Aesthetics Commons^™

Absolute Pitch And Tone Identification, Gilead Bar-Elli

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

Absolute pitch (AP), besides the psychological and neurological interests it has, raises some conceptual difficulties that can teach us about the richness of our notion of musical tone and various aspects of its identification. It is argued that when AP is conceived under a slim notion of identifying the pitch of a crude sound, it is hardly meaningful and has no significance in music comprehension. The rich notion, which is the meaningful and important one, involves knowing the position of a tone in a tone-space and its relations. This is presented as experiential: hearing and identifying tones under concepts and …

Human Nature And Aesthetic Ecosystem Services: Nature In The Service Of Humankind And Humankind In The Service Of Nature, Yrjö Sepänmaa

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

The term “ecosystem services” refers to the material and spiritual benefits and goods that we receive from nature, or, in a broad sense, from all kinds of environment. The various forms of such benefits have begun to be called services. Nature serves people by producing the material and spiritual (intangible, non-material) prerequisites for life. This is also the foundation of our aesthetic well-being. Does humankind reciprocally serve nature, or only itself through nature, with the intention of exploiting it? We see when nature suffers or flourishes, and we also observe our own effect on its state. As much as our …

Symposium On The Cultural Promise Of The Aesthetic By Monique Roelofs: Introduction, Editorial Office

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

No abstract provided.

Positioning And Discernment: A Comment On Monique Roelofs's The Cultural Promise Of The Aesthetic, Kathleen M. Higgins

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

This essay offers replies to the critical commentaries on The Cultural Promise of the Aesthetic presented by Kathleen M. Higgins, Carolyn Korsmeyer, and Mariana Ortega. The essay shows how the probing questions and criticisms that the three commentators raise bring out details in the framework of relationality, address, and promises through which the book theorizes the aesthetic.

The Difference That Art Makes, Mariana Ortega

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

In the following essay I discuss Monique Roelofs’s The Cultural Promise of the Aesthetic. I show that Roelofs’s rich and complex notion of the aesthetic, informed by promises, modes of address, and aesthetic relationality, offers an important and novel way of understanding the aesthetic within a context attuned to questions of difference. I point out that Roelofs’s analysis may be enhanced by notions theorized by Audre Lorde, Gloria Anzaldúa, and María Lugones. Moreover, I raise a question regarding the intricate link between Roelofs’s notion of the aesthetic and morality

The Groundwork For Food Criticism: How Normative Aesthetic Judgments Are Possible With Regards To Tastes, Jacob Caldwell

Senior Independent Study Theses

Issues of tastes and smells are often relegated to an ancillary or minor rank of importance in the domain of aesthetics, if recognized at all as legitimate objects of aesthetic inquiry and experience. This essay aims, firstly, to carve out a space of legitimacy for the aesthetics of tastes, and secondly, to clarify what aesthetic inquiry with regards to tastes must look like. In order for the above to be decisively established, the following positions will be argued for: (1) tastes are real, (2) our ordinary or scientific conception of what tastes are, upon which our reasons for doubting the …

Catching All Passions In His Craft Of Will: Portraits And Pater In Oscar Wilde’S “The Portrait Of Mr. W. H.”, Rebecca E. Jones

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines Oscar Wilde’s “The Portrait of Mr. W. H.” as the product of Wilde’s long interest in critic Walter Pater’s literature and scholarship. From its first iteration published in 1889, through Wilde’s ongoing revision and expansion into the version commonly anthologized today, “The Portrait of Mr. W. H.” is an evolving work that mirrors Wilde’s enduring relationship with the art and ideas of his former teacher. This relationship is explored in three contexts: Pater’s contribution to Wilde’s understanding of the Renaissance period; the steady influence of Pater’s ideas and persona on Wilde’s other major works from the period …

