I'm not so sure about Mallory's proposal that aesthetics objectifies experience. He alsom implies that the objectification itself is not the aesthetic but that some symbolic framing of the experience is. The transfer of experience from one location to another by means of an image or language obviously involves hazardous events. One may not remember the experience and thus fabricates some or all of it, knowingly or unconsciously. One may not know how to transfer the experience, lacking the means or competency to do so. Other will say that there is no experience until it is re-fabricated in each and every iteration of it. And none of this tells us a thing about aesthetics since the transfer of experience may or may not employ aesthetic events or conditions, Further there are many ways to transfer experience with no interest at all in aesthetic values. Mallory speaks of the continual flow of experience but I think we can't possibly be conscious of the totality of our experience moment to moment. (This is why the relating of testimony can far exceed the time of actual events being described). Any reflection on experience whatever its presumed flow, is a conscious reconstruction and transformation and highly likely of error. Thus what Mallory describes as the conceptual object is indistinguishable from the unknowable experience. if whatever conscious or unconscious "framing" that takes place is defined as aesthetic (per Mallory) then that aesthetic is indistinguishable any other mechanism of framing. In that respect it is a superfluous term and might as well be cast out.
The same argument dooms the art is anything view. If all art is anything and if all of anything is everything then art is everything. Or: all A is B; all B is C, thus all A is C. If there is no distinction between art and everything then the two terms are symmetrical. One of them is superfluous and can be cast out. When people take snapshots of the family picnic they are interested in capturing and translating their picnic experience to say,"Here we are at our picnic" . But all they have done is to provide a hint or clue of the event which they must then re-imagine and reconstruct through a hugely complex process and symbolization, relying on social habits, forms, of enormous magnitude....all done in a moment! At any point in this translation/transformation/symbolizing/make-believing/remembering/ etc/, there could be errors. One might say, No, that's a picture of an earlier picnic" and so on. The aesthetic objectification of experience is, finally, an impossible process. It's tacit because it can't be explicated by any known means. Further, it's a statement of fact that can't be empirically proven because the terms are indistinguishable from their opposites. wc ----- Original Message ---- From: Mike Mallory <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Mon, May 24, 2010 4:27:25 PM Subject: Re: "Indifference to the aesthetic will in the long run lessen the economic product [whereas] attention to the aesthetic will increase economic welfare." Josiah Stamp I have suggested that aesthetics objectifies experience, which facilitates commodification. I did not mean that aesthetics turns experience into a material object. Rather, to answer Kate's question, aesthetics is a process whereby a piece of the endless flowing stream of experience is segregated and separated out. A simple or complex unit of experience becomes "framed" by the artifact. This results in a conceptual object. Furthermore, I'm only saying that the process can happen this way. Artwork representing experience previously reduced to a conceptual object is more appropriately viewed as editing, rather than create, a conceptual object. Mike Mallory _____________________________________________ From: "Saul Ostrow" <[email protected]> To: <[email protected]> Sent: Wednesday, May 12, 2010 2:00 PM Subject: Re: "Indifference to the aesthetic will in the long run lessen the economic product [whereas] attention to the aesthetic will increase economic welfare." Josiah Stamp > Commodification needs no material object - it is the fetishization of > objectification - in that the objectified experience is of greater exchange > value than it does use value - the very process in itself is one of > anaesthetization &&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&& Doesn't it also involve a lexical shift, in that things are described so that their social meanings are changed from what was previously not acceptable as an aesthetic perception to being acceptable? Also what is the objectification of experience? Kate Sullivan
