Aesthetics

Lecture

The lecturer began this topic by asking us to google the topic.
Aesthetics (also spelled æsthetics or esthetics) is a branch of philosophy dealing with the nature of beauty, art, and taste, and with the creation and appreciation of beauty. It is more scientifically defined as the study of sensory or sensori-emotional values, sometimes called judgments of sentiment and taste.
It is a subjective and personal opinion.

‘By providing an education in the artistic language of vision, the future engineers will be better able to incorporate aesthetic value into their design work.’

It is believe that aesthetics is about three factors:

Beauty

Truth

Goodness

Plato’s idea was of Conception over perception, he believed that true reality was in the ideal form. Anything created was a copy of the ideal form. Photographs and drawings of things were copies of copies. His writing is favourable to design, but not to art.

Louis Sullivan famously said: 

“Form ever follows function. This is the law.”

The interpretation of this has been a key aspect associated with modern architecture and industrial design within the 20^th century meaning, when designing, you should bear in mind the function and the form and aesthetics should be exist only for a functionality purpose. However his essay was titled ‘The Tall Build- ing Artistically Considered’ suggesting that maybe he was meaning that form should be looked at from a creative approach.

‘Beauty is in the eye of the beholder’

It is subjective and therefore beauty can not be a universally valid comment. Everybody has their own personal opinion and there is no common view. The properties and the function of the object, can be viewed with an objective view point.

On the subject of photographs aesthetics can be confusing. Is it what is in the photograph that you like or the actual photograph itself. This goes back to Plato’s idea of an ideal form. It is a copy of a copy and in the end, are you even sure at what the beauty of it is.

Aesthetics in contemporary visual culture

Today’s seminar was to discuss and consider the value of aesthetics in contemporary visual culture.

At the beginning of the seminar we watched a video of Don norman.

He believes that the key to beauty is understanding that it is about emotions. Subconciously the mind notices if a design is fun, pleasant, working well and this can improve a persons mood. There are three components to be considered: Beauty, function and emotion. Fear effects the way the brain works.

He says there are three ways good design makes you happy.

1.     Visceral level – humans like bright colour and we dislike things too hot or too cold.

2.     Behavioural level – Useability, understanding and feeling in control.

3.     Reflective – super ego. A little part of the brain that has no control, the image and keeping up with the jones effect.