definitions and approaches

aesthetics

sensation, perception > how does it make us feel?

an object with aesthetic properties is an objects that makes something (a sensation? a feeling?) happen

• hume
• • taste
• jakobson
• • innovation -> always seeking the new, a reconfiguration of experiences
• goodman
• • understanding
• • semiotics > metaphors and referral to higher classes of concepts
• dewey
• • action, halfway between sensitivity and activity, that which brings forward
• wittgenstein
• • aesthetics, as a field of conceptual inquiry, should start not from a presumption that the central task is to analyze the determinant properties that are named by aesthetic predicates, but rather with a full-blooded consideration of the activities of aesthetic life.

poetry questions our approach to (natural/machine) language (through what? interactivity? sound? color? typography? …mental structures) literature is the aesthetic usage of written language (tresor de la langue francaise)

adorno - the form of the phonograph record: the artwork only holds “truth-content”, has fragments of true language once life has left it. it is, in a sense a threat to life/a judgment upon life.

• art works to shape our basic sense of what is and what matters in all of life (heidegger)

ranciere: - tissu du sensible

poetics

linguistic -> language vs. poetics -> discourse

is about understanding coherence, about understanding structure, and understanding pre-existing patterns (if poetics are prototypes, aesthetics are instances, maybe interfaces). it “an internal theory of literature”, a conjuction of categories, but also a general direction from an author (not sure how that is different from the aesthetics?)

poetics will be called upon to elaborate a theory of description that will bring to light not only what all descriptions have in common but also what permits them to remain different (todorov) - but it must also provide instruments to identify such occurences of, here, a description

a poetics of beautiful code -> what is beautiful code? an aesthetics of beautiful code -> how is code beautiful?

aesthetics are somewhat isolating, but at the same time connecting. it isolates from the immediate, and then connects to the indirect

architecture

plato

“The aesthetics of architecture, by itself, spans traditional issues mooted in philosophy of art, as well as aesthetics of the everyday, and environmental aesthetics. Such traditional issues include the nature of the work; the possibility of classes, kinds, or types in the domain; the character and roles of representation, intentionality, and expression; and the warranted foundations for criticism.”

In distinct progressive and utopian traditions in architectural thought (Eaton 2002), advancement of social utility is a central motivation in architectural attempts to realize idealistic visions of modes of living and societal organization.

“In general, when a thing becomes useful, it ceases to be beautiful” -Théophile Gauthier, Préface des premières poésies, 1832.