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Aesthetics and Technology in Building: The Twenty-First-Century Edition
by Thomas Leslie Pier Nervi Cristiana Chiorino Elisabetta NerviThe UNESCO headquarters in Paris. The Pirelli skyscraper in Milan. The Palazetto dello Sport in Rome. The "soaring beauty" of Pier Luigi Nervi's visionary designs and buildings changed cityscapes in the twentieth century. His uncanny ingenuity with reinforced concrete, combined with a gift for practical problem solving, revolutionized the use of open internal space in structures like arenas and concert halls. Aesthetics and Technology in Building: The Twenty-First-Century Edition introduces Nervi's ideas about architecture and engineering to a new generation of students and admirers. More than 200 photographs, details, drawings, and plans show how Nervi put his ideas into practice. Expanding on the seminal 1961 Norton Lectures at Harvard, Nervi analyzes various functional and construction problems. He also explains how precast and cast-in-place concrete can answer demands for economy, technical and functional soundness, and aesthetic perfection. Throughout, he uses his major projects to show how these now-iconic buildings emerged from structural truths and far-sighted construction processes. This new edition features dozens of added images, a new introduction, and essays by Joseph Abram, Robert Einaudi, Alberto Bologna, and Gabriele Neri on Nervi's life, work, and legacy.
Aesthetics and the Embodied Mind: Beyond Art Theory and the Cartesian Mind-Body Dichotomy (Contributions To Phenomenology #73)
by Alfonsina ScarinziThe project of naturalizing human consciousness/experience has made great technical strides (e. g. , in mapping areas of brain activity), but has been hampered in many cases by its uncritical reliance on a dualistic "Cartesian" paradigm (though as some of the authors in the collection point out, assumptions drawn from Plato and from Kant also play a role). The present volume proposes a version of naturalism in aesthetics drawn from American pragmatism (above all from Dewey, but also from James and Peirce)--one primed from the start to see human beings not only as embodied, but as inseparable from the environment they interact with--and provides a forum for authors from diverse disciplines to address specific scientific and philosophical issues within the anti-dualistic framework considering aesthetic experience as a process of embodied meaning-making. Cross-disciplinary contributions come from leading researchers including Mark Johnson, Jim Garrison, Daniel D. Hutto, John T. Haworth, Luca F. Ticini, Beatriz Calvo-Merino. The volume covers pragmatist aesthetics, neuroaesthetics, enactive cognitive science, literary studies, psychology of aesthetics, art and design, sociology.
Aesthetics and the Iconoclasm of Contemporary Art: Pictures Without a World (SpringerBriefs in Philosophy)
by Žarko PaićThe main themes and aims of this book are understanding aesthetics, contemporary art and the end of the avant-garde not from the traditional viewpoint of the metaphysics of the beautiful and the sublime but rather thru close connection to the techno-genesis of virtual worlds. This book tackles problems in contemporary art theory such as the body in space and time of digital technologies, along with other issues in visual studies and image science. Further intentions exhibit the fundamental reasons for the disappearance of the picture in the era of virtual reality starting from the notion of contemporary art as realized iconoclasm; art has no world for its "image". The author argues that the iconoclasm of contemporary art has severe consequences. This text appeals to philosophers of art and those interested in contemporary art theory.
Aesthetics and the Philosophy of Art: Comparative Perspectives
by Prabha Shankar DwivediThis volume brings together the finest research on aesthetics and the philosophy of art by stalwart critics and leading scholars in the field. It discusses various themes, such as the idea of aesthetic perception, the nature of aesthetic experience, attitude theory, the relation of art to morality, representation in art, and the association of aesthetics with language studies in the Indian tradition. It deliberates over the theories and views of Aristotle, Freud, Plato, Immanuel Kant, T. S. Eliot, George Dickie, Leo Tolstoy, R. G. Collingwood, Michael H. Mitias, Monroe C. Beardsley, and Abhinavagupta, among others. The book offers a comparative perspective on Indian and Western approaches to the study of art and aesthetics and enables readers to appreciate the similarities and differences between the conceptions of aesthetics and philosophy of art on a comparative scale detailing various aspects of both. The first of its kind, this key text will be useful for scholars and researchers of arts and aesthetics, philosophy of art, cultural studies, comparative literature, and philosophy in general. It will also appeal to general readers interested in the philosophy of art.
