视觉化传播对当代审美文化的影响

当代视觉化传播对当代审美文化的影响是深刻而复杂的,既有积极的一面,又有消极的一面。一方面,视觉化传播整体上把日常生活纳入审美的范围之内,有利于培育当代大众的新型审美文化形态;另一方面,视觉化传播泛审美的结果也导致审美活动停留在感官-形象消费的水平上,使大众的审美趣味庸俗化、审美感官钝化,消解了美学的传统精神。     

“Feeling for Beauty”

ABSTRACT

May Morris (1862–1938), renowned craftswoman and daughter of William Morris, had an unconventional Victorian childhood in a home where all the members of the family were engaged in various forms of aesthetic labor, either as amateurs or professionals, and shared an aesthetic philosophy that blended the artisanal and the experimental from which would develop the Arts and Crafts movement. This article will examine the fragmentary recollections of her childhood recorded by May Morris in the introductions she wrote for the twenty-four-volume edition of The Collected Works of William Morris as a rich resource for Victorian sensory history because of the emphasis she places on the development of the child's sensorium, especially in relation to touch as the vital sense that linked family intimacy with creative activity. Employing the term “tactile aesthetics,” I show how, in the Morris household, the pleasurable sensual apprehension of the objects or materials worked by the hands of the craftsperson was inseparable from the complex feelings of connection with others. In such an environment, a feeling for beauty comprised a vital component of habitus, the embodied knowledges and aptitudes that, according to Pierre Bourdieu, are acquired from earliest childhood through the practices of everyday life within a specific social setting.     

审美物化论

"物化"是中国美学中一个渊源有自又有深厚的中国哲学背景的范畴,对于中华民族的艺术创作和理论都有深刻的影响。"物化"与西方美学中的"移情"说有接近之处,却又有其不同的美学内涵;与中国美学中的"感物"、"感兴"等范畴有密切联系,但又并不等同。"物化"是指主体进入审美体验和审美创造的高峰时,在感觉和意识中与客体完全融合为一、无法分辨物我关系的至高境界。在中华传统艺术领域中,"物化"是诗词书法艺术家审美体验中物我两忘、而将主体的灵性和对象的物性化而为一的极致之境。     

生态、城市与救赎

关是在人的实践活动中形成的。美的形成通过实践却对实践的功利性有一定程度的超越。生态美学强调的是人与自然的共生关系。实践美学是在哲学美学中引入实践层面的思考，其投射到城市建设上就是：一座城市要有个性才是美。城市美的根源是多样的，但最终还是由城市中人的主体创造精神来决定。当代美学的救赎使命之一，就是通过“拆墙”来打破美学的“围城”，其在实践中体现为生态关学，这是哲学、伦理学和美学都背离了生态的原则之后尝试实现的一种美学回归。     

Puzzling pieces: a sensory design learning tool

ABSTRACT

This article gives an account of an activity that is part of a collection of instructional materials for learning about sensory aspects of design for products, environments, and services. It describes the participants’ experiences and reflections in a workshop at DeSForM, the 10th Conference on Design and Semantics of Form and Movement. The article highlights the participants’ engagement with one of the exploratory activities, Puzzling Pieces, that was in the process of being developed. The unique ways in which the attendees translated theoretical multi-sensory design perspectives into activities for heightening multi-sensory awareness and consciousness of sensory interactions suggest that this activity may be a useful tool for finetuning the sensory design process.     

当代社会认识中的审美追求

社会认识中的审美追求根源于马克思的在社会实践中“人也按照美的规律建造”的重要思想。当代社会认识的审美追求体现在三个层面:日常的社会心理;阐释的社会理论;决策的社会规划。在日常生活中,人们以美的眼光来感受社会的物质文明与精神文明。审美设计、管理美学、社会发展美学等新兴学科对日常生活审美加以理论阐释,在此基础上,和谐社会成为新的社会规划的审美理念。研究当代社会认识中的审美认识具有重要理论意义与实际价值。     

Introducing Sensory Studies

ABSTRACT

Color serves a variety of purposes in society from identifying groups to conveying symbolic meanings to providing aesthetic pleasure. More subtle effects of color can be found in the environments that human communities construct around themselves. At Doon School, an elite boys' boarding school in northern India, color is intimately associated with the students' activities, social relationships and sensory experiences. It defines their status and shapes their everyday lives. The uses of color at the school are consistent with a wider social aesthetic emphasizing restraint, logical thought and the training and presentation of the body. Many of these values can be seen to have their origins in the school's colonial history and postcolonial aspirations.     

