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Past-Oriented and Future-Oriented Frames of Familiarity: Aesthetic Experience in Everyday Environments
Mami Aota
Abstract
Familiarity is an important concept that reveals aesthetic and ethical connections in everyday environments. However, it is unclear what a particular object of familiarity is in our daily lives. Identifying the object of familiarity is important for respecting residents’ perspectives in practices such as community redevelopment. This study uses two concepts, past-oriented and future-oriented framing, to clarify the process of identifying objects with which we feel familiar in our everyday environments. A past-oriented frame is invoked by a loss experienced in an everyday environment and refers to memories relating to our habits therein. A future-oriented frame is called upon by the process of planning for the future, referring not only to personal memory but also to collective memory. The proposed concepts facilitate the verbalizations of residents’ perspectives, valuable in community redevelopment and revitalization efforts.[1]
Key Words
environmental aesthetics; everyday aesthetics; familiarity; memory; resident
- 1. Introduction
In recent years, my hometown in Tokyo has witnessed a series of large-scale redevelopment projects. As cities are constantly changing and developing, we must adapt to the current state of the everchanging world. One might even say that in cities, ultimately everything is temporary. For city dwellers, accepting these changes is essential to establish a stable daily life. Needless to say, those living outside cities must also adjust to changes in their everyday environments. People can and often must accept changes in their environments to continue their daily lives.
However, not all changes are acceptable. Some changes are considered decisive and destructive to our daily environments. My personal experience in Tokyo offers an example. My father used to work in Shibuya, one of Tokyo’s largest downtown areas. Since childhood, I have repeatedly visited this town with my family and friends. During my university years, I used to walk through Shibuya every day on my way to university. Even today, Shibuya remains an important place for my daily life and activities. I often go there to shop, meet my friends, and visit museums or theaters. While I have never been a resident of Shibuya in a strict sense, it has always been at the center of my daily life. In recent years, large-scale redevelopment has been underway in this region. Old buildings have been demolished, and several new skyscrapers have been constructed. Indeed, Shibuya’s landscapes are undergoing rapid transformations. I have a rather negative opinion on the matter: it appears as though the previous cityscapes have been destroyed, but the new ones being created are not adequate replacements or redevelopments to compensate for the losses from destroying the old. Certainly, I do not perceive all the changes in Shibuya as negative. In fact, new buildings are being built and stores are being replaced, as has been the case for a while now. However, I perceive some of its recent transformations as losses rather than changes. Why are we able to accept or feel positively about certain types of change, but tend to reject or feel negatively about those that trigger a sense of loss?
Outsiders may easily perceive the new cityscapes as beautiful. In fact, in Shibuya, each new building highlights the architects’ elaborate designs. It is understandable that some people find Shibuya’s current modern landscapes visually and aesthetically better than the previously cluttered landscapes. However, an important question is how people who have lived in Shibuya for a long time feel about this. Having spent a significant amount of time in this place, these people have developed an attachment to it.
This feeling seems noteworthy as an aesthetic feeling unique to them. This may cause residents to perceive certain changes as losses rather than interesting redevelopments. Aesthetics has traditionally assumed that an aesthetic experience is the result of an encounter with something special, typically a work of art. However, as is well known, this tendency has been reconsidered in recent years. Since the 2000s, everyday aesthetics has grown into a sub-discipline that explores aesthetic experiences in daily life. While aesthetics is sometimes regarded as a philosophy of art, everyday aesthetics traces back to the origin of aesthetics as a discourse “investigating the nature of experiences gained through sensory perception and sensibility.”[2] Even if we are not as moved by everyday objects and events as by artworks, our sensibility is active in our daily lives. In particular, everyday environments experienced by residents activate their sensibility, and the notion of familiarity becomes an important contribution to their aesthetic experience. As detailed in section 2, Arto Haapala argues that familiarity is an attachment to our everyday environment that makes us feel safe and comfortable.
Taking Haapala’s discussion of familiarity as a starting point, this study aims to identify the process by which residents understand the basis of their familiarity with their everyday environments in the face of changes, whether past or incipient, in these environments. Haapala points out that we feel familiarity with our everyday environments and argues that this is a type of aesthetic emotion, which is both aesthetically and ethically important. It sustains our existence and defines who we are. However, we do not feel familiarity with everything in or all aspects of our everyday environments. This possibly is why some changes in our environments are perceived as positive or neutral and others as negative. That is, some elements are fundamental to our familiarity with our everyday environments, whereas others are not. For this reason, while I perceive some of the redevelopments in Shibuya as mere changes, I consider other changes as losses.