Aesthetics and the Revolutionary City: Real and Imagined Havana (Studies of the Americas)
by James Clifford KentAesthetics and the Revolutionary City engages in alternative ways of reading foreign visual representations of Havana through analysis of advertising images, documentary films, and photographic texts. It explores key narratives relating to the projection of different Havana imaginaries and focuses on a range of themes including: pre-revolutionary Cuba; the dream of revolution; and the metaphor of the city “frozen-in-time.” The book also synthesizes contemporary debates regarding the notion of Havana as a real and imagined city space and fleshes out its theoretical insights with a series of stand-alone, important case studies linked to the representation of the Cuban capital in the Western imaginary. The interpretations in the book bring into focus a range of critical historical moments in Cuban history (including the Cuban Revolution and the “Special Period”) and consider the ways in which they have been projected in advertising, documentary film and photography outside the island.
Aesthetics and the Sociology of Art (Routledge Revivals)
by Janet WolffFirst published in 1983, Aesthetics and the Sociology of Art provides a lucid account of two divergent tendencies in the study of aesthetics. At the one extreme, traditional aestheticians have assumed that art and literature are wholly independent, following only the laws and inspirations of artists and artistic movements, and that the question of aesthetic value is accordingly unproblematic. At the other extreme, some sociologists have treated works of art as no more than manifestations of the socio-economic circumstances which produce them, arguing that aesthetic value is therefore entirely relative matter. Janet Wolff shows how both the extreme positions are untenable, and argues convincingly that we must accept that the conceptions and criteria of aesthetic value are socially constructed and inevitably ideological, while stopping short of the reductionist alternative which fails to recognise the irreducible questions of pleasure and of aesthetic discourse. This book provides an invaluably clear guide both to old debates and to otherwise obscure modern controversies, which will be welcomed both by students and scholars in the sociology of art, in aesthetics, in art history, and in literary criticism.
Aesthetics at Large: Volume 1: Art, Ethics, Politics (Art, Ethics, Politics)
by Thierry de DuveImmanuel Kant’s Critique of Judgment, Thierry de Duve argues in the first volume of Aesthetics at Large, is as relevant to the appreciation of art today as it was to the enjoyment of beautiful nature in 1790. Going against the grain of all aesthetic theories situated in the Hegelian tradition, this provocative thesis, which already guided de Duve’s groundbreaking book Kant After Duchamp (1996), is here pursued in order to demonstrate that far from confining aesthetics to a stifling formalism isolated from all worldly concerns, Kant’s guidance urgently opens the understanding of art onto ethics and politics. Central to de Duve’s re-reading of the Critique of Judgment is Kant’s idea of sensus communis, ultimately interpreted as the mere yet necessary idea that human beings are capable of living in peace with one another. De Duve pushes Kant’s skepticism to its limits by submitting the idea of sensus communis to various tests leading to questions such as: Do artists speak on behalf of all of us? Is art the transcendental ground of democracy? Or, Was Adorno right when he claimed that no poetry could be written after Auschwitz? Loaded with de Duve’s trademark blend of wit and erudition and written without jargon, these essays radically renew current approaches to some of the most burning issues raised by modern and contemporary art. They are indispensable reading for anyone with a deep interest in art, art history, or philosophical aesthetics.
