One point that definitions of art experience disagree about is whether this kind of experience is qualitatively different from experiences related to ordinary objects and everyday contexts. Here, we follow an ecological approach assuming that art experience has its own specific quality that is, not least, determined by typical contexts of art presentation. Practically, we systematically observe typical phenomena of experiencing art in ecologically valid or real-world settings such as museum contexts. Based on evidences gained in this (...) manner, we emulate and implement essential properties of ecological contexts (e.g., free choice of viewing distance and time, large scale of artworks and exhibition-like context) in controlled laboratory experiments. We found, for instance, that for large scale paintings by Pollock and Rothko preferred viewing distances as well as distances inducing most intense art experiences including Aesthetic Aha insights were much larger than typical viewing distances realized in lab studies. Following Carbon’s (2019) terminology of measurement strategies of art experience, the combined use of “Path #1” (real-world context) and “Path #2” (mildly controlled, still ecologically valid settings and contexts), enables us to understand and investigate much closer what is really happening when people experience art. (shrink)

The Art Experience: An Introduction to Philosophy and the Arts takes readers on an engaging and accessible journey that explores a series of fundamental questions about the nature of art and aesthetic value. Three of these questions serve as the major sections for the book's 12 chapters: What makes something a work of art? How should we experience art in order to get the most out of it? And once we understand art, how should we evaluate whether it (...) is good or bad? Philosophical theory is illustrated with concrete examples: the paintings of Frida Kahlo, the music of Johann Sebastian Bach, the masks of the Nso people, and many others. Classic questions are balanced with cutting-edge challenges, such as Linda Nochlin's work on the exclusion of women from the artistic canon. The Art Experience presupposes no prior knowledge of philosophy or art, and it will be of interest to any reader seeking an accessible and engaging introduction to this field. Along the way, readers learn how philosophical theories can affect our real-world experiences with painting, music, theater, and many more art forms. Key Features Accessible for any college student and assumes no knowledge of philosophy, art theory, or any artistic medium Organizes topics conceptually, rather than historically, allowing students to more easily grasp the core issues themselves rather than tracing their historical evolution Offers readers a large number of contemporary examples and a consistent focus on the way theory can affect people's real-world experiences with art Explores questions about bias - for example, whether the artistic canon has excluded some groups unfairly and whether definitions of art are Western-biased. (shrink)

Art theory has consistently emphasised the importance of situational, cultural, institutional and historical factors in viewers’ experience of fine art. However, the link between this heavily context-dependent interpretation and the workings of the mind is often left unexamined. Drawing on relevance theory—a prominent, cogent and productive body of work in cognitive pragmatics—we here argue that fine art achieves its effects by prompting the use of cognitive processes that are more commonly employed in the interpretation of words and other stimuli (...) presented in a communicative context. We describe in particular how institutional factors effectively co-opt these processes for new ends, allowing viewers to achieve cognitive effects that they otherwise would not, and so provide cognitivist backing for an Institutional Theory of Art, such as that put forward by Arthur Danto. More generally, we situate and describe the Western fine art tradition as a phenomenon that is a consequence of both the cognitive processes involved in communication, and of cultural norms, practices and institutions. (shrink)

Prof. Hiriyanna Was The First Among The Pioneers To Establish Meaningfully The Relationship Of Philosophy, Aesthetics And Life. The Present Volume Carries Fifteen Contributions On Topics Of Indian Aesthetics. After A Penetrating Analysis Of The Funda-Mental Concepts Envisaged From A Traditional Point Of View, Prof. Hiriyanna Interprets Them Succinctly. He Elucidates The Theory Of Rasa From The Point Of Sankhya In A Masterly Fashion; Equally Illuminating Are The Other Essays On Rasa And Dhvani, And Sanskrit Poetics.

The increasing availability of passively observed data has yielded a growing interest in “data fusion” methods, which involve merging data from observational and experimental sources to draw causal conclusions. Such methods often require a precarious tradeoff between the unknown bias in the observational dataset and the often-large variance in the experimental dataset. We propose an alternative approach, which avoids this tradeoff: rather than using observational data for inference, we use it to design a more efficient experiment. We consider the case (...) of a stratified experiment with a binary outcome and suppose pilot estimates for the stratum potential outcome variances can be obtained from the observational study. We extend existing results to generate confidence sets for these variances, while accounting for the possibility of unmeasured confounding. Then, we pose the experimental design problem as a regret minimization problem subject to the constraints imposed by our confidence sets. We show that this problem can be converted into a concave maximization and solved using conventional methods. Finally, we demonstrate the practical utility of our methods using data from the Women’s Health Initiative. (shrink)

A review of Thomas Hilgers’s Aesthetic Disinterestedness: Art, Experience, and the Self.