When developing a community or redeveloping a city, developers and planners often incorporate the perspectives of residents or those connected to a place in the development. However, in reality, their attempts often face difficulties. This is because outsiders’ perspectives are easily articulated due to their singular focus, such as with the visual perception of building design or scenery, whereas residents’ familiarity, which develops over time, is difficult to verbalize because it is integrated with their daily life. To preserve or create a neighborhood that reflects the residents’ perspectives, it is necessary not only to describe the feelings of familiarity but also to identify the “object” of that familiarity.
In this paper, through specific steps, I describe how we notice objects of familiarity. In section 2, I review Haapala’s argument about familiarity and highlight the need to clarify how we find or determine what is familiar to us. Section 3 introduces the concept of frame, which defines what an aesthetic object is in our experiences. In addition, I suggest that our memory plays a key role in understanding the aesthetic experience of familiarity in our everyday environments. In section 4, I argue that two types of framing exist for familiarity, past-oriented and future-oriented. I point out that we can distinguish between these framings based on certain underlying motivations and roles in memory. Section 5 concludes the paper. This study reveals the process by which we discover objects of familiarity in our everyday environments. Additionally, it presents a perspective that will help us better understand our sense of place and reconstruct pleasant communities for a better future.[3]
2. Familiarity as a concept of everyday aesthetics
In his seminal paper, Arto Haapala characterizes everyday aesthetics with the notion of familiarity. He focuses on strangeness and familiarity as key concepts in analyzing relationships in our everyday environments. Strangeness is a feeling toward a place that is completely new to us.[4] For example, when visiting other cities or towns for the first time, we may feel that the environments are unfamiliar.[5] Therefore, we pay special attention to these environments. Haapala states:
In one sense of the word aesthetic, strangeness creates a suitable setting for aesthetic considerations. Our senses are more on alert in a strange milieu than in our home region. We can judge the aesthetic character of an area without being biased by the preferences that define our normal surroundings. This is the outsider’s gaze, visitor’s curiosity, which has been very much in the forefront in aesthetics.[6]
When I first visited Paris, I was visually attracted to the city, especially its buildings and riverscapes. It was an aesthetic experience in a strange environment. Haapala accurately illustrates this kind of aesthetic experience: We are busy sensing strange places. Because the starting point of aesthetic experience is usually considered to be the reception of the world through the senses, it is not surprising that such an experience is mentioned alongside experiencing a work of art as a typical example of aesthetic experience. Such an object is distant from us, that is, unfamiliar to us.
Is it impossible for us to have aesthetic experiences in our everyday environments if unfamiliar environments are what capture our aesthetic attention? Can we have aesthetic experiences in our daily environments too? To answer these questions, Haapala’s arguments on familiarity must be examined. Unlike strange environments, we feel a sense of familiarity with our everyday environments.
While we are living in the lifeworld, doing and making things, acting in different ways in different situations, we create ties to our surroundings, and in this way familiarize ourselves with it. We make the environment “our own,” we create relations that are significant for us and serve our purposes and interests.[7]
Although we do not initially feel familiar with a place, we gradually develop a strong connection with our daily environment as we continue to reside there. By living in a specific place for a certain period of time, we gradually become familiar with that daily environment. In this process, our senses, compared to how it operates when we are in a strange environment, gradually cease to; we make the environment “our own.” Notably, it is not just that the environment becomes familiar to us but also that we familiarize ourselves with it through this process. Haapala points out that our historicity has an inescapable effect on our interpretation of place.