Aesthetics beyond the Arts: New and Recent Essays
by Arnold BerleantTaking the view that aesthetics is a study grounded in perception, the essays in this volume exhibit many sides of the perceptual complex that is the aesthetic field and develop them in different ways. They reinvigorate our understanding of such arts as music and architecture; they range across the natural landscape to the urban one; they reassess the place of beauty in the modern environment and reassess the significance of the contributions to aesthetic theory of Kant and Dewey; and they broach the kinds of meanings and larger understanding that aesthetic engagement with the human environment can offer. Written over the past decade, these original and innovative essays lead to a fresh encounter with the possibilities of aesthetic experience, one which has constantly evolved, moving in recent years in the direction of what Berleant terms 'social aesthetics', which enhances human-environmental integration and sociality.
Aesthetics from Ancient China: Aspects of Fenggu (Key Concepts in Chinese Thought and Culture)
by Yonghao WangThis book presents the concept of Fenggu, one of the most important aesthetic categories of ancient China. As an inspiring aesthetic principle, it once encapsulated the particularities of various types of artistic creation and played an important role in traditional artistic creation and theoretic critique. The present volume aims to systematically elaborate on its etymological origin, connotations and generation, its great role in overcoming the tendency of creative stereotypes, its logical positioning in the ancient aesthetic system and its profound connection with traditional culture, via comprehensive analysis of a rich repository of original materials, in combination with calligraphy, painting, and poetry criticism. The theoretical character of traditional aesthetics has been derived from agglomeration of Fenggu with other several important categories of paradigm significance. Therefore, its investigation can offer insights into the organic rhythm of the development of ancient aesthetic thought and consequently lay a solid foundation for the construction of ancient art history and aesthetic history.
Aesthetics in Digital Photography
by Henri MaîtreAutomatically evaluating the aesthetic qualities of a photograph is a current challenge for artificial intelligence technologies, yet it is also an opportunity to open up new economic and social possibilities.Aesthetics in Digital Photography presents theories developed over the last 25 centuries by philosophers and art critics, who have sometimes been governed by the objectivity of perception, and other times, of course, by the subjectivity of human judgement. It explores the advances that have been made in neuro-aesthetics and their current limitations.In the field of photography, this book puts aesthetic hypotheses up against experimental verification, and then critically examines attempts to “scientifically” measure this beauty. Special attention is paid to artificial intelligence techniques, taking advantage of machine learning methods and large databases.
Aesthetics of Absence: Texts on Theatre
by Heiner GoebbelsAesthetics of Absence presents a significant challenge to the many embedded assumptions and hierarchical structures that have become ‘naturalised’ in western theatre production. This is the first English translation of a new collection of writings and lectures by Heiner Goebbels, the renowned German theatre director, composer and teacher. These writings map Goebbels’ engagement with ‘Aesthetics of Absence’ through his own experience at the forefront of innovative music-theatre and performance making. In this volume, Goebbels reflects on works created over a period of more than 20 years staged throughout the world; introduces some of his key artistic influences, including Robert Wilson and Jean-Luc Godard; discusses the work of his students and ex-students, the collective Rimini Protokoll; and sets out the case for a radical rethinking of theatre and performance education. He gives us a rare insight into the rehearsal process of critically acclaimed works such as Eraritjaritjaka and Stifters Dinge, explaining in meticulous detail the way he weaves an eclectic range of references from fine art, theatre, literature, politics, anthropology, contemporary and classical music, jazz and folk, into his multi-textured music-theatre compositions. As an artist who is prepared to share his research and demystify the processes through which his own works come into being, as a teacher with a coherent pedagogical strategy for educating the next generation of theatre-makers, in this volume, Goebbels brings together practice, research and scholarship.