L’« artification » peut être conçue comme un processus entraînant « le passage du non-art à l’art ». Selon une perspective phénoménologique (notamment husserlienne), ce passage semble impliquer deux mouvements neutralisants qui le constituent et que l’on pourrait nommer « imagification » et « esthétisation ». D’une part, une telle neutralisation est l’indice d’une suspension de tout intérêt, à la fois de l’artiste et du spectateur, pour l’existence ou la non-existence de « l’objet artifié » (Husserl reprend et relance ici (...) une ligne kantienne). D’autre part, ce désintéressement ouvre en même temps l’expérience, pour l’artiste et pour le spectateur, à un intérêt diffèrent, à savoir un intérêt axiologique visant à une saisie de valeurs. (shrink)

In contrast to mainstream accounts which explain the aesthetic experience of people with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in terms of cognitive abilities, this paper suggests as an alternative explanation the “emotional abilities approach”. We present an example of a person with ASD who is able to exercise a variety of emotional abilities in aesthetic contexts but who has difficulties exhibiting their equivalents in interpersonal relations. Using an autobiographical account, we demonstrate first that there is at least one precedent where (...) a person with ASD can exercise a series of emotional abilities when engaging with art works. Second, we offer also an explanation about why aesthetic contexts might enable this person to exercise emotional abilities which in interpersonal contexts seem to be blocked. (shrink)

Theodor W. Adorno's aesthetics has dominated discussions about art and aesthetic modernism since World War II, and continues to inform contemporary theorizing. Situating Adorno's aesthetic theory in the context of post-Kantian European philosophy, Espen Hammer explores Adorno's critical view of art as engaged in reconsidering fundamental features of our relation to nature and reality. His book is structured around what Adorno regarded as the contemporary aesthetician's overarching task: to achieve a vision of the fate of art in the modern world, (...) while demonstrating its unique cognitive potential. Hammer offers a lively examination of Adorno's work through the central problem of what full human self-actualization would require, and also discusses the wider philosophical significance of aesthetic modernism. This book will be a valuable resource for scholars and students of social philosophy, art, and aesthetics. (shrink)

“Hijack” has etymological connotations of force. It is intended here as a purposeful turn away from expert authority and from singular authorship, towards a more expanded sphere of multiple experience in art aesthetics. If there is a hijacking force in art, it is the dynamic desire to reclaim the impossible and the unexpected. These qualities are evident in telepathy as a system of transmitted aesthetic information. Isabelle Stengers, who has investigated the role of the charlatan, might urge us to (...) follow such a turn away from regulated forms of sensory information and repurpose telepathy as a propagated extra-sensory activity. Like the charlatan or other maligned characters of ill repute, the art writer who responds to the essence of the artwork through participation rather than judgment becomes the outsider and, in this case, the telepath. This paper addresses the work of Australian artist Jacquelene Drinkall as an aggregate of telepathic transmissions, ripe for hijacking. I argue that a telepathic hijack, as an unexpected reclamation and as a method of aesthetic experimentation, can be enacted as a speculative form of art writing. Telepathy in art and of art allows a writing with the artwork. By this I mean that a super-sensory and speculative mode of writing can exist beside the artwork, rather than in judgment of it. This is a divergence from an overt critique of art through established constructs of history, origin or relations alone. In this paper I will explore the concept of telepathy as a quality of speculative aesthetics, which is distinguished by contingent change, variable outcomes and meandering. I will focus on: telepathic art transmissions as a hijack of conventional aesthetics; Jacquelene Drinkall’s telepathic artwork as an interrupted experience; and Isabelle Stengers’ figure of the charlatan. (shrink)

Thomas Alexander shows that the primary, guiding concern of Dewey's philosophy is his theory of aesthetic experience.

In the published article the following information should have been included: Acknowledgment TSP was financially supported by Durham University’s Addison Wheeler bequest and by the European Research Council, under the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme /ERC grant agreement no. 609819.