Historicity is built into human existence. I cannot throw my past experiences away…Similarly, the places that have constituted my identity in the past influence the way I am presently connected to my surroundings. Our existence is formed through our past and it interprets the surroundings each of us faces and makes it meaningful for us.[8]
Our identity is created through our past experiences. Influenced by our unique historicity, we find things in our surroundings that are meaningful to us and to which we are strongly connected. In doing so, the everyday environment becomes a component of one’s historicity, as something one has experienced. In other words, the everyday environment is not merely an environment in which one lives, it becomes a part of oneself. This brings us to the argument that our memory is involved in finding aesthetic objects in our everyday environments, as I will discuss in section 3. Through this interpretation, we are transformed into beings that cannot exist without that particular environment. The environment has also been transformed into something imbued with our existence. In this sense, they are inseparable. This connection is referred to as attachment.[9]
In this context, what aesthetic meanings do our everyday environments have? As Haapala points out, objects in our everyday environment such as a neighboring house on the street do not attract our attention visually, but form the background of our consciousness as a part of our lives. Haapala states that his hometown, Helsinki, is so familiar to him that he usually takes a walk in the city without paying attention to it. However, this does not mean that Helsinki is not aesthetically important to him. Haapala states:
Ordinary everyday objects lack the surprise element or freshness of the strange, nevertheless they give us pleasure through a kind of comforting stability, through the feeling of being at home and taking pleasure in carrying out normal routines in a setting that is “safe.”[10]
According to him, what is incorporated into the everyday guarantees a pleasant stability, and this brings pleasure to the performance of our daily routines. Haapala claims that this pleasure is aesthetic in the sense that it is derived from an emotional connection. Further, he states that the aesthetic experience of familiarity is the feeling of “the quiet fascination.”[11] He argues that if we can focus more on the pleasurable aspects of our everyday lives, we can construct “the aesthetics (or the art) of living.”[12]
As he rightly claims, we have different types of aesthetic experiences according to our position in a given environment. As outsiders, we may be attracted to buildings or natural landscapes in the areas where we visit. By contrast, we as residents usually pay less attention to everyday environments. This does not imply that the environment is unimportant. Rather, feeling at home is essential to our existence. The aesthetics of familiarity reveal specific characteristics of everyday life. Sensing is important for perceiving unfamiliar environments, but in our familiar environments, feeling has much more significance than sensing. Although our senses such as sight and hearing are not strongly stimulated, we feel that our daily life is flowing pleasantly.
Familiarity is a feeling that underlies daily life. As Haapala points out, when we successfully perform our daily routine such as commuting, we feel comfortable, but do not pay attention to our surroundings that make us comfortable. In this mode, we are unable to discern what we are familiar with. As mentioned in the introduction, it is often important to identify the object of our familiarity in the context of our activities and practices such as the redevelopment of cities. Haapala does not delve into this point. He mentions that we start to pay attention to a given environment when a building disappears or a new one is constructed. He also states that even when we take some distance from our everyday concerns, “we do not see familiar objects surrounding us as strange; rather, we start to enjoy their visual and auditory features.”[13] In this case, why do we not consider them strange? What is happening at that moment? How do we discern objects of familiarity when we begin to pay attention to our everyday environment? To answer these questions, it is necessary to examine the activities of our mind in detail.[14]
3. Framing and memory
In this section, before explaining the mechanism of discovering the object of familiarity, I examine how it is possible to find the object of appreciation in the environment in the first place, using the concept of “frame.” Next, considering the frame of familiarity, I point out that memory plays a vital role in relation to our historicity, which I will discuss in section 4.
First, although not limited to the familiar everyday environment, several difficulties arise when discussing the environment as an aesthetic object in general. The environment does not appear before us as a concrete object such as a painting or sculpture. The environment has no boundary for aesthetic appreciation by itself. Moreover, an environment cannot exist without being subject to some degree of change. When the wind blows, plants and trees sway; birdsong can suddenly be heard. When cars and people move, the components of the environment change. In the long run, especially in the case of human environments, they will gradually change and in a few decades become completely different. Thus, at first glance, it is difficult to define the object of an aesthetic experience in the environment.
Because the environment is spatially expansive and changes over time, we cannot appreciate everything in our environment. We select what we pay attention to by ourselves, sometimes intentionally, but normally unintentionally. The object here does not mean a physical individual, but rather what our consciousness is oriented toward. I will refer to our selection of aesthetic objects as “framing” in this paper.
My argument regarding the frame is derived from Ronald Hepburn’s study. According to Hepburn, one of the differences between art and nature (or the environment) is the existence of a frame. He argues that nature is frameless. Some frames are physical such as the frame of a painting, but others are conventions for art appreciation such as the boundary between the stage and the audience. In short, a frame defines the object of an aesthetic experience within a specific context.[15]
If no frame exists in the environment, does it mean that we cannot select any object for aesthetic appreciation? Although Hepburn states that nature has no frame, he does not seem to claim that it cannot have a frame. He describes our aesthetic experiences in nature as follows:
Whatever lies beyond the frame of an art-object cannot normally become part of the aesthetic experience relevant to it. A chance train-whistle cannot be integrated into the music of a string quartet; it merely interferes with its appreciation. But where there is no frame, and where nature is our aesthetic object, a sound or a visible intrusion from beyond the original boundaries of our attention can challenge us to integrate it in our overall experience, to modify that experience so as to make room for it.[16]
Artists usually create frames for their artworks.[17] In contrast, as Hepburn suggests, no such frame exists in the environment. This does not mean that we do not have a frame for appreciating the environment. Rather, we are the creators of the frame in our aesthetic appreciation of the environment. Hepburn mentions that we have already experienced “the ordinary boundaries of attention” before some form of intrusion. These boundaries can be interpreted as the frames. Moreover, we expand the frame “to make room for it,” implying that, in the case of the environment, we can recreate our frames through the process of aesthetic experience.[18] Thus, focusing on our surroundings, we continue to reorganize the frame repeatedly. Through this process, we continue to discover aesthetic objects in our environment.