Aesthetics of Dalit Theatre: Perspectives on Caste, Class and Gender
by Shubhendu Shekhar NaskarSince Dalit theatre has not garnered as much recognition as the other genres of Dalit literature have, this book, being one of the pioneering works in the field, aims to highlight the genre within the framework of Dalit literature and the Dalit Movement in India. The discussion extensively delves into the historical background, context and aesthetics of Dalit drama and theatre from epistemological viewpoints. To illustrate the subtleties of caste, class and gender in the pan-Indian scenario, the book includes textual understandings of specific Dalit plays, available in English translation, originally written in Marathi, Tamil, Telugu, and Bengali, covering diverse regions of India. The inclusion of full-length interviews, conducted by the author, of all the living playwrights whose texts have been taken up for analysis, is another substantial facet of this study.
Aesthetics of Early Sound Film: Media Change around 1930 (Cinema and Technology)
by Daniel WiegandThis volume takes a fresh look at the various aesthetics emerging globally in the early sound film era, with a focus on the films’ fundamentally experimental and inventive character. By considering films and production contexts often neglected in film studies, it strives to counter the still dominant view of the transitional period as a time of yet-to-be-perfected forerunners of ‘classical’ sound film. Instead, authors highlight the sense of ‘fruitful uncertainty’ in this period of media change and transformation. Subjects covered include visual and auditory style; the uses of speech, music, and noises; aesthetic conceptions in sound film theory; and intermedial aesthetics. The volume’s scope is decidedly international, covering production and reception contexts in the Soviet Union, Japan, the USA, Germany, France, Italy, the UK, and Switzerland.
Aesthetics of Excess: The Art and Politics of Black and Latina Embodiment
by Jillian HernandezHeavy makeup, gaudy jewelry, dramatic hairstyles, and clothes that are considered cheap, fake, too short, too tight, or too masculine: working-class Black and Latina girls and women are often framed as embodying "excessive" styles that are presumed to indicate sexual deviance. In Aesthetics of Excess Jillian Hernandez examines how middle-class discourses of aesthetic value racialize the bodies of women and girls of color. At the same time, their style can be a source of cultural capital when appropriated by the contemporary art scene. Drawing on her community arts work with Black and Latina girls in Miami, Hernandez analyzes the art and self-image of these girls alongside works produced by contemporary artists and pop musicians such as Wangechi Mutu, Kara Walker, and Nicki Minaj. Through these relational readings, Hernandez shows how notions of high and low culture are complicated when women and girls of color engage in cultural production and how they challenge the policing of their bodies and sexualities through artistic authorship.
Aesthetics of Film Production: A Hands-On Guide to Authorial Voice
by James B. JoyceExploring aesthetic decision-making skills through active, critical interpretation of the screenplay, this book investigates the ways filmmakers translate a screenplay into a powerful film. Guiding the reader through the formal choices a filmmaker makes, this book encompasses all aspects of the filmmaking process, including directing, acting, cinematography, lighting, production design, sound, and editing. Author Joyce illustrates how to apply aesthetics in a way that encourages creative thinking and stylistic choices, while emphasizing the importance of active decision-making to foreground the screenplay in the filmmaking process. Focusing on how films should be crafted stylistically from beat to beat, the book provides tangible footholds to assist filmmakers with the aesthetic decision-making process, empowering filmmakers to create films to resonate emotionally and intellectually. Ideal for students of filmmaking and aspiring filmmakers looking to train their gut and hone their creative and aesthetic decision-making in the filmmaking process. Additional online screenplay samples show how one singular story can be told with different emphasis and narrative perspectives.
Aesthetics of Gentrification: Seductive Spaces and Exclusive Communities in the Neoliberal City (Cities and Cultures)
by Ming Zhang Mahtab AhmadGentrification is reshaping cities worldwide, resulting in seductive spaces and exclusive communities that aspire to innovation, creativity, sustainability, and technological sophistication. Gentrification is also contributing to growing social-spatial division and urban inequality and precarity. In a time of escalating housing crisis, unaffordable cities, and racial tension, scholars speak of eco-gentrification, techno-gentrification, super-gentrification, and planetary gentrification to describe the different forms and scales of involuntary displacement occurring in vulnerable communities in response to current patterns of development and the hype-driven discourses of the creative city, smart city, millennial city, and sustainable city. In this context, how do contemporary creative practices in art, architecture, and related fields help to produce or resist gentrification? What does gentrification look and feel like in specific sites and communities around the globe, and how is that appearance or feeling implicated in promoting stylized renewal to a privileged public? In what ways do the aesthetics of gentrification express contested conditions of migration and mobility? Addressing these questions, this book examines the relationship between aesthetics and gentrification in contemporary cities from multiple, comparative, global, and transnational perspectives.