Bhabha, Georges Didi-Huberman, David Morgan and Lee Siegel, as well as a series of focused contributions by Yve-Alain Bois, Wendy Doniger, Kenneth Frampton, Martin E. Marty, John Hallmark Neff, Annemarie Schimmel, and Helen Tworkov consider how rapture resonate's both in a cultural context and within the experience of a single human being.

Based on John Dewey's lectures on esthetics, delivered as the first William James Lecturer at Harvard in 1932, Art as Experience has grown to be considered internationally as the most distinguished work ever written by an American on the formal structure and characteristic effects of all the arts: architecture, sculpture, painting, music, and literature.

Empathy is a psychologically significant phenomenon. It plays a key role in the development of the self, sociality, and prosocial behaviour. The term empathy originated in 19th-century aesthetics, where the concept was seen as an explanation for aesthetic experience. Despite renewed interest in the relation between empathy and aesthetic experiences, investigations into how empathy shapes experiences of art are still scarce. Given this situation, we ask the following three questions: What does one experience when experiencing a work of (...) art empathetically? What is given during such moments? How is consciousness structured in aesthetic empathetic experience? To answer these questions, we analysed five different experiences with visual art using a phenomenological psychological methodology. We found that a complexity of psychologically significant meaning arises from the empathic experience of art. The core aspects of this meaning are captured in a structure incorporating experience of a foreign subjective sense, reliving and affective adherence, interiorisation, pleasure in sharing, and affective understanding. Based on this structure, we argue that aesthetic empathy features a sense of otherness to a degree not previously recognised and that aesthetic empathy is an inherently intersubjective experience in which the spectator is invited to participate and share feelings expressed in the work of art in moments of aesthetic presence. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Journal of Aesthetic Education 37.2 (2003) 19-30 [Access article in PDF] Bugged Out:A Reflection on Art Experience Christopher Perricone I used to enjoy art. Not all the arts equally. Overall literature spoke to me most clearly. I am not sure exactly why. I guess some combination of inborn and learned dispositions. Whatever is the case, my enjoyment of literature always seemed natural to me, since literature was (...) of a medium I already knew, the vocabulary and grammar of my own language. But I enjoyed paintings and musical pieces as well, some of which I shall never forget even though they have virtually faded from my life, from what I have become.I cannot say that I ever had a favorite artwork. I have always thought the idea foolish, reminiscent of children who think often in terms of favorites, whether colors, candies, or friends. However, there are some works that do stand out in memory, even though, as I say, I cannot bring myself to enjoy them now. They are ghosts whose forms are discernible, but whose flesh is long gone.I had read lots of literature. I even enjoyed the act and the atmosphere of reading. I remember the chair I sat in, the lighting, the room. I also used to love to wake up on weekends, eat a leisurely breakfast, and then get back into bed and read until noon. Of course the setting itself of reading was ultimately not crucial, it was merely a pleasant means of facilitating one's excursion into another world. It was the other world that counted. So many worlds. Of course, I entered joyfully the worlds of Shakespeare and Dante, which Harold Bloom recently has judged at the center of the Western canon, but I entered also lesser but personally not less significant worlds to which I was drawn. 1 I needed some tutoring in Shakespeare and Dante because they did not quite speak my language, my twentieth-century American tongue. I had trouble negotiating their worlds. However, I had none whatsoever when it came to the worlds of James Joyce, Wallace Stevens, William Carlos Williams, Graham Greene, Walt Whitman, T.S.Eliot, Herman Melville, Emily Dickinson, or Joseph Conrad. I was at home in these worlds, different [End Page 19] worlds, but nonetheless home. I loved Conrad's the "Heart of Darkness." For me this was one of the truly haunting tales. After my first reading of the "Heart of Darkness," I can honestly say, my life was changed. I neither talked nor walked the same. I moved among and around people and things differently. I saw myself differently both among others and when I would stand before my mirror alone. And subsequent readings brought about further changes, changes of my comportment in the world. I imagined that I saw, heard, touched, tasted, and smelled the details from the beginning of that story to its very end. I sat on the deck of the Nellie with Marlow, Conrad's character narrator, and his listeners. I watched with them