A closer examination of Hepburn’s train-whistle example reveals the role of memory in our aesthetic experience of the environment. In this case, we experience the vividness of the intrusion by comparing it with the prior state of the environment. In other words, the aesthetic effect of the intrusion is distinctive in that it is an auditory stimulus that comes after silence. In this sense, the environment is not experienced aesthetically as a mere physical object enframed spatially but also as a temporally enframed entity. Our memory captures its temporality. Accordingly, taking the same example, we must use our memory to compare the before and after of the whistle, albeit for a relatively short period of time. Memory plays an important role in ensuring that our aesthetic experience of our environment is not merely a tracing of spatial and visual surfaces.
The passage of time evoked by memory becomes even more significant in the aesthetic experience of everyday environments, especially in the aesthetic experience of familiarity. The everyday environment is an important constituent of one’s existence. Haapala refers to this as an attachment to our everyday environments. It is built throughout our lifetime in a particular place, and this also constitutes our historicity. Therefore, the familiarity of our everyday environment is, above all, obtained through the history of the accumulation of time we have spent there.
In our daily lives, we often do not pay attention to our everyday environments. In other words, we live without framing. However, in certain instances, such as when asked by a foreign friend about the charms of our town, when something changes in our environment, or when the town is being redeveloped, we start to try to frame it ourselves. However, we do not confront our daily environment from the ground up, as tourists do. Our historicity has already been accumulated there. Thus, when we frame an object of familiarity with our environment, we capture this accumulation of time. In other words, we use our memory of a place to realize familiarity. We have various memories of specific events in our localities such as of festivals or accidents. We also have more ordinary memories of the environment through the repetition of routines such as commuting or working. We frame the present and past states of the environment through memory. Moreover, aesthetic experiences through memory can help us better understand ourselves in relation to our environments. Memory is subjective, in the sense that it is usually preserved in the minds of individuals. However, as explored in more depth in the next section, it also has both collective and inter-subjective aspects.
It should be noted that I still use the concept of frame to describe our appreciation of the environment. In my view, a frame is not fixed as is typical of painting frames. Rather, it has an open-ended character. However, if this is the case, why should we continue to call this a frame? I continue using the word ‘frame’ for the following reasons. First, I seek to emphasize the artist-like aspects of the viewer. Just as an artist shows an aesthetic object through the production of her work—that is, through the framing of the work—we, as appreciators, show ourselves the object of our own appreciation through framing. We enjoy discovering something that is aesthetically good in our environments. This pleasure may be likened to that experienced by artists during their creative processes. Second, the concept of frame allows us to capture the possibilities of an act of appreciation such as expanding the scope of our perception or superimposing another frame onto an existing one. Although the object of attention while viewing our environment changes from moment to moment, each moment has its own focus. This can be captured by continuing to apply the concept of frame. Moreover, we can learn from the ways in which others appreciate their environments, from perspectives different than ours, for example, as scientists and artists do. I thus retain my previous viewpoints and introduce new ones, a process that can be described as the layering of multiple frames.
Let me comment on the role of memory, before proceeding with the next section. Some people may not agree that memory is an important factor in framing the environment because it seems to be subjective. They may insist that an objective standard is required to assess the aesthetic meaning of the environment.[19] However, memory is essential when considering the aesthetics of our everyday environments. Pierre Nora points out that history and memory capture the past in entirely different ways.[20] History is a reconstruction of the past and, similar to any other science, is required to have objectivity; meanwhile, memory captures one’s past experiences of life in a way that cannot be separated from the present. If our everyday environment is the ground for our current life, it is doubtful that we can understand it objectively from the perspective of history. Rather, if we approach the everyday environment on its own terms, we should focus on ourselves, as we are a part of it. Thus, our memory is important for the aesthetics of our everyday life.