Aesthetics of Interaction in Digital Art
by Katja Kwastek Niamh WardeSince the 1960s, artworks that involve the participation of the spectator have received extensive scholarly attention. Yet interactive artworks using digital media still present a challenge for academic art history. In this book, Katja Kwastek argues that the particular aesthetic experience enabled by these new media works can open up new perspectives for our understanding of art and media alike. Kwastek, herself an art historian, offers a set of theoretical and methodological tools that are suitable for understanding and analyzing not only new media art but also other contemporary art forms. Addressing both the theoretician and the practitioner, Kwastek provides an introduction to the history and the terminology of interactive art, a theory of the aesthetics of interaction, and exemplary case studies of interactive media art. Kwastek lays the historical and theoretical groundwork with discussions of processual strategies of twentieth-century art and theories of aesthetic experience, process aesthetics, play, and performance. She then develops an aesthetics of interaction, discussing such aspects as real space and data space, temporal structures, instrumental and phenomenal perspectives, and the relationship between materiality and interpretability. Finally, she applies her theory to specific works of interactive media art, including narratives in virtual and real space, interactive installations, and performance -- with case studies of works by Olia Lialina, Susanne Berkenheger, Stefan Schemat, Teri Rueb, Lynn Hershman, Agnes Heged's, Tmema, David Rokeby, Sonia Cillari, and Blast Theory.
Aesthetics of Interaction in Digital Art (The\mit Press Ser.)
by Katja KwastekAn art-historical perspective on interactive media art that provides theoretical and methodological tools for understanding and analyzing digital art.Since the 1960s, artworks that involve the participation of the spectator have received extensive scholarly attention. Yet interactive artworks using digital media still present a challenge for academic art history. In this book, Katja Kwastek argues that the particular aesthetic experience enabled by these new media works can open up new perspectives for our understanding of art and media alike. Kwastek, herself an art historian, offers a set of theoretical and methodological tools that are suitable for understanding and analyzing not only new media art but also other contemporary art forms. Addressing both the theoretician and the practitioner, Kwastek provides an introduction to the history and the terminology of interactive art, a theory of the aesthetics of interaction, and exemplary case studies of interactive media art.Kwastek lays the historical and theoretical groundwork and then develops an aesthetics of interaction, discussing such aspects as real space and data space, temporal structures, instrumental and phenomenal perspectives, and the relationship between materiality and interpretability. Finally, she applies her theory to specific works of interactive media art, including narratives in virtual and real space, interactive installations, and performance—with case studies of works by Olia Lialina, Susanne Berkenheger, Stefan Schemat, Teri Rueb, Lynn Hershman, Agnes Hegedüs, Tmema, David Rokeby, Sonia Cillari, and Blast Theory.