The aesthetic life of artificial flavors

Abstract

Artificiality is usually understood as that which is man-made and is in contraposition to the natural. The term itself is increasingly recognized as a negative pole, while the label of “natural” is exploited as guarantee of healthiness in marketing food campaigns. This article takes issue with the natural/artificial debate by emphasizing the aesthetic side of artificial flavorings – chemical substances designed to alter or enhance the taste of processed foods. Here, I reconsider the conception of artificiality as a poor imitation of nature and instead underline the link between technology and aesthetics, by examining the practice of flavorists. Through ethnographic detail I call for moving the synthetic out of the “inauthentic” and argue that the attempt to mimic natural flavors through synthesis is not only an act of imitation and resemblance (as critics exclusively contend) but can also be thought as an act of representation and interpretation (as my fieldwork illuminates).     

Tasting off-flavors: food science,sensory knowledge and the consumer sensorium

Abstract

In food science and technology, understanding off-flavors has a significance with both technical and commercial implications. In the food industry in the United States, it is a widely held truism that consumers will not buy a product if they do not like the way it tastes or if it contains unpleasant flavors. But how can science determine when food is off putting, and how do scientists learn to address bad tastes in their experimental and technical practice? Based on ethnographic work with food scientists in the United States, this paper is a reflexive account of learning to taste off-flavors, a form of sensory learning that utilizes the scientist’s own body as a kind of instrument. The paper argues that a particular understanding of the consumer sensorium emerges through food scientists’ approach to off-flavors. This is an image of the consumer as a chemically receptive sensory system that is highly sensitive to compounds at trace levels. By utilizing the sensitivity of their own senses, food scientists exploit the relationship between distaste, memory and sensory perception as a form of training to produce future aesthetic memories of off-flavors that can be deployed in a technical context.     

The awakening of the body: “Film as Sensation” in the first French avant-garde

ABSTRACT

This article examines the notion of “Film as Sensation” in the first French avant-garde. It begins by exploring the meaning of this notion in a series of key films and aesthetic statements by Germaine Dulac, Jean Epstein, Pierre Porte, Henri Chomette, Jean Tedesco, and Réne Clair. Contrary to Gilles Deleuze’s account of the work of this school as Cartesian in spirit, this article seeks to demonstrate that it operates a fusion between the senses, disruption, and criticism: the three elements coming together to produce a new, integral art form. Walter Benjamin’s views on the tactile and the absent minded public of film, and Henri Bergson’s critique of time and movement in cinema are also discussed, with the latter being shown to be a key philosophical influence. The essay ends with an analysis of some films by Abel Gance, Marcel Duchamp, and Fernand Léger. It is concluded that the idea of “Film as Sensation” entrained a significant development in thinking about the mediation of perception that, once recovered from the oblivion to which it has been consigned, can help bring film theory to a reconsideration of the senses and a new attention to the aesthetics of filmic sensation.     

Surprising the Senses

ABSTRACT

We perceive the world around us and the objects in it with all our senses. Designers can therefore influence the way we experience everyday products by paying attention to the multiple sensory aspects of products.

When sensory information from two or more senses conflicts, people can be surprised. Currently, more and more product designers are experimenting with designing products that provide incongruent sensory information. Creating such products enables these designers to evoke interest for their products and let people experience something new.

In several studies, we have investigated people's reactions to and opinions about products with sensory incongruities. The results of our studies suggest that evoking surprise by incorporating sensory incongruities in products can be seen as a means to create more pleasurable product experiences.     

中国古典美学的思维方式及其现代意义(上)

中国古典美学比较突出地体现着东方式的思维方式 ,包括中和思维、类比思维、整体思维、圆形思维等。研究中国古典美学的思维方式说到底仍是为了发掘其现代意义 ,为建设现代美学体系提供必要的思想资源。中国古典美学的思维方式对于美学研究中某些思维片面性具有防范作用 ,对于美学研究方法的某些欠缺之处具有弥补和完善的意义 ,而其中某些富于生命力的因素也可以整合到美学研究的现代思维之中     

中国古典美学的思维方式及其现代意义(下)

中国古典美学比较突出地体现着东方式的思维方式 ,包括中和思维、类比思维、整体思维、圆形思维等。研究中国古典美学的思维方式说到底仍是为了发掘其现代意义 ,为建设现代美学体系提供必要的思想资源。中国古典美学的思维方式对于美学研究中某些思维片面性具有防范作用 ,对于美学研究方法的某些欠缺之处具有弥补和完善的意义 ,而其中某些富于生命力的因素也可以整合到美学研究的现代思维之中     

