Philosophy of aesthetics

experiMental

Dear members,

I would like a practical reference on aesthetics, examined from a philosophical point of view. What I need is any article or paper or book that examines the meaning, the context and the implication of aesthetics and concept design on people.

I'm currently producing a collection of artwork and design work for my portfolio, so this reference would be invaluable.

Would you be able to recommend me a few titles?
Thanks for your help,
Y.

Joe1919

Alan De Bottom had a book out "The Architecture of Happiness" might be worth a read.
I also remember looking at the chinese idea of Feng Shui a few years ago and many of the ideas are actually quite practical.

experiMental

What I don't like in Feng Shui is that it is too restrictive for the designer and it has too many rules and constraints. I could guarantee you that it would be possible to make a computer program that uses ideas and images from feng shui and could make a plan of a 3d building automatically. However, it has some plausible ideas.

What I want is something that could be applied to graphic and product design rather than architecture.

DadaKopf

That's rubbish. Just go into your college library and find a book. A reader, perhaps. On Aesthetics. Which is a BRANCH of philosophy, so the 'philosophy of...' is overkill.

experiMental

Thanks for the tip

I'm not too familiar with Philosophy, so when I've seen the phrase "philosophy of aesthetics" in these subforums I thought that's what the area I wanted to look into was called.

I've seen the TV programme "The Architecture of Happiness2, the author doesn't go too deeply into aesthetics, he just emphasized obvious things like "form must always follow function" and that modern architecture is aggressive.

DadaKopf

Form doesn't always have to follow function. Jeez, that's modernist theory propagated by the Bauhaus. Personally, I like form to follow function, but it doesn't *have* to. This is the difference between a preference or tradition versus a universalising statement; i.e. a preference/tradition elevated to morality or dogma. As if you can't have fun with form and function, and why reduce (industrial and architectural) design to a binary opposition?

I mean, I HATE Philippe Starck's designs. I think they're ugly, over-the-top, mostly useless and they put form way ahead of function. They just make me retch. However, he's designed a lot of stuff for Alessi (a famous Italian industrial design company), which is rubbish. But while in France last year, I picked up a corkscrew that looks like a parrot. Personally, I like simple, functional-looking stuff, but this prioritised form just enough to make a functional instrument fun, interesting, enjoyable to use.

A more extreme version is Bernard Tschumi's 'deconstructive architecture' projects which strategically try to break town commonly-held concepts about the architectural construction and arrangement of space and function, e.g. putting a restaurant beside a rubbish dump, and dividing them by a glass wall (a 'play' on Derrida's ideas of 'contamination').

In other words: why not? There's no ideal, only what is practical or preferable. After that, it's morality and social structures.

However, there comes a point when, the construction of spatial environments and instruments (utensils, chairs etc.) that people use becomes extremely important. The trend in architecture is, now, to design spaces around their occupants rather than applying universal rules about how things 'should be'. To borrow a phrase from Michel de Certeau, how we use spaces and things constitute an 'enunciation' - it's a form of functional action and communication that overlaps with the moral world. Instead of designing spaces according to how 'all' people should live, spaces are designed around how individuals and communities themselves wish to live, how they believe things 'should be'.

So finding a universal balance of 'form and function' is impossible, it's all situational, and deeply subjective.

The irony here, though, is the social fact that our current system - global capitalism - puts in place social structures that shape actual structures and planning. The social relations of our system are actually encoded in our cities, towns and countryside. And, as inhabitants in these systems, we're involved in its perpetuation, change, and undoing.

Just my two cents.

Joe1919

How about the philosophical theme of emergence, which also applies to nature and possibly to art.
Artistic ideas appear to emerge or spring up out of nowhere but can there is some latent or natural underlying reason........................just a thought

experiMental

Joe1919 wrote: »

How about the philosophical theme of emergence, which also applies to nature and possibly to art.
Artistic ideas appear to emerge or spring up out of nowhere but can there is some latent or natural underlying reason........................just a thought

This is actually quite an interesting idea to look into, as it is quite a popular topic among computer scientists. They are trying to create a virtual mechanism that would create random aesthetic forms.

What I can say about creating art and design is that sometimes one would see a certain thing that would interest him/herself, and then take it down in a sketchbook, and then just add bits and pieces to it, to finish the artwork off.
If you would place a person inside a closed off box, he/she would hardly be able to come up with new and original artwork, because he/she would not be stimulated enough by surrounding environment.

I think that emergence is just a function of natural stimulation, but I can't tell what other factors would be involved and whether it's right at all.

//
Dada Kopf, very interesting post.

So it appears to me that it would be very difficult for a designer to create a piece of visual design and predict how the auduence will react to it.