Antithetical Commentaries On X, Y And The Disruption Of Being, Eva Rocha

Theses and Dissertations

Through discursive essays and poetic narrative, Antithetical Commentaries on X, Y and the Disruption of Being explores the tenuous relationship between modes of measurement and the struggle for human relevance in the post-contemporary digital age. In the introductory essay, “Not the Feather, but the Bird”, I give an overview of the inherent problems of object-oriented ontology, and how it relates to aesthetics and social issues of our times. In the Developmental Overview, I detail how I developed my installation approach and techniques, particularly with regard to the three-way dynamic of the artist:work:viewer relationship and how it can encourage …

Turn, Turn, Turn: Civic Instrumentalisation And The Promotion Of Autonomy In ‎Contemporary Arts Funding, Connell Vaughan, Michael O'Hara, Elizabeth Matthews, Colm Desmond, Jeanette Doyle, Catherine O'Carroll

Conference papers

Over the past twenty-five years aesthetic practice, theory and Arts policy in Europe and North America has been subject to three different yet interrelated and international “turns”: creative, social and ethical this has been exemplified by Arts funding policy in Ireland. Combined, these three turns produce a tone of cultural production that is pitched toward a more measurable and overtly instrumental direction. This paper explores the trends regarding the critical terms of instrumentality and autonomy and their relevance to arguments relating to criteria employed in current Irish Arts funding policy. We argue that that existing Arts funding criteria relegates the …

Course Syllabus (Fa15) Coli 211 Literature & Psychology: "Material Aesthetics", Christopher Southward

Comparative Literature Faculty and Student Scholarship

An examination of questions concerning aesthetic experience from the standpoint of the structural and functional logics of the capitalist mode of production

Remembering The Philosopher Ted Cohen (1939-2014), Curtis L. Carter

Philosophy Faculty Research and Publications

No abstract provided.

Presence-At-Hand, Eric Lyle Schultz

Graduate School of Art Theses

Abstract

The writing that follows is intended to provide a theoretical framework for the motives behind my practice. The primary concerns addressed are the reception, transmission, and physical shape of knowledge. I will discuss a human condition that exists as a byproduct of both the legacy of representation as well as the innate biology of the brain. I will argue that as a society we are governed by the residue of an extreme logic, and that this condition places severe margins on our potential for creative solutions. I will propose that our ability to create meaning is stifled by the …

We Begin When We Finish When We Begin, Students Of Risd, Risd Archives

All Student Newspapers

We Begin When We Finish When We Begin was a graduate student publication published in 2015. It featured essays, interviews, and student work dealing with themes of identity, geography, academics, and student life. Students as well as faculty contributed.

Considering Triple Self-Portraiture In The Work Of María Izquierdo, Brooke Lashley

The Quiet Corner Interdisciplinary Journal

This paper looks to María Izquierdo’s paintings, Prisioneras (Prisoners) of 1936 and Sueño y presentimiento (Dream and Premonition) of 1947, as case studies for activating a theory of triple self-portraiture. The theory reflects how plurality arises in the singular or in single significations of the self and disrupts homogeneity in thinking about identities for the self and others within the genre of self-portraiture. In activating a theory of triple self-portraiture, I found three forms of the self in Izquierdo's works: the self as oppressed (the past); the self as oppressing (the current); and the self as an emancipator (future). Although …

The Philosophical Side Of Contemporary Art Forms, Kristina Bodetti

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The purpose of this project is to show that contemporary art forms, specifically popular music, film and comics/graphic novels, are capable of, and do in many cases work as philosophical pieces. I believe that an analysis of these mediums will reveal instances in which the works of art explicate established philosophical theories, expand upon them, and in some cases invent new theories.