4. The framings of familiarity
This section explores when and exactly how we acquire a frame to capture the object of our familiarity. I present two types of familiarity framing: past-oriented and future-oriented. Both framings depend on the memory function. Memory broadens the scope of aesthetic objects; that is, it shows us not only the present but also the past, and sometimes enables us to anticipate the future of our environment.[21] It should be noted that ‘object’ here does not mean a solid individual object such as a building or a tree. As pointed out in the previous section, the environment as an aesthetic object has a spatial and temporal range; however, as examined in detail in this section, this feature is even more pronounced in the case of an everyday environment, since we have a past in that place and also look to a future therein.
4.1 Past-oriented framing
In past-oriented framing, after some change has already occurred in the environment, the object of our familiarity emerges—as something with a temporal range—by recalling the environment not only in the present but also in the past through memory. Haapala mentions that we begin to see our everyday environment when something such as a building has been lost. However, he states that at this time, we do not feel a sense of strangeness, but only begin to see the environment. He does not explain what occurs in this situation. I propose that we impose the past-oriented framing on our environment. When something is lost, a past-oriented frame is formed through the memory of experiences that have been accumulated in our daily lives in the environment. Through this frame, we can see which parts of our town, for example, have been or remain important to us.
An example from my own experience can be used to illustrate this type of framing. In January 2023, Shibuya’s Tokyu Department Store closed its doors after more than half a century of operation. Shortly after the department store closed, through the glass door I saw the empty spaces within. The store that I had passed through every day when I was a university student appeared as an immense hole in this larger space. At that moment, I not only started to visualize the lost place but also realized my feeling of familiarity with the area. Even though we lost our lively department store, the surrounding areas did not entirely disappear. Yet, through the loss of this significant element, I recognized that the area itself is important to me. I found myself hoping that the area will not be further damaged.[22]
From my perspective, the closing of the department store was not a change, but a loss to the environment. Our everyday environments are constantly changing. It is not rare for old buildings to disappear and new ones constructed. We do not perceive all these changes as losses. Referring to Haapala, Ariane Nomikos suggests that attachment to the environment is the key to understanding the concept of loss. When a material change impacts our ontological security, we perceive it as a loss.[23]
This experience of feeling some change to be a kind of loss is particularly characteristic of residents. As residents, we repeat the same activities such as commuting almost every day. Through repetition, we construct the habit of automatically performing an act. Usually, in daily activities, we simply rely on habits and do not reflect on episodic memories connected to the environment.[24] However, when a loss ruptures our habitual activity, our memories start to evoke our past in everyday environments to rehabilitate our connections with the environment. In my own case, stimulated by the loss of the store, I recalled my experiences of passing through the street: every season I found different flowers and plants, I often walked there with one of my friends several years ago, and so on. I composed an image of the past in my everyday environment by piecing together some memorable moments. This image was imposed onto the present environment. I then began to notice my feeling of familiarity with the environment because through the imposition I found that I had been existentially connected to it. In other words, I saw myself within this environment. We may say, “I am familiar with X,” to refer to a situation or thing that we know about, and we may also say, “X is a familiar thing,” to describe the quality of an object we know about. Thus, the concept of familiarity precisely describes the experiences that we integrate into an object. Through past-oriented framing, we discover what is familiar to us in relation to our past experiences.
4.2 Future-oriented framing
Future-oriented framing constitutes the frame that we construct when we are trying to make a decision about our future daily environment at a point in time when there has been no actual positive change in the environment. When we place importance on the unity of the past and present, we imagine what the future should resemble, using not only our individual memories but also our collective memories. At this point, we can discover objects of familiarity that have always existed in the environment as aspects to be preserved for the future.
Residents are not the only appreciators of a given environment. Tourists also enjoy the present and often the past in this environment, which is experienced through historical landscapes. However, tourists normally do not care about the future of this environment. In contrast as residents we should care about the future of our everyday environment because our own future is tied to it. A future-oriented framework of familiarity typically emerges during community redevelopment.
As previously mentioned, one of my everyday environments, Shibuya, is currently undergoing intense redevelopment. The Tokyu department store referred to in my explanation above on past-oriented framing is also set to be demolished as part of the redevelopment project. A new high-rise building, by the Norwegian architectural design firm Snøhetta, will be constructed on the site. The building will include luxury residences and hotels. The blueprints designed by Snøhetta illustrate a skyscraper that is both eco-friendly and sophisticated. This will certainly be an eye-catching new landmark in Shibuya for tourists.