The Flesh and the World: Intercorporeal Body-selves,Ageing and Dancing

ABSTRACT

In this paper I address the role that embodiment, embodied consciousness and what can be termed “extradiscursive” experiences such as body memory and ekstasis as a form of ecstatic experience assume in understanding the body-self of mature dancers. I argue that the body-self of the dancer becomes increasingly intersubjective in maturity through her/his bodily practice, and that this can be understood in terms of the notions of intercorporeity, and of the “flesh” derived from the phenomenology of Merleau-Ponty. I argue that ways of manifestation of intercorporeity in bodily experience are discursively elusive, drawing on two forms of bodily experience—body memory and ekstasis—and examining experiences narrated by mature dancers who were interviewed in my Ph. D. study on ageing, gender and dancers' bodies. I contend that the experience of ekstasis is the “glue” of a corporeal subjectivity that transforms itself through momentary identification with the world, that calls on the invisible as well as the visible. Body memory also challenges Western dualist conceptions of consciousness and bodily experience, and is more easily aligned with Eastern understandings of consciousness as embodied. Finally, I suggest that the concept of body memory is useful for imbuing the body-subject with a cohesion and authenticity through the body's capacity for nonconscious remembrance of movement through a proprioceptively stored “body history,” which enables the constitution of a coherent body-self in older age.     

Sonic Envelopes

ABSTRACT

This article examines ways in which an individual's experiences of spatial environments are informed by physical and psychic perceptions of sound. It explores how sonic images, memories, voices, spaces and events constitute “sonic envelopes.” These aesthetic figures are developed out of the late-nineteenth-century writings by the philosopher Henri Bergson and from contemporary audio-walks by the artist, Janet Cardiff. Each shows that sound, space and time are embodied in the individual's powers of sensory perception. Bergson and Cardiff's sonic envelopes may therefore enable reevaluations of the relationships between sound, space and time that connect the individual to his or her environment.     

大众文化时代的审美生态与美学转向

20世纪美学从以美的本质为重心转向以审美经验的探讨为重心,在关注艺术美的同时强调审美经验和审美心理本身的意义。大众文化的主流化发展和审美化弥散,使当代美学走出经典美学的认识论路径、本体论路径和心理学路径,进入新的理论整合期,艺术哲学的视野明显扩大,并形成与生活世界的双向互动和深度沟通;审美风尚逐渐偏重功利性,世俗性的审美趣味基本取代了崇高与理想,严格自律的审美观念正在被一种泯灭了界限的泛审美观念取代。日常生活意志的感性需求持续高涨和精神崇高性的失落尽管不是绝对对立的,但是这其中潜藏着的审美文化超越性消退的危机值得关注。审美生态的更替与当下关怀的世俗性、身体美学的可能与审美体验的纵深性、大众文化的张力与审美观念的生成性,成为现代性转向后的题中之义。     

20世纪90年代美学论争与思考

2 0世纪 90年代美学界令人瞩目的景观是实践美学与后实践美学之间的论争 ,以及修辞论美学、否定主义美学的异军突起。这场批评与反批评、超越与双重超越的论争展示了世纪之交美学界多元化的理论景观 ,集中体现了中国美学正在发生的深刻变化和发展的趋势 ,显示出中国美学蓄势待发的生机活力和前途。但也存在一些问题值得人们去进一步思考 :后实践美学自身存在的诸多局限 ;美学理论与争鸣和现实的脱节 ;美学界匮乏原创冲动     

From Emplaced Knowing to Interdisciplinary Knowledge

ABSTRACT

In this article, we discuss how experiential and unspoken ways of knowing produced through a video-based approach to sensory ethnography can be made meaningful and relevant to the applied practice of design and engineering scholars. We advance discussions of sensory ethnography by interrogating and making explicit the analytical processes that turn the sensory knowing of the ethnographic encounter into convincing accounts of everyday realities whilst engaging new sensitivities and ways of seeing that in themselves contribute to cross-disciplinary knowledge. We argue that through a more self-conscious appreciation of how and where experiential categories become applied knowledge the value of a sensory ethnography approach in design-centered energy research can be realized.     

牟宗三美学思想探论

当代学界对牟宗三的哲学思想研究较多,但对其审美理论很少涉猎。牟宗三美学思想的特色在于:强调中国文化生命中有一种“综和的尽气精神”,即英雄的、艺术性精神。牟宗三用儒家的心性之学,改造了康德哲学美学,建立了自己的道德理想主义美学,认为审美固然是一种判断,但它更具品鉴或赏鉴性质。康德的审美判断理论既有洞见,又存在着矛盾。从中国美学角度来看,真、善、美虽各有其独立性,但三者合而为一,“即真即善即美”。三者合一的关键在于善,在于道德之心,即实践理性之心。道德实践之心是主导,是人们建体立极的纲维。牟宗三“消化康德而归于儒圣”的美学运思,有助于国人确立中国美学的独特品质,实现传统美学的创造性转化。