Each new medium of art gets examined by philosophy in its turn and its merits as a unique art form are debated. From these arguments it is possible to extrapolate the ways in which these works can become …

The Finales Of Robert Shumann's Piano Sonatas And Fantasie, Emiko Sato

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation sets out to examine the finales of Robert Schumann's Piano Sonatas (opp. 11, 14, 22 [original finale]), and Fantasie (op. 17), with an especial focus on their form, which can be broadly categorized as parallel form. The introduction examines historical criticisms of Schumann's large-scale works, pointing out some of the idiosyncratic features found in Schumann's finales. Each chapter will present a comprehensive analysis of one of the finales. I make use of color diagrams in the formal analyses, which expeditiously and efficiently elucidate the repeating patterns of thematic and transitional materials; they also visually reflect the actual …

Finding Aid To The Collection Of Vernon Lee Materials, Violet Paget, Colby College Special Collections

Finding Aids

The Vernon Lee Collection at Colby College contains over 1000 letters, 136 manuscripts and articles, 117 photographs, and a small number of personal documents and artifacts, spanning the years 1866-1960. First and subsequent editions of Vernon Lee titles are described in the Colby Libraries web catalog. Materials arranged in seven series: Correspondence from Vernon Lee, Correspondence to Vernon Lee, Manuscripts, Published Writings, Photographs, Personal Items and Artifacts, and Clippings.

What Makes A Technology Appropriate?, Barrett Hazeltine

Articles

No abstract provided.

A Company Town, Daniel Peltz, Sheridan Coleman

Articles

No abstract provided.

Urban Eden, Anne Tate

Articles

No abstract provided.

Critical Design And The Critical Social Sciences, Damian White

Articles

No abstract provided.

On The Hallelujah Efect: Priming Consumers, Recording Music, And The Spirit Of Tragedy, Babette Babich

Articles and Chapters in Academic Book Collections

An overview of The Hallelujah Effect concentrating on priming or sonic branding, media, online porn as well as marketing and media programming, with a special excursus on the space of music --and radio in Adorno's Current of Music, and a detailed discussion on Nietzsche and music in antiquity as he explores this with reference ot Beethoven in The Birth of Tragedy.

Statecraft: Vandalism And Iconoclasm In The Digital Age, Connell Vaughan

Conference papers

Not only is vandalism increasingly subject to digital documentation, but the aesthetic nature of vandalism itself is different as a result of the digital. No longer is vandalism a local destructive act, it has become an act performed primarily for broadcast to global markets. This paper uses the example of Islamic State (IS) iconoclasm to explore the way in which digital media is strategically used by vandals and considers the responses of the heritage industry to respond to such destruction. It illustrates how the deliberate digital documentation and subsequent global broadcasting of the destruction of cultural heritage by Islamic State …

Matafunctional/Metafictional Objects, Paolo Cardini

Articles

No abstract provided.

Design For Transitions - From And To What?, Cameron Tonkinwise

Articles

No abstract provided.

On Creative Dialectics, Ian Gonsher

Articles

No abstract provided.

Adolescents' Characterization Of Their Neighborhood Through An Art-Based Community Project, Eileen Finnegan

Wayne State University Dissertations

The purpose of this research was to study adolescent participation in the development of a neighborhood mural as an art-based community project. I examined perceptions of the adolescents regarding the awareness of their community and neighborhoods. Additionally, I explored adolescents' perceptions of their own development in terms of building their self-confidence. To accomplish this, I facilitated the creation and design of a mural that depicts their perceptions of their neighborhoods, using art as a modality for expression. Fourteen seventh grade students attending a parochial school in a low socioeconomic area of a large metropolitan city participated in the study. They …

A 'Paradox Of Expression': Bertolt Brecht's Verfremdungseffekt In Performance, Cohen L. Ambrose Mr.

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

No abstract provided.

Editorial

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

No abstract provided.

Experience Of Awe: An Expansive Approach To Everyday Aesthetics, Thomas Leddy

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

As opposed to Melchionne and Naukkarinen, I defend an expansive definition of everyday aesthetics, one that includes festivals, tourism, and many daily activities of artists and other professionals, along with most ordinary and common experiences. I argue for continuities between aesthetics of everyday life and the aesthetics of art and nature. Looking through a window, for example, may involve aspects of all three. Although I agree with Melchionne that everyday aesthetics is closely related to questions of subjective well-being, I take a more expansive approach to this, drawing from recent psychological studies of the experience of “awe” to stress the …