However, after many years of daily life in Shibuya, to my eyes the building appeared to be inappropriate for the surrounding landscape; it would destroy the prevailing ambience of this area. Can redevelopment be accomplished without tearing down what is already present and building something new? Even if new architecture is introduced such that it makes a structure “more refined,” I am unsure whether it will be desirable to residents. If our attachment to our daily environment sustains us in our daily lives, then redevelopment should be undertaken while protecting the objects of our familiarity.
In fact, some community development projects have been successful in preserving and utilizing objects of familiarity for residents. For example, in the small town of Akaoka, in Kochi Prefecture, Japan, residents have been trying to revitalize their own culture. Their motto is “to use something already here.” They preserved and redeveloped a red-brick merchant house built almost 150 years ago. Currently it is used as a public space. All the redevelopment processes were led by the residents and the committee that supported them.[25] Importantly, “to use something already here,” we must know what is essential to the place.
Hence, in Akaoka, people find something familiar to them and reuse it, carrying it forward into their future. I attribute their success to their awareness of the base of their feelings of familiarity with their everyday environments. Here, I argue that they identified the object of their familiarity through future-oriented framing. The following section describes the framing process.
Our everyday environment is not constituted by untouched materials such as stone used for a sculpture. It has already been etched into its own story.[26] When we try to imagine the future, we tend to envision something that is consistent with our present everyday environment. Emily Brady calls this ‘aesthetic integrity,’ proposed as a principle for thinking about environmental conservation. Aesthetic integrity refers to the degree to which human intervention is justified from an aesthetic perspective.
This principle provides a guide for deciding how to protect the aesthetic character of a landscape. It treats aesthetic features as parts of an integrated whole which constitute the aesthetic character of an environment. It requires that we be true to that character, which means maintaining its soundness while being faithful to its narrative.[27]
She argues that for the sake of environmental conservation, we should not focus on one part of the environment at stake such as a lake or a building, but on the aesthetic character of the entire environment, which requires sensitive attention to the diachronic development of the story. Aesthetic integrity ensures that the narrative of the environment does not diverge from the image of the future.
As creators of our future environments, we should refer to aesthetic integrity when imagining the future of a particular environment. During the redevelopment process, we create several plans and compare them. We should consider the aesthetic character of our everyday environment when selecting the best plan. To imagine how our city or town will appear in the future, we begin to observe the present, to which we usually do not pay special attention. We not only see what is directly visible but also notice what we have inherited from the past and integrated into the present through the narratives of the everyday environment inscribed in the present. In the case of Akaoka, people may have noticed that something important to their narrative is already there and seem to have then decided to preserve and reuse it during the process of placemaking.
While subjective memory plays a role in the process of future-oriented framing, collective memory that is shared by people belonging to the same society or culture is more important. In discussing collective memory, Maurice Halbwachs states that things in space can be factors that activate memory.[28] Although we tend to think of memory as personal, collective memory can be shared with others in the community through discourse and the built environment. We identify ourselves not only as individuals but also as members of a community. Thus, we may secure attachment to our environment not only through personal experiences but also by engaging in a community. If we have a social self-identity, we also find an object of familiarity through future-oriented framing.
5. Conclusion
In this paper, I discussed when and how objects of familiarity are discovered in everyday environments. Based on Haapala’s concept of familiarity, I aimed to articulate the importance of considering residents’ perspectives in community development practices such as the redevelopment of towns and cities. The feeling of familiarity derives from our attachment to our everyday environment. I focus on the role of memory and present two types of framing based on familiarity: past-oriented and future-oriented. The arguments regarding the two types of framing presented above clarify how we find aesthetic objects in our everyday environments. The past-oriented frame is invoked by a loss in the everyday environment and refers to our habitual memory of that place. In contrast, the future-oriented frame is called upon in the process of planning for the future. While individual memory affects this type of framing, collective memory is helpful in maintaining aesthetic integrity. We are not just individuals but also belong to social and cultural groups. Our identity is constructed not only through personal experiences but also through narratives of our society and culture.
This paper has described residents’ aesthetic perspectives only in terms of familiarity; however, this consideration is not exhaustive. Haapala, for example, also argues that in the daily routines of urban dwellers there remains room for strangeness, even after familiarity has been constructed.[29] Petteri Enroth also argues that for people in precarity, daily routines do not construct familiarity as an aesthetic pleasure. He points out that people in precarious situations have a specific mode of temporality. They cannot see the future clearly because they adopt a hyper-alert mode that binds them too tightly to the present.[30] As these arguments demonstrate, different frameworks are required to analyze different lifestyles. This study presents one perspective and may be useful as a point of reference for other frameworks.