as the sun went down over the Thames. I followed Marlow as he told the story of how he had "set off for the center of the earth," up the Congo perhaps where in his mind all human life had its source; how as he came closer to the center facts became less straightforward, the greed for ivory, the "flavor of mortality in lies," the hollowness of Mr. Kurtz, the final horror of it all. I sweated in the heat of the "Heart of Darkness." Like any experience of a masterpiece, the "Heart of Darkness" was a visceral experience for me. After such experiences one feels emotionally and physically drained. One feels comfort in thinking, as with a dream, it was not real. And yet there is a lingering discomfort: as it were no mere fantasy at all.I often had feelings of the same intensity and profundity in respect to painting and music. They, too, were worlds for me. I enjoyed the varioustouches of the painters. In particular, I enjoyed the gold, the... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Journal of Aesthetic Education 37.2 (2003) 19-30 [Access article in PDF] Bugged Out:A Reflection on Art Experience Christopher Perricone I used to enjoy art. Not all the arts equally. Overall literature spoke to me most clearly. I am not sure exactly why. I guess some combination of inborn and learned dispositions. Whatever is the case, my enjoyment of literature always seemed natural to me, since literature was (...) of a medium I already knew, the vocabulary and grammar of my own language. But I enjoyed paintings and musical pieces as well, some of which I shall never forget even though they have virtually faded from my life, from what I have become.I cannot say that I ever had a favorite artwork. I have always thought the idea foolish, reminiscent of children who think often in terms of favorites, whether colors, candies, or friends. However, there are some works that do stand out in memory, even though, as I say, I cannot bring myself to enjoy them now. They are ghosts whose forms are discernible, but whose flesh is long gone.I had read lots of literature. I even enjoyed the act and the atmosphere of reading. I remember the chair I sat in, the lighting, the room. I also used to love to wake up on weekends, eat a leisurely breakfast, and then get back into bed and read until noon. Of course the setting itself of reading was ultimately not crucial, it was merely a pleasant means of facilitating one's excursion into another world. It was the other world that counted. So many worlds. Of course, I entered joyfully the worlds of Shakespeare and Dante, which Harold Bloom recently has judged at the center of the Western canon, but I entered also lesser but personally not less significant worlds to which I was drawn. 1 I needed some tutoring in Shakespeare and Dante because they did not quite speak my language, my twentieth-century American tongue. I had trouble negotiating their worlds. However, I had none whatsoever when it came to the worlds of James Joyce, Wallace Stevens, William Carlos Williams, Graham Greene, Walt Whitman, T.S.Eliot, Herman Melville, Emily Dickinson, or Joseph Conrad. I was at home in these worlds, different [End Page 19] worlds, but nonetheless home. I loved Conrad's the "Heart of Darkness." For me this was one of the truly haunting tales. After my first reading of the "Heart of Darkness," I can honestly say, my life was changed. I neither talked nor walked the same. I moved among and around people and things differently. I saw myself differently both among others and when I would stand before my mirror alone. And subsequent readings brought about further changes, changes of my comportment in the world. I imagined that I saw, heard, touched, tasted, and smelled the details from the beginning of that story to its very end. I sat on the deck of the Nellie with Marlow, Conrad's character narrator, and his listeners. I watched with them as the sun went down over the Thames. I followed Marlow as he told the story of how he had "set off for the center of the earth," up the Congo perhaps where in his mind all human life had its source; how as he came closer to the center facts became less straightforward, the greed for ivory, the "flavor of mortality in lies," the hollowness of Mr. Kurtz, the final horror of it all. I sweated in the heat of the "Heart of Darkness." Like any experience of a masterpiece, the "Heart of Darkness" was a visceral experience for me. After such experiences one feels emotionally and physically drained. One feels comfort in thinking, as with a dream, it was not real. And yet there is a lingering discomfort: as it were no mere fantasy at all.I often had feelings of the same intensity and profundity in respect to painting and music. They, too, were worlds for me. I enjoyed the varioustouches of the painters. In particular, I enjoyed the gold, the... (shrink)

In _Knowledge, Art, and Power_ John Ryder develops a pragmatic naturalist theory of experience that posits the cognitive (knowledge), the aesthetic (art), and the political (power) as the most general and pervasive dimensions of all human experience.