Aesthetics of Negativity: Blanchot, Adorno, and Autonomy (Perspectives in Continental Philosophy)
by William S. AllenMaurice Blanchot and Theodor W. Adorno are among the most difficult but also the most profound thinkers in twentieth-century aesthetics. While their methods and perspectives differ widely, they share a concern with the negativity of the artwork conceived in terms of either its experience and possibility or its critical expression. Such negativity is neither nihilistic nor pessimistic but concerns the status of the artwork and its autonomy in relation to its context or its experience. For both Blanchot and Adorno negativity is the key to understanding the status of the artwork in post-Kantian aesthetics and, although it indicates how art expresses critical possibilities, albeit negatively, it also shows that art bears an irreducible ambiguity such that its meaning can always negate itself. This ambiguity takes on an added material significance when considered in relation to language as the negativity of the work becomes aesthetic in the further sense of being both sensible and experimental, and in doing so the language of the literary work becomes a form of thinking that enables materiality to be thought in its ambiguity.In a series of rich and compelling readings, William S. Allen shows how an original and rigorous mode of thinking arises within Blanchot’s early writings and how Adorno’s aesthetics depends on a relation between language and materiality that has been widely overlooked. Furthermore, by reconsidering the problem of the autonomous work of art in terms of literature, a central issue in modernist aesthetics is given a greater critical and material relevance as a mode of thinking that is abstract and concrete, rigorous and ambiguous. While examples of this kind of writing can be found in the works of Blanchot and Beckett, the demands that such texts place on readers only confirm the challenges and the possibilities that literary autonomy poses to thought.
Aesthetics of Repair: Indigenous Art and the Form of Reconciliation
by Eugenia KisinAesthetics of Repair analyses how the belongings called “art” are mobilized by Indigenous artists and cultural activists in British Columbia, Canada. Drawing on contemporary imaginaries of repair, the book asks how diverse forms of collective reckoning with settler-colonial harm resonate with urgent conversations about aesthetics of care in art. The discussion moves across urban and remote spaces of display for Northwest Coast–style Indigenous art, including galleries and museums, pipeline protests, digital exhibitions, an Indigenous-run art school, and a totem pole repatriation site. The book focuses on the practices around art and artworks as forms of critical Indigenous philosophy, arguing that art’s efficacies in this moment draw on Indigenous protocols for enacting justice between persons, things, and territories. Featuring examples of belongings that embody these social relations – a bentwood box made to house material memories, a totem pole whose return replenishes fish stocks, and a copper broken on the steps of the federal capital – each chapter shows how art is made to matter. Ultimately, Aesthetics of Repair illuminates the collision of contemporary art with extractive economies and contested practices of “resetting” settler-Indigenous relations.
Aesthetics of the Margins / The Margins of Aesthetics: Wild Art Explained
by David Carrier Joachim Pissarro"Wild Art" refers to work that exists outside the established, rarified world of art galleries and cultural channels. It encompasses uncatalogued, uncommodified art not often recognized as such, from graffiti to performance, self-adornment, and beyond. Picking up from their breakthrough book on the subject, Wild Art, David Carrier and Joachim Pissarro here delve into the ideas driving these forms of art, inquire how it came to be marginalized, and advocate for a definition of "taste," one in which each expression is acknowledged as being different while deserving equal merit.Arguing that both the "art world" and "wild art" have the same capacity to produce aesthetic joy, Carrier and Pissarro contend that watching skateboarders perform Christ Air, for example, produces the same sublime experience in one audience that another enjoys while taking in a ballet; therefore, both mediums deserve careful reconsideration. In making their case, the two provide a history of the institutionalization of "taste" in Western thought, point to missed opportunities for its democratization in the past, and demonstrate how the recognition and acceptance of "wild art" in the present will radically transform our understanding of contemporary visual art in the future.Provocative and optimistic, Aesthetics of the Margins / The Margins of Aesthetics rejects the concept of "kitsch" and the high/low art binary, ultimately challenging the art world to become a larger and more inclusive place.
