Emerging Aesthetics
And You and I: The Aesthetic Attitude and the Beautiful Thou
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Mason Johnson
In this paper, I seek to defend the notion of the disinterested aesthetic attitude, as put forth by Immanuel Kant in his Critique of Judgment, by analyzing and refuting arguments made against it, particularly by George Dickie. Further, through comparison with Martin Buber’s I and Thou, I argue that the aesthetic attitude is really a means of relation, and that when we make an aesthetic judgment (i.e. that something is beautiful), we approach the artwork as if it were an independent, autonomous subject. Using the work of H.P. Grice and Jacques Derrida, I argue that artworks have a semantic autonomy to provide a range of different meanings, differing from other forms of communication and lending themselves more human qualities. However, because artworks cannot actually speak up to defend themselves, I propose an ethics of the aesthetic, based on the Kantian categorical imperative, to justify why propaganda and censorship are wrong from the perspective of artworks themselves, and not just from viewers.
Object of Experience: Object, Space and the Photograph
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session James A. Rhodes
Photographs are inherently illusionary by the nature in which they are recorded, and this illusion can be explored to create an experience. Roland Barthes's definition of art photography in Camera Lucida and James Elkins’s unpacking of photography in What Photography is are compared to works like Gwon Osang’s Deodorant Type series. Osang’s work takes the understanding of photographic objects in Elizabeth Edwards article Material Beings: Objecthood and Ethnographic Photographs one step further. Photographic objects come to life through a process of reflection, an artist can create photographic objects through framing and reframing of their own work by analysing what the work is, and how the work will live within a space. The illusion the work creates causes the audience to question their preconceived experience of the space and the object. By incorporating aspects from James Turrell’s use of space, Peter Bunnell’s photographic sculptures and Duchamp’s questioning of the art object while working with images created with a camera an artist can create photographic objects that question the definition Barthes and Elkins gave to photography, and explore Edwards’s and Osang’s understanding of the materiality of a photographic object.
Aesthetics at Work: Cultivating an Aesthetic Sensibility to Enhance Well-Being and How We Think and Do
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Wanda Hurren
Aesthetic surroundings are linked to creativity, productivity, and well-being. The common response to this link in places where we think and do our work typically involves renovating to promote more aesthetic surroundings. Structural and financial implications of such alterations are not always feasible. In many cases people have little agency over adjusting the aesthetics of the places where they think and do their work. However, people do have agency over adjusting how they think about the aesthetics of their workplace. The studies reported here asked: Does cultivating an aesthetic sensibility among people in their workplace enhance how they think and do their work? Cultivating an aesthetic sensibility means becoming attuned to the aesthetic aspects that are present: perhaps the play of light in a stairwell, or the colours in a stack of files. People in several places of work and study participated in studio + exhibit projects wherein contemplative photography was explored as one way to pay attention to the everyday aesthetics in a place of work or study. Implications for everyday places and communities wherein people think and do their work will be discussed.