Published under the auspices of The World Institute for Advanced Phenomenological Research and Learning, 19 essays document the April 1998 international congress held at Harvard University. They ponder on such topics as the phenomenology of the experience of enchantment, Leonardo's enchantress, the ambiguous meaning of musical enchantment in Kant's Third Critique, art and the reenchantment of sensuous human activity, the creative voice, the allure of the Naza, Henri Matisse's early critical reception in New York, Zizek's sublimicist aesthetic of enchanted (...) fantasy, and enchantment in Baroque festive court performance in France. There is no subject index. Annotation copyrighted by Book News Inc., Portland, OR. (shrink)

This paper considers recent experiments in art and artificial intelligence that crystallize around training algorithms to generate artworks based on datasets derived from the Western art historical canon. Over the last decade, a shift towards the rejection of canonicity has begun to take shape in art historical discourse. At the same time, algorithmically enabled practices in the US and Europe have emerged that entrench the Western canon as a locus and guarantor of aesthetic value. Operating within the epistemic framework of (...) a “view from nowhere,” this tendency in generative art inherits the coloniality of both art history and artificial intelligence. Producing “art histories from nowhere,” this tendency conflates the conceptual category of visual art with the histories of Western cultural production. It reproduces a set of aesthetic values that entrench the mythology of the artist-genius and his imputed whiteness and masculinity; the extolment of innovation and novelty as self-evident virtues; disembodied Cartesian models of knowing and sensing; and the erasure of contributions that have been occluded from canonical visibility. As we encounter systems trained on particular visions of art history and of the artist, how might we remain attentive to the specific lens through which they are taught to see? This essay addresses that question by bringing the coloniality of recent experiments into view, bridging data feminisms and decolonial studies to formulate alternative visions of encounters between art and AI. (shrink)

PurposeTo explore the mindfulness practice, its long-term effects, facilitators and barriers, in clinical clerkship students 2 years after participation in an 8-week mindfulness-based stress reduction training.MethodA qualitative study was performed by semi-structured in-depth interviews with 16 clinical clerkship students selected by purposive sampling. Students had participated in a MBSR training 2 years before and were asked about their current mindfulness practice, and the long-term effects of the MBSR training. Thematic analysis was conducted using the constant comparison method. Data saturation was (...) reached after 16 interviews.ResultsMost interviewees were still engaged in regular, predominantly informal, mindfulness practice, although some discontinued mindfulness practice and reported an “unchanged lifestyle.” Three main themes came forward; “focused attention and open awareness” during daily activities as core elements of long-term mindfulness practice; “changes in behavior and coping” that resulted from taking a pause, reflecting, recognizing automatic behavioral patterns and making space for a conscious response; “integration in personal and professional life” by enhanced enjoyment of daily activities, improved work-life-balance and making different career choices. Barriers and facilitators in starting and maintaining mindfulness practice were understanding and intention as “pre-conditions”; practical, personal, and professional factors of students in maintaining practice.ConclusionTwo years after participation in a MBSR training, many interviewees were still engaged in mindfulness practice contributing to both personal and professional changes. In light of the high clerkship demands, MBSR training could be a valuable addition to medical curricula, supporting medical students in developing necessary competencies to become well-balanced professionals. (shrink)

This Collision explores the relationship between Object-Oriented Ontology theory, the “aesthetic experience” of a contemporary artwork (Iris Haussler’s He dreamed overtime from 2012) and the creeping hand of fiction. OOO is a useful theory to apply to contemporary art, as it charts a philosophical return to all things as objects, rather than their relations or networks. It is also timely for understanding the changing nature of multi-media art, wherein experience, interactivity, spectatorial agency and contingent narratives are key.

Researchers in the areas of prehistoric art, anthropology of art, psychology, philosophy, feminist art theory, histories of visual arts education, and the emerging field of neuroaesthetics have created new interest within education in the writings of John Dewey related to art and experiential learning as found in Art as Experience and Experience and Nature. Thus, another look at Dewey’s life experience and his philosophy of experiential art may bring renewed support for visual arts education in the twenty-first (...) century. Dewey has influenced the public education system through his philosophy of experience and his less well-known theory of aesthetics. The definition that Dewey provided for education centers on the.. (shrink)

