All Art moves the boundaries our personal perception of the essence.
mando
On Dec 24, 2008, at 7:00 AM, Michael Brady wrote:
The word "aesthetics" is very often used to designate a
philosophical description of formal properties in various objects
in the world. Maybe we've been looking at it wrong. Perhaps
aesthetics accomplishes something different.
Bear with me on this, because it came to me a short time ago and I
haven't worked it through entirely. (And I haven't read much in the
area of aesthetics, much less "aesthetic cognition," in a while.)
IF the human brain is particularly adept at pattern recognition, as
many people assert; and
IF speech, image recognition (especially facial), bilateral
dexterity, and other skills are especially crucial to humans; and
IF artifacts of many kinds are the hallmark of human activity;
THEN the ability to discriminate among different patterns,
different sounds, and different memories in order to choose one or
more individual instances may have been a valuable skill and may
have arisen through evolutionary forces. More than that, humans may
have developed an "aesthetic" sense, not as a way to appreciate
artifacts, but as a way to produce them. An "aesthetic" sense may
have been used as a cognitive tool or technique of a practical
nature, as much as of a disinterested or speculative nature.
Thus, "aesthetics" as a cognitive tool would contribute to analytic
thinking about the sensory appearance (or sound, or taste, etc.) of
a thing. Our "aesthetic" vocabulary includes words that refer to
sensory phenomena (colors, textures, tastes, sounds) and to the
relationships between them (color and sound harmonies) or
particular qualities (loudness or softness, pitch, tartness,
granularity).
But as happens, sometimes the paradigm reaches a limit and, in
order to accomplish something more, the paradigm must be abandoned
or broken. I'm thinking here of the Stealth Fighter, which appears
so different from every other airplane up to its invention. Not
merely different (and not merely non-airworthy, which it certainly
seems from outward appearances), but unattractive. It doesn't look
like an airplane, much less the sleek, impressive, and powerful
predecessors that formed our notions of beautiful and admirable in
aircraft. The Stealth Fighter redefined aerodynamic beauty, or at
least expanded its definition--very much like how modern music
(e.g., jazz) or painting (e.g., abstract Surrealism) moved the
boundaries in their fields.
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Michael Brady
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