Aesthetics of the Margins / The Margins of Aesthetics: Wild Art Explained
by David Carrier Joachim Pissarro“Wild Art” refers to work that exists outside the established, rarified world of art galleries and cultural channels. It encompasses uncatalogued, uncommodified art not often recognized as such, from graffiti to performance, self-adornment, and beyond. Picking up from their breakthrough book on the subject, Wild Art, David Carrier and Joachim Pissarro here delve into the ideas driving these forms of art, inquire how it came to be marginalized, and advocate for a definition of “taste,” one in which each expression is acknowledged as being different while deserving equal merit.Arguing that both the “art world” and “wild art” have the same capacity to produce aesthetic joy, Carrier and Pissarro contend that watching skateboarders perform Christ Air, for example, produces the same sublime experience in one audience that another enjoys while taking in a ballet; therefore, both mediums deserve careful reconsideration. In making their case, the two provide a history of the institutionalization of “taste” in Western thought, point to missed opportunities for its democratization in the past, and demonstrate how the recognition and acceptance of “wild art” in the present will radically transform our understanding of contemporary visual art in the future.Provocative and optimistic, Aesthetics of the Margins / The Margins of Aesthetics rejects the concept of “kitsch” and the high/low art binary, ultimately challenging the art world to become a larger and more inclusive place.
Aesthetics, Gender, and Disability in Interactive Digital Art and Performance Art (Routledge Advances in Art and Visual Studies)
by Phaedra ShanbaumThis book explores the tensions between aesthetics, gender, and disability in contemporary digital media installations and performance art. Notions of agency and subjectivity are connected to four contemporary political issues (artificial intelligence, migration and political violence, contemporary medical technologies and practices, and the Anthropocene) and analyzed against a Western legacy of utopian and dystopian ideas and desires that have shaped, and continue to shape, what it means to be human. The book’s main argument is that agency and subjectivity are not universal attributes; rather they are socio-material entanglements and contextually bound enactments that are strategically negotiated by the subject. Thus, they involve conflict, struggle, and other forms of resistance.The book will be of interest to scholars working in art history, media and cultural studies, disability studies, and gender studies.
Aesthetics, Industry, and Science: Hermann von Helmholtz and the Berlin Physical Society
by M. Norton WiseOn January 5, 1845, the Prussian cultural minister received a request by a group of six young men to form a new Physical Society in Berlin. In fields from thermodynamics, mechanics, and electromagnetism to animal electricity, ophthalmology, and psychophysics, members of this small but growing group—which soon included Emil Du Bois-Reymond, Ernst Brücke, Werner Siemens, and Hermann von Helmholtz—established leading positions in what only thirty years later had become a new landscape of natural science. How was this possible? How could a bunch of twenty-somethings succeed in seizing the future? In Aesthetics, Industry, and Science M. Norton Wise answers these questions not simply from a technical perspective of theories and practices but with a broader cultural view of what was happening in Berlin at the time. He emphasizes in particular how rapid industrial development, military modernization, and the neoclassical aesthetics of contemporary art informed the ways in which these young men thought. Wise argues that aesthetic sensibility and material aspiration in this period were intimately linked, and he uses these two themes for a final reappraisal of Helmholtz’s early work. Anyone interested in modern German cultural history, or the history of nineteenth-century German science, will be drawn to this landmark book.
Aesthetics, Well-being and Health: Essays within Architecture and Environmental Aesthetics (Routledge Library Editions: Ethnoscapes)
by Birgit ColdIn everyday life, most people do not reflect seriously on the impacts of architecture and environmental aesthetics on their well-being and health. Originally published in 2001 as part of the Ethnoscapes: Current Challenges in the Environmental Social Sciences series, reissued now with a new series introduction, Aesthetics, Well-being and Health: Essays within Architecture and Environmental Aesthetics, is an intriguing volume bringing together professionals working in architecture, planning, urban design and social policy with academics from both humanities and social sciences to provide a broad-based and insightful discussion on how aesthetics affect us emotionally and physically. The essays help us understand our cultural and individual preferences related to the quality of the environment and challenge the common belief that environmental beauty is a matter of personal taste. A wide range of concepts are discussed such as place identity, multi-sensuous and emotional processes, geometrical order and controlled space, architectural plasticity, aesthetically real and virtual values, participative design processes, ethics in architecture, and beauty and happiness. The book highlights the importance for today's society to engage more in aesthetic ethics and to understand the significance of creating aesthetically pleasing environments.