In addition, something that is an object of familiarity to one group of people may be perceived negatively by another. For example, suppose a statue representing a racist politician stands in a town square; while this represents an object of political affiliation for most residents, it is considered an object of hostility by some minority groups. Here, a contradiction exists between aesthetic value and other values such as ethical or political values. In this case, it would be inappropriate to prioritize placing the statue there solely on the basis of it being an object of familiarity for the majority of people. Thus, different types of values need to be considered in actual redevelopment, and aesthetic value is one of them. However, as we have already seen, the aesthetic sense of familiarity also has an ethical dimension in that it is deeply related to our existence. Therefore, it is no less important than other values. To assure a better future for the community, it may be necessary to have a thorough discussion on the subject, even if there are disagreements on the object of familiarity.
Past- and future-oriented framings of familiarity are effective in understanding our activities and practices pursued in everyday life. Our daily environment is not permanently stable. We should accept some changes while simultaneously protecting what is important to us. As we live in a world we ourselves constantly change, this point needs to be emphasized to protect our own life values rather than merely following the views of architects, designers, and urban planners. I described a mechanism for identifying aesthetic senses and their objects, which are often seen as ambiguous in terms of familiarity. The proposed theoretical framework can facilitate verbalizations of residents’ perspectives and their appropriate considerations in practices such as community development.
Mami Aota
mamiaota@gmail.com
Mami Aota is a lecturer at Gunma Prefectural Women’s University (Japan). Her main research interests are environmental and everyday aesthetics. She recently published, “Aesthetics and Environmental Humanities: The Fieldwork on Ourselves,” in Aesthetic Theory Across the Disciplines, eds. Max Ryynänen and Zoltán Somhegyi (Rowman and Littlefield, 2023).
Published August 27, 2024.
Cite this article: Mami Aota, “Past-Oriented and Future-Oriented Frames of Familiarity: Aesthetic Experience in Everyday Environments,” Contemporary Aesthetics, Volume 22 (2024), accessed date.
Endnotes
This work was supported by JSPS KAKENHI Grant Number 22K199965 and Grant for Groundbreaking Young Researchers by SUNTORY Foundation (2016). I would like to thank the anonymous reviewers and the editor for their helpful comments and suggestions on my paper.
[1] I have presented the concept of past- and future-oriented framing in my book, Mami Aota, Kankyō o hihyō suru: Eibeikei Kankyobigaku no Tenkai (Critiquing the Environment: A Theory of Environmental Aesthetics) (Tokyo: Shumpūsha, 2020). This paper is significantly revised version of it.
[2] Yuriko Saito, Aesthetics of the Familiar: Everyday Life and World-Making (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), 1.
[3] Though a topic that remains controversial is regarding which aspects of our daily life should be featured in everyday aesthetics, I do not explore this debate in detail. For example, Thomas Leddy argues that although it is correct that familiarity is a part of everyday aesthetics, it cannot be the fundamental aesthetic concept in the field [Thomas Leddy, The Extraordinary in the Ordinary: The Aesthetics of Everyday Life (Peterborough: Broadview Press, 2012), 107]. Leddy treats the contrast of the strange and the familiar as that of the extraordinary and the ordinary, and argues that we feel familiar with everyday things, but they have a low-level aesthetic property. Special attitudes, such as active engagement and contemplation, represent higher-level aesthetic properties (Ibid., 111). However, Leddy misunderstands Haapala’s argument, as Haapala insists that strangeness is also important, particularly for city-dwellers [Arto Haapala, “Strangeness and Familiarity in the Urban Environment,” in The City as Cultural Metaphor: Studies in Urban Aesthetics, ed. Arto Haapala (Lahti: International Institute of Applied Aesthetics, 1998), 124]. Following Haapala, I admit that familiarity is not enough to understand all aspects of our everyday lives. I argue that familiarity is a useful concept to understand our ambivalent feelings toward our everyday environments.
[4] Arto Haapala, “On the Aesthetics of Everyday: Familiarity, Strangeness, and the Meaning of Place,” in The Aesthetics of Everyday Life, eds. Andrew Light and Jonathan M. Smith (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005), 47.
[5] Ibid., 47.
[6] Ibid., 44.
[7] Ibid.
[8] Ibid., 47.
[9] Haapala points out that “attachment most often involves a positive emotional connection, but not necessarily” (Ibid., 51). We sometimes have an attachment to a particular environment, but this can also be accompanied with indifference.
[10] Ibid., 50.
[11] Ibid., 52.