Arts-Based Thought Experiments is a highly visual offering that engages visual arts, photography, poetry, creative non-fiction, memoir and speculative fiction. In this novel book, the authors lean deeply into concepts of the imaginary, and through artful experiments with thought, trouble the tensions between the human, the posthuman and the more than human. In the Anthropocene, with its intractable challenges and cataclysms, engaging posthuman positions when thinking of learning in socioecological terms is paramount to human survival. In this sense, the arts (...) offer creative and critical thought for the possibilities of a post-Anthropocene earth. Contributors are: Raoul Adam, Marilyn Ahearn, William Boyd, Euan Boyd, Adrienne Brown, Shae L. Brown, Teresa Carapeto, Philemon Chigeza, Amy Cutter-Mackenzie-Knowles, David Ellis, Katie Hotko, Marianne Logan, Ferdousi Khatun, Alexandra Lasczik, Yaw Ofosu-Asare, Maia Osborn, Marie-Laurence Paquette, Jemma Peisker, Ziah Peisker, Adrienne Piscopo, David Rousell, Benjamin Ryan, Billy Ryan, Lisa Siegal, Helen Widdop Quinton, Thilinika Wijesinghe and Tracy Young. (shrink)

A significant impediment to the study of perceptual consciousness is our dependence on simplistic ideas about what experience is like. This is a point that has been made by Wittgenstein, and by philosophers working in the Phenomenological Tradition, such as Husserl and Merleau-Ponty. Importantly, it is an observation that has been brought to the fore in recent discussions of consciousness among philosophers and cognitive scientists who have come to feel the need for a more rigorous phenomenology of experience. (...) The central thought of this paper is that art can make a needed contribution to the study of perceptual consciousness. The work of some artists can teach us about perceptual consciousness by furnishing us with the opportunity to have a special kind of reflective experience. In this way, art can be a tool for phenomenological investigation. The paper focuses on the work of Richard Serra and offers a comparison of his work with that of Tony Smith. (shrink)

Given the coterie of philosophers focused on everyday aesthetics, it's fascinating that gift reception has heretofore managed to escape their scrutiny. To enact a gift, recipients begin by imagining its use. On this level, gifts serve as a litmus test. In luring us, we're taken out of our normal ways of being to experience a different side of ourselves. Enacting a gift is thus a kind of performance, whose value depends on the donee’s interpretation, just as exhibitions, concerts, staged (...) plays or books are performances of visual art, scores, scripts or texts, whose interpretations demonstrate their aesthetic value. To develop the relationship between enacting gifts and performing artworks, I begin by surveying junctures along the gift-event’s arc: reply, imagination, trust, recognition, transformation and memory. Transformations arising from agonistic gifts strike me as significant because they characterise the way gifts challenge our beliefs, eventually altering our values. That we grow to love gifts, which we originally rejected out of hand, casts doubt on self-knowledge. Enacted gifts handily challenge self-knowledge’s twin features: authority and transparency. As this paper indicates, gift reception helps both to understand ourselves better and to remove the obstacles to what Quassim Cassim calls Substantive Self-Knowledge. (shrink)

This collection of essays by one of the preeminent Kant scholars of our time transforms our understanding of both Kant's aesthetics and his ethics. Guyer shows that at the very core of Kant's aesthetic theory, disinterestedness of taste becomes an experience of freedom and thus an essential accompaniment to morality itself. At the same time he reveals how Kant's moral theory includes a distinctive place for the cultivation of both general moral sentiments and particular attachments on the basis of (...) the most rigorous principle of duty. Kant's thought is placed in a rich historical context including such figures as Shaftesbury, Hutcheson, Hume, Burke, Kames, as well as Baumgarten, Mendelssohn, Schiller, and Hegel. Other topics treated are the sublime, natural versus artistic beauty, genius and art history, and duty and inclination. These essays extend and enrich the account of Kant's aesthetics in the author's earlier book, Kant and the Claims of Taste. (shrink)

“The longer you work, the more the mystery deepens of what appearance is, or how what is called appearance can be made in another medium."—Francis Bacon, painter This, in a nutshell, is the central problem in the theory of art. It has fascinated philosophers from Plato to Wittgenstein. And it fascinates artists and art historians, who have always drawn extensively on philosophical ideas about language and representation, and on ideas about vision and the visible world that have deep philosophical roots. (...) John Hyman’s _The Objective Eye_ is a radical treatment of this problem, deeply informed by the history of philosophy and science, but entirely fresh. The questions tackled here are fundamental ones: Is our experience of color an illusion? How does the metaphysical status of colors differ from that of shapes? What is the difference between a picture and a written text? Why are some pictures said to be more realistic than others? Is it because they are especially truthful or, on the contrary, because they deceive the eye? _The Objective Eye_ explores the fundamental concepts we use constantly in our most innocent thoughts and conversations about art, as well as in the most sophisticated art theory. The book progresses from pure philosophy to applied philosophy and ranges from the metaphysics of color to Renaissance perspective, from anatomy in ancient Greece to impressionism in nineteenth-century France. Philosophers, art historians, and students of the arts will find _The Objective Eye_ challenging and absorbing. (shrink)

