Editorial As we begin the new year with Volume 18 (2020), I am happy to report that Contemporary Aesthetics (CA) continues to attract authors and readers from diverse geographical, cultural, and disciplinary backgrounds. This is partly due to CA being an open access journal, but I believe it is more importantly due to CA’s […]
Category: 18 (2020)
NOTICES
CA welcomes notices of interest to our readers. These include announcements and reviews of conferences, news items, forthcoming events, etc. Please send them using the submission guidelines. Call for Papers Tracing Disgust: Cultural Approaches to the Visceral eds. Max Ryynänen, Susanne Ylönen & Heidi Kosonen Deadline: August 15, 2020 We recoil at the thought […]
RECENT PUBLICATIONS
Contemporary Aesthetics does not publish book reviews. However, to inform our readers of new publications of interest, we do publish brief descriptions extracted from information provided by the publishers. These notices do not necessarily represent the views or judgment of this journal. Readers are invited to send us such information about books they think will interest […]
SHORT NOTES
Floating Gardens in the Urban Landscape
Floating Gardens in the Urban Landscape Victor Rivera-Diaz Urban agriculture has been the focus of many metropoleis around the world as a way to reintroduce the right to the city in tandem with the land. These initiatives, while covering an extensive range of methods and possibilities, come up against a common snag: the negotiation […]
SHORT NOTES
Projective Aesthetics as a New Discourse
Projective Aesthetics as a New Discourse Boris Orlov Today’s situation in aesthetics seems to be problematic. The former methodologies such as Analytics, Systematics, Hermeneutics, Deconstruction, etc. still exist, but fail to grasp current changes in culture and art. Besides assessment, these challenges of our time need a new theoretical vision with a practical orientation. […]
SHORT NOTES
Material Matters
Material Matters Mary Bittner Wiseman In Vers une Architecture (1923), Le Corbusier said: “…cubes, cones, spheres, cylinders or pyramids are the great primary forms which light reveals to advantage; the images of these is distinct and tangible within us and without ambiguity. It is for this reason that these are beautiful forms, the most beautiful […]
SHORT NOTES
Revolution and Aesthetics
Revolution and Aesthetics Nicholas Romanos One of the revolutionary movements with the highest profile today operates not so much on a political level, as has been common in the past, as on a planetary one. “Extinction Rebellion,” as this environmental protest group calls itself, has a uniquely striking and consistently applied aesthetic, from the […]
ARTICLES
Keeping Score: Some Lessons for Artists from the Later Wittgenstein
Keeping Score: Some Lessons for Artists from the Later Wittgenstein Nickolas Calabrese Abstract This text rounds up a few lessons fashioned after the idea of keeping score as it relates to the later work of Ludwig Wittgenstein. These lessons are emphatically related to the production of art, so this text might be at its […]
ARTICLES
Reconstructing Heritage: Places, Values, Attachment
Reconstructing Heritage: Places, Values, Attachment Lisa Giombini Abstract As natural catastrophes alter the environment, historical towns and other sites of heritage significance are at risk of being damaged, if not disrupted altogether. How should we confront the prospect of these disasters? And how are we to cope with the reconstructions that will be needed […]
ARTICLES
On Japanese Minimalism
On Japanese Minimalism Paul Haimes Abstract Shibumi, a Japanese term referring to a subtle elegance, but at times suggestive of austerity or even bitterness, captures a certain sense of restraint that is reflected in much traditional Japanese design. Although concepts derived from Japanese Zen Buddhism, such as ma, wabi-sabi, and iki, may be more commonly known […]
ARTICLES
The Hospitality of the Abyssal Ground or Perceptual Architectures of Indeterminacy
The Hospitality of the Abyssal Ground or Perceptual Architectures of Indeterminacy Natasha Lushetich Abstract There never has been such a thing as solid ground. As profoundly transient beings, all we can hope for is the hospitality of the abyssal ground.[1] Perhaps that is why our everyday aesthetic appreciation of our natural environment is […]
ARTICLES
A Philosophical Account of Listening Musically
A Philosophical Account of Listening Musically Paskalina Bourbon Abstract What is the distinctive character of musical experiences? An answer: musical experience is distinctive because it is of music. I argue, however, that the difference between musical and nonmusical experience cannot be explained with an ontological account of music per se. Instead, we have musical […]
ARTICLES
The Aesthetics of Social Situations: Encounters and Sensibilities of the Everyday Life in Japan
The Aesthetics of Social Situations: Encounters and Sensibilities of the Everyday Life in Japan Garcia Chambers Abstract What beauty could there be in mundane, interactive encounters in and observations of the everydayness of life in Japan? The answer rightly may be none whatsoever based on the Kantian, distancing, art-centered theory and practice of aesthetics. […]
ARTICLES
Aesthetic Disappointment
Aesthetic Disappointment Russell L. Quacchia Abstract A survey of the literature in philosophical aesthetics reveals no extended studies on aesthetic disappointment. If anything, the topic has no more than a tacit or implicit presence to that of aesthetic satisfaction. Yet we do suffer aesthetic dissatisfactions in the form of disappointment. In this essay I […]
ARTICLES
Aesthetic Appreciation of Silence
Aesthetic Appreciation of Silence Erik Anderson Abstract We enjoy sounds. What about silence: the absence of sound? Certainly not all, but surely many of us seek out, attend to, and appreciate silence. But, if nothing is there, then there is nothing to possess aesthetic qualities that might engage aesthetic interest or reward aesthetic attention. […]
ARTICLES
Art Addressing the Anthropocene
Art Addressing the Anthropocene Wolfgang Welsch Abstract The current diagnosis that the era we are living in ought to be conceived as anthropocene has two implications: 1. Human activity is changing the superficial as well as the deep structure of our planet to a formerly unknown degree; and 2. The foreseeable catastrophic consequences of […]