Week 4: Aesthetics
Aesthetics as sensory perception of reality.
The field of aesthetics is the body and its interaction with media forms.
Film has capacity to record the concrete materiality of life and produce sensory experiences
(opsis) for the viewer.
Aesthetics is a form of cognition, achieved through taste, touch, hearing, seeing, smell-the
whole corporeal sensorium. The terminating of all of these-nose, eyes, ears, mouth, some of the
most sensitive areas of skin-are located at the surface of the body, the mediating boundary
between inner and outer.
● How do the media give form to external reality and produces sensory experiences for
viewers/users/interactors?
● What is external reality itself, and how is it given form in different historical periods
● Reality → Media → Audience
What is the link between aesthetics and phenomenology?
● Aesthetics concerns the bodily experience of external reality, including the reality of the
body.
● Aesthetics moves beyond the realm of art and towards the field of knowledge
“Silent film”: Accompanied by live music
Sensory experience:
● Moving pictures with no soundtrack
● Musical accompaniment
● Noise from the crowds
● Public space
Micro-context to historical reality
● In what historical period were forms of media consumed?
○ Invention of the television (1920’s)?
○ The TV is not just a family medium
○ Also public presence in the past and present
● What were the historical and social changes in reality?
● What were the aesthetic (bodily) consequences of these changes for different media?
Aesthetics: Perspectives and definitions
, Siegfried Krakauer: “Film in Our Time.”
Experience of Modernity
● 1889: Frankfurt → 1966 New York
● Jewish/German
● From Caligari to Hitler: A Psychological History of the German Film
● First World War → Second World War → Internment → Exile → Lisbon → Freedom in
New York
Modernity: The disruptions wrought by industrialization, capitalism, mass movements of
people, community to society, urbanization, transport and communication technologies,
upheaval in class formations.
Kracaueur: Reality & Redemption
Modernity → The disruptions wrought by industrialization, capitalism, mass movements of
people, community to society, urbanization, transport and communication technologies,
upheaval in class formations
How do we experience our time?
● What are the aesthetic (bodily) consequences of the shifts brought about by modernity?
● Cinema as the medium with the potential to expose the true reality of the present
through the production of sensory experiences (aesthetics)
Reality is ideological, to redeem reality, a film must interrogate how reality is given to us,
expose aspects of reality kept hidden from us (by media) through the techniques that the
camera possesses.
ut sees the film as having a potential from critiquing the
Kracaueur is not a realist aesthetician b
ideological experience of reality
How do we experience our time?
● What are the aesthetics (bodiky) consequence of the shifts brought about modernity?
● Cinema as the medium with the potential, to expose the true reality of the present
through the production of sensory experiences.
The Redemption of Reality
● Reality is ideological, to redeem reality, a film must interrogate how reality is given to us,
expose aspects of reality kept hidden from us (by media) through the techniques that the
camera possesses.
● He is not a realist aesthetician but sees the film as having the potential from critiquing
the ideological experience of reality.
Aesthetics as sensory perception of reality.
The field of aesthetics is the body and its interaction with media forms.
Film has capacity to record the concrete materiality of life and produce sensory experiences
(opsis) for the viewer.
Aesthetics is a form of cognition, achieved through taste, touch, hearing, seeing, smell-the
whole corporeal sensorium. The terminating of all of these-nose, eyes, ears, mouth, some of the
most sensitive areas of skin-are located at the surface of the body, the mediating boundary
between inner and outer.
● How do the media give form to external reality and produces sensory experiences for
viewers/users/interactors?
● What is external reality itself, and how is it given form in different historical periods
● Reality → Media → Audience
What is the link between aesthetics and phenomenology?
● Aesthetics concerns the bodily experience of external reality, including the reality of the
body.
● Aesthetics moves beyond the realm of art and towards the field of knowledge
“Silent film”: Accompanied by live music
Sensory experience:
● Moving pictures with no soundtrack
● Musical accompaniment
● Noise from the crowds
● Public space
Micro-context to historical reality
● In what historical period were forms of media consumed?
○ Invention of the television (1920’s)?
○ The TV is not just a family medium
○ Also public presence in the past and present
● What were the historical and social changes in reality?
● What were the aesthetic (bodily) consequences of these changes for different media?
Aesthetics: Perspectives and definitions
, Siegfried Krakauer: “Film in Our Time.”
Experience of Modernity
● 1889: Frankfurt → 1966 New York
● Jewish/German
● From Caligari to Hitler: A Psychological History of the German Film
● First World War → Second World War → Internment → Exile → Lisbon → Freedom in
New York
Modernity: The disruptions wrought by industrialization, capitalism, mass movements of
people, community to society, urbanization, transport and communication technologies,
upheaval in class formations.
Kracaueur: Reality & Redemption
Modernity → The disruptions wrought by industrialization, capitalism, mass movements of
people, community to society, urbanization, transport and communication technologies,
upheaval in class formations
How do we experience our time?
● What are the aesthetic (bodily) consequences of the shifts brought about by modernity?
● Cinema as the medium with the potential to expose the true reality of the present
through the production of sensory experiences (aesthetics)
Reality is ideological, to redeem reality, a film must interrogate how reality is given to us,
expose aspects of reality kept hidden from us (by media) through the techniques that the
camera possesses.
ut sees the film as having a potential from critiquing the
Kracaueur is not a realist aesthetician b
ideological experience of reality
How do we experience our time?
● What are the aesthetics (bodiky) consequence of the shifts brought about modernity?
● Cinema as the medium with the potential, to expose the true reality of the present
through the production of sensory experiences.
The Redemption of Reality
● Reality is ideological, to redeem reality, a film must interrogate how reality is given to us,
expose aspects of reality kept hidden from us (by media) through the techniques that the
camera possesses.
● He is not a realist aesthetician but sees the film as having the potential from critiquing
the ideological experience of reality.