[12] Ibid.
[13] Haapala, “On the Aesthetics of Everyday,” 50.
[14] The following discussion is also instructive as a response to two criticisms that have been directed at Haapala. First, and also mentioned in Note 2, Leddy argues that what Haapala calls ‘familiarity’ is nothing more than a low-level aesthetic quality. He also states that to obtain a higher-level aesthetic experience, we need to dissimulate our everyday life. However, as shown in sections 3 and 4, when we consider the process of finding the object of familiarity, we see that familiarity is in fact an experience no less complex than a high-level aesthetic experience. Second, Jane Forsey points out that Haapala’s argument, based on the traditional distinction between mere bodily pleasure and aesthetic pleasure, might be classified in the former category [Jane Forsey, The Aesthetics of Design (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 223-36]. However, as shown below, familiarity is guided by the mental faculty of memory and is therefore not to be equated with mere physical pleasure.
[15] Ronald Hepburn, “Contemporary Aesthetics and the Neglect of Natural Beauty,” in Aesthetics and the Philosophy of Art―The Analytic Tradition: An Anthology, eds. Peter Lamarque and Stein Haugom Olsen (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2004), 523-24.
[16] Hepburn, 523-24.
[17] Here, I refer to traditional artworks. Many contemporary artworks, such as participatory art, have no frames at all.
[18] Ronald Moore also points out that Hepburn’s argument does not mean that we cannot have a frame for the environment. He argues that a frame is a necessary condition for aesthetic appreciation. As a pro-framist, Moore emphasizes framing “as concentrations of attention within limits” (Ronald Moore, “The Framing Paradox,” Ethics, Place and Environment 9, no. 3 (2006): 263).
[19] What I have in mind here is Allen Carlson’s scientific cognitivism. He argues that common sense/scientific knowledge is necessary for appropriate aesthetic appreciation of the environment. He does not directly deny the role of memory, but based on his argument it is general knowledge that guarantees the appropriateness of aesthetic appreciation of the environment. Conversely, memories that are tied to individual experiences are unreliable. Indeed, in presenting the correct curriculum for landscape appreciation, he asserts that the histories of the production of actual landscapes, as indicated by scientific knowledge, are essential for appropriate aesthetic appreciation, while myths and folks are significant only in certain contexts. Myths and folktales are also strongly linked to the local memories of the inhabitants, but he values them less than science. [Allen Carlson, Nature and Landscape: An Introduction to Environmental Aesthetics (Columbia: Columbia University Press, 2009), 127.]
[20] Pierre Nora, “Entre Mémoire et Histoire: La problématique des lieux,” in Les Lieux de Mémoire I :La République, ed. Pierre Nora (Paris: Gallimard, 1984), xix.
[21] Emily Brady explains how our imagination “amplifies what is given in perception, thereby reaching beyond the mere projection of images on to objects” [Emily Brady, Aesthetics of the Natural Environment (Tuscaloosa: The University of Alabama Press, 2003), 243-44.] In the process of framings based on familiarity, it could be said that ampliative imagination cooperates with memory.
[22] In fact, the entire landscape in this area will undergo major changes in the near future when the department store building will be demolished and a new high-rise building will be erected.
[23] Ariane Nomikos, “Place Matters,” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 76, no. 4 (2018): 459.
[24] Habit is also a kind of memory, but to avoid possible confusion I use ‘memory’ to point out episodic memory. For the categorization of various types of memory, see Kourken Michaelian and John Sutton, “Memory,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2017, accessed March 7, 2022, https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/memory/.
[25] District information is available via the Akaoka Project website (in Japanese), accessed August, 9, 2023, https://www.akaokaakarenga.org. It is also worth noting that Michel de Certeau states that people can conduct autonomous activity while being part of a larger system such as a nation. He distinguishes a “strategy” and a “tactic” and assigns the latter to our everyday practices. Michel De Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life, trans. Steven Rendall (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press, 1988), xix.
[26] We can create a city or town where no one has lived before. However, even in that case, it is affected by the topography.
[27] Brady, 243-44.
[28] Maurice Halbwachs, La Memoire Collective (Paris: Les Presses Universitaires France, 1950), 93.
[29]Haapala, “The Urban Identity: The City as a Place to Dwell,” in Place and Location III, eds. Virve
Sarapik and Kadri Tüür(Tallinn: Estonian Academy of Arts, 2003), 16.
[30] Petteri Enroth, “Challenging Everydays: On Precarity in Everyday Aesthetics,” Popular Inquiry 2 (2021): 43.