concepts derived from Japanese Zen Buddhism, such as ma, wabi-sabi, and iki, may be more commonly known to English-speaking audiences, this article proposes that shibumi is the more appropriate concept to apply when considering the minimalist nature inherent in much Japanese design. Moreover, this article suggests that shibumi and modernist design tastes may be compatible, despite past suggestions to the contrary. To support …

The Hospitality Of The Abyssal Ground Or Perceptual Architectures Of Indeterminacy, Natasha Lushetich

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

There never has been such a thing as solid ground. As profoundly transient beings, all we can hope for is the hospitality of the abyssal ground.[1] Perhaps that is why our everyday aesthetic appreciation of our natural environment is inseparable from indeterminacy, as change and ambiguity but also potentiality; think of the immensely pleasurable journeys through the rapidly changing shapes in fire- or cloud-gazing. But can the same be said of our machinic environment? In this article, I discuss indeterminacy as a generative principle in four realms: elemental, evental, linguistic, and machinic. Anchoring the transubstantiating potential of the four …

A Philosophical Account Of Listening Musically, Paskalina Bourbon

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

What is the distinctive character of musical experiences? An answer: musical experience is distinctive because it is of music. I argue, however, that the difference between musical and nonmusical experience cannot be explained with an ontological account of music per se. Instead, we have musical experiences of sounds whenever we listen and attend to sounds in a particular kind of way. I call this special kind of attention “musical listening.” One can explain why musical experiences are distinctive by explaining what makes musical listening distinctive. This account of musical listening suggests an anti-realist stance towards music; there is no …

A Critique Of Nelson Goodman’S Aesthetics: Music As Process, William S. Gilbert

PANDION: The Osprey Journal of Research and Ideas

This essay seeks to provide a space to argue for music as both a process and memory as a counter to Nelson Goodman who argues for score as the fundamental means of identifying a piece of music. This paper builds off the work done by So Jeong Park in her piece, ‘Sound and Notation: Comparative Study on Musical Ontology’ in which she outlines an argument for calling attention to thinking about music as experienced over focusing on Platonic forms. She specifically focuses on the question, “what is music?'' rather than “what is a musical score”? Her question was intended to …

Editorial Introduction To The Special Volume On Urban Aesthetics, Sanna Lehtinen

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

No abstract provided.

What Is An Urban Atmosphere?, Adam Andrzejewski, Mateusz Salwa

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

Atmosphere is one of the key ideas in contemporary aesthetics. The concept proves to be exceptionally useful whenever particular spaces, including interiors or urban spaces, are discussed regarding their unique features. The goal of the paper is to reconsider how an urban atmosphere may be understood. In order to do that, we will shed light on the ontological nature of atmospheres, by revisiting the concept as it recently was presented by some influential proponents of the aesthetics of atmospheres. Contrary to the widespread view, we argue that an atmosphere is not an entity itself. It is not a “quasi-thing” or …

Urban Kinesthetics, Tea Lobo Ph.D.

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

The question how a city can be an aesthetic object or a beautiful object can be posed in a more fundamental manner: how a city can be perceived in the first place. By city, I mean both a built environment and its less tangible social and political reality, such as hierarchies, interactions, and alliances. A city is never perceived, in this sense, as a whole but only as snippets of buildings, the smell of pollution, and so on. Therefore, it is not accidental that urban aesthetics have traditionally been associated with the figure of the flâneur, a leisurely stroller through …

Visions Of Political Form: Kantian Free Play And Urban Space, Ryan Wittingslow Ph.D.

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

A number of commentators have examined Kantian beauty in regards to its political promise. According to these readings, the free play inherent to beauty is a precondition for realizing political forms that are both pluralistic and non-coercive. But what does this mean for the design of urban spaces where pluralistic and non-coercive politics are supposed to take place? In this paper I offer a reading of urban beauty via a Kantian lens. I argue that any assessment of urban beauty is, in part, an assessment of that space’s capacity to encourage the free play necessary for non-coercive politics and a …

Atmospheric Affordances And The Sense Of Urban Places, Vesa Vihanninjoki

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

The places of our everyday lives constitute a fundamental condition for the sensibility and the meaningfulness of our urban experience. Such places afford us various things, and it is precisely the afforded uses and actions that remarkably affect or even define our experience of a place. It is, however, crucial to ask what makes certain place-based affordances visible to us while others remain invisible. Why do we experience and interpret a place as a “place-for-something,” and what is the role of aesthetics in this process? Not all place-based affordances are equally visible to everyone, and the meaning of personal and …