Time is a necessary element in understanding AI art. Firstly, time reveals the historical process by which art-theoretical predicates move from the unmarked to the marked, which can thus be utilized as a defense for arguing the legitimacy of AI art as art. Furthermore, AI art should be seen as a “new” art that is temporally ahead of the descriptive forms of art theory. Secondly, time provides a unique interpretation of AI artworks’ characteristics and aesthetic experience. The absence of (...) experience, the de-depth of AI artworks, and the “short experience/short memory” aesthetic mode of the masses are closely linked to the scarcity of time in an age of acceleration. Finally, time reflects the loss of “aura” and the new end of art that AI art may bring about. Time provides a defense and explanation of AI art, as well as a perspective for reflecting on the development of art in contemporary times. (shrink)

In this major reinterpretation, Howard Caygill argues that all of Benjamin's work is characterized by its focus on a concept of experience derived from Kant but applied by Benjamin to objects as diverse as urban experience, visual art, literature and philosophy. The book analyzes the development of Benjamin's concept of experience in his early writings showing that it emerges from an engagement with visual experience, and in particular the experience of colour. By representing Benjamin as (...) primarily a thinker of the visual field, Caygill is able to bring forward previously neglected texts on inscription and the visual field and to cast many of his more familiar texts, for instance the Work of Art in an Age of Mechanical Reproduction in a new light. (shrink)

This article examines a key question emerging from the strong program in cultural sociology — can art provide a window into social life? An examination of Giacometti's Standing Woman shows that art attempts to express cultural structures via immersion into and through the material surfaces of aesthetic form. Through an analysis of the iconic significance of family photos, furniture and celebrities, the article goes on to suggest that such iconic experience remains at the basis of contemporary social life. It (...) explains how we feel part of our surroundings, how we experience the ties that bind us to the people we know and how we develop a feeling for cultural hierarchy. (shrink)

In this book Thomas Alexander presents the thesis that the best approach to what Dewey means by "experience" is not to be gained by focusing primarily on his instrumentalism but rather on experience in its most complete, significant, and fulfilling mode, experience as art.

Aesthetic experience has been relativized and marginalized by recent social and cultural theory. As less attention has been paid to understanding the nature of aesthetic experience than mapping the distributed social correlates of tastes, its transformative potential and capacity to animate actors’ imaginations and actions goes unexplored. In this paper we draw upon a large number of in-depth interviews with performing arts audiences around Australia to investigate the language and discourse used to describe aesthetic experiences. In particular, we (...) begin with theorizations of the subject-object nexus within object-relations theory to consider the transformative potential of aesthetic experience. Using these literatures, and extending them to others within sociology of the arts and materiality, our focus is on the way aesthetic experience can fuse human subjects with aesthetic objects. We examine how viewers take an aesthetic object into themselves and in turn project themselves into the aesthetic object by various visual and imaginative techniques. Our theoretical and empirical analysis bears out the constructive and productive capacity of aesthetic experience. (shrink)

This is the introduction to the Routledge Companion to Thought Experiments.

The end of aesthetic experience -- Don't believe the hype -- The fine art of rap -- Affect and authenticity in country musicals -- The urban aesthetics of absence : pragmatist reflections in Berlin -- Beneath interpretation -- Somaesthetics and the body/media issue -- The somatic turn : care of the body in contemporary culture -- Multiculturalism and the art of living -- Genius and the paradox of self-styling.

While the 'sense of place' is a familiar theme in poetry and art, philosophers have generally given little or no attention to place and the human relation to place. In Place and Experience, Jeff Malpas seeks to remedy this by advancing an account of the nature and significance of place as a complex but unitary structure that encompasses self and other, space and time, subjectivity and objectivity. Drawing on a range of sources from Proust and Wordsworth to Davidson, Strawson (...) and Heidegger, he argues that the significance of place is not to be found in our experience of place so much as in the grounding of experience in place, and that this binding to place is not a contingent feature of human existence, but derives from the very nature of human thought, experience and identity as established in and through place. (shrink)