The Poetic Dimension of Everyday Aesthetic Appreciation. Perspectives from East-Asian Cultures

As Yuriko Saito, one of the main exponents of everyday aesthetics holds, East-Asian cultures have long established a deep link between artistic practices and everyday life, transforming apparently mundane practices such as having a cup o ftea with cakes into a highly ritualized form of art (cha-no-yu) and allowing us to enjoy the fleeting moment. The tea ceremony example is grounded, as this paper aims at showing, on a whole East-Asian worldview (as exemplfieied in Confucianism, Daoism and Zen Buddhism philosophies) whereby aesthetic appreciation is deeply pervaded by a poetic feeling, mainly consisting in the interactive harmony or attunement established with the particular circumstances of one’s own life due precisely to its fleeting and evanescent nature. To accomplish this, savouring and perceiving the uniqueness ingrained in every single human experience, the adequate attitude is the poetic one, due to its holistic and non-discriminative nature. Having as its focus everyday life, or simply put, life as such in its specificity, traditional artistic practices in East-Asia as the arts of the brush, garden design or utilitarian crafts such as pottery, become means of revealing what, due to its closeness, lies hidden in ordinary experience. Utilitarian arts are, in this sense, a priviledged way of conveying this end due precisely to its practical link with ordinary existence, preventing the eventual arousal of a purely formal and detached apprehension. The only coherent way to develop this awareness of the extraordinary in the ordinary, to use Leddy’s expression, is through the main feature of all poetic qualities: indirect allusion and subdued reference so that what is close at hand may shine in a different light. Particularly, in association with Japanese Zen Buddhism, where the rootedness of aesthetics in the ordinary is stronger, it has frequently adopted the form of restraint, contention, reserve, or, as Saito puts it, “insufficiency”. This paper aims at showing with the help of a few examples how this difuse poetic attitude, so prevalent in Traditional East-Asian contexts, is required not only in standardized art practices, but also in a wider aesthetic level of awareness of our ordinary experiences. In order to justify these claims, it will refer first to the ideal of harmony or poetic resonance in Chinese aesthetics and then it will refer to some concrete Japanese aesthetic categories inspired by Zen Buddhism, such as mono-no-aware, sabi, wabi, or yugen

Listen to Nice

In describing Humphrey Jennings’ wartime documentary propaganda film, 'Listen to Britain' (1942), a film with an overtly poetic sensibility and dominantly musical soundtrack, John Corner asserts that ‘through listening to Britain, we are enabled to properly look at it