The Socially Transformative Aesthetics Of Street Culture: From Walter Benjamin’S One-Way Street To The Arcades Project, Jules Simon

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

This paper discusses the dialectical relationship of what I call an ethical aesthetics of the city, exemplified in the relationship of the Haussmannization techniques of architectural administration and spatial domination in their forms of the functionalist imperative of modern capitalist urban planning and spontaneous, improvisational-yet-collective, innovative modes of street life. I draw significantly on Walter Benjamin’s phenomenological ethics of urban aesthetics, comparing two developments in his reflections on the “everyday lived experience of the city,” specifically, lived experiences of city streets, namely, the work that he published in One-Way Street, and his unfinished work in The Arcades Project. …

Street Art, Decorum, And The Politics Of Urban Aesthetics, Andrea Baldini

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

In the last forty years or so, authorities across the globe have appealed to the notion of decorum to justify authoritarian policies of urban control. Such a notion is distinctly aesthetic insofar as it deals with good taste in matters of appearances and behavior; decorum is about what we should or is appropriate to see and do in public spaces. When considering how deeply discussions and policies of decorum shape our daily lives, it is surprising that aestheticians have largely ignored the city as a subject of inquiry. In this paper, I examine the heretofore largely overlooked link between the …

Loneliness, Art, And The City, David Jenkins

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

Recognition of the costs of loneliness, in terms of public coffers and people’s health, is a relatively new phenomenon. That cities can be experienced as lonely places is nothing new. Responding to this, urban design focuses primarily on designing parks, housing, and plazas that bring people together in public space. However, these designs tend to encourage sociability amongst the already connected and do not address the social needs of lonely people who often feel daunted by the presence of others in public space. In this paper, I compare and contrast David Foster Wallace’s novels and Edward Hopper’s painting as different …

From Footsteps To Data To Art: Seeing (Through) A Bridge, Sage Cammers-Goodwin, Michael Nagenborg

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

While the guiding vision for IoT (Internet of Things) suggests that technology withdraws to the background, this paper explores the case of a physically visible, IoT-enabled footbridge to be placed in Amsterdam in summer 2020. The question is, how do aesthetic relationships with the bridge shift as knowledge of its IoT capabilities increase? The outcomes of user observation and two community design workshops are discussed, focusing on 1) what individuals desire to know about the bridge’s IoT capabilities, 2) how to best inform users that the bridge is collecting data, and 3) what capabilities people would want a smart bridge …

The Data City, The Idiom And Questions Of Locality, Noel Fitzpatrick

Articles

The paper aims to provide both a radical critique of the “smart city” as a techno-ideological apparatus,that through data analysis and algorithmic forms of governmentality tends to colonize space and time, and an attempt to reframe the very concept of intelligence within the smart cities. Two concepts are presented as tools for such a reframing: locality and idiom, where the first is conceived as openness of meaning generated by a territory, while the latter,analysed througha paradigmatic Irish example (Friel’s play Translations), prepares the ground for the pars construensof the paper. The claim, built by intertwining a set of authors (Ricoeur, …

Topics Of The Sky: Ashbery's Involving Search For The Poem, Tom M. Carlson

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

An essay lived by John Ashbery's Three Poems with special attention to the possibility of cosmic relevance. This paper attempts to imagine priorities and needs proper to celestial bodies. Three Poems is the consciousness that gives possibility to the text, while Blanchot, Nietzsche, and other thinkers ground its exploration in philosophical analysis.

Narcissus And Beauty: A Renaissance Of Paterian Aesthetics, Amir Dagan

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation is intended as a correction to the almost universal contemporary assumption that beauty is either nonexistent or a tool of oppression, and that the arts should be judged less by their aesthetic value than their social, political, or moral dimensions. This dissertation will propose a fivefold argument. First, I will assert that the experience of beauty is real, pleasurable, and not in any way culturally determined, second, that beauty is the most significant and characteristic feature of art, third, that the rejection of the reality of beauty is motivated more by the fragility of the mass man’s ego …

Object-Oriented Musicology: Some Implications Of Graham Harman's Philosophy For Music Theory, History, And Criticism, Eric Taxier

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation brings the ideas of the philosopher Graham Harman (b. 1968) into a musicological context. His “object-oriented ontology” is widely known in continental philosophy, but it has not yet entered rigorous contact with musicology. Certain factors pose difficulties at first glance, such as Harman’s focus on metaphysical issues (originating in his critique of Martin Heidegger) and his rehabilitation of the widely criticized concept of aesthetic autonomy. But these are also sources of novelty that could make an object-oriented encounter with musicology fruitful. In the first chapter, I outline the main features of Harman’s thought. He critiques assumptions about the …

The Problem Of Literary Development In Russian Formalism And Digital Humanities, Basil Lvoff

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The interest of this dissertation is how our understanding of literary development—as gradual or revolutionary; self-governed or socio-politically determined; like or unlike biological evolution—informs the status, meaning, and value of literature and literary studies. The dissertation shows how this problem—most pressing in our post-logocentric age—was addressed at the dawn of contemporary literary theory by the Russian Formalists. The latter are compared with Distant Readers, i.e., the Digital Humanists from, or conducting research in dialogue with, the Stanford Literary Lab: Franco Moretti, Matthew Jockers, Ted Underwood, William Benzon, and others.

This dissertation argues that both Russian Formalism and Distant Reading were …

Projective Aesthetics As A New Discourse, Boris Orlov Ph.D.

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

No abstract provided.

Material Matters, Mary Bittner Wiseman

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

No abstract provided.

Afrosonic Noise: A Transnational Black Feminist Musicological Study Of Global Black Joy In Black North American Rock Music And Afro Argentinian Music Performance., Jerika M Jones

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

I have decided that my academic mission, at this juncture at least, is to find common links between 2 groups of people that have come to know themselves through paralleling but colonially different environments. Perhaps it is wise for me to explore the similarities between Afro Argentine Black Music and African North American Music in closer ethnomusicological detail using feminist praxis—after all both communities are part of the African Diaspora and producing Black music. I do this by reconstructing a very limited genealogy of Black Femme’s and their contribution to their respective musical communities. I draw parallels between the global …

Ethicizing Art: A Rancièrean Analysis Of 'Feminist' Art And The Notion Of Victimhood, Bora Zaloshnja

Senior Theses and Projects

No abstract provided.

Not Just Pretty Clothes: Fashion's Progressive Operationalization As Seen In Baudelaire And Benjamin; Addendum: Anna Karenina's Appropriation Of Her Mortality Through Dress, Serena Laine Trainor

Senior Theses and Projects

Throughout this double thesis, the author investigates the philosophical significance of fashion. Through her pursuit, she works through the reformulations of the experience of the beautiful as constructed by French poet Charles Baudelaire, then expands her findings with insights from Walter Benjamin and Georg Simmel in their fashion theories. In working through these conceptualizations, as analyzed by fashion and philosophy scholar Philipp Ekardt, fashion's mechanics emerge as a model for time, history, and the human life. To more deeply understand these insights, and for a more insightful reading of Leo Tolstoy's famed novel, the author applies her analysis to the …

Rockin' The Church: Vernacular Catholic Musical Practices, Kinga Povedak

Journal of Global Catholicism

This article focuses on the unique dimensions of lived or vernacular Catholicism through the analysis of contemporary congregational music in Hungary. Looking at the musical lives of Hungarian Roman Catholics from the late 1960s to contemporary times can provide us with new understandings of the theological contents and aesthetics, as well as the vernacular religiosity of the community. Christian popular music appeared behind the Iron Curtain relatively early, in 1967 when the first “beat mass” was created and introduced at Budapest. The early Christian popular music sounded astonishingly similar to the songs of the American Folk Mass Movement of the …

Aesthetic Disappointmnet, Russell L. Quacchia

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

A survey of the literature in philosophical aesthetics reveals no extended studies on aesthetic disappointment. If anything, the topic has no more than a tacit or implicit presence to that of aesthetic satisfaction. Yet we do suffer aesthetic dissatisfactions in the form of disappointment. In this essay I attempt to initiate a discussion of the question, why and under what conditions are we aesthetically disappointed? I identify some of the main ingredients of aesthetic disappointment by examining commonly relevant emotions, the expectation basis of aesthetic appreciation, and the role of adaptive preference formation in the cultivation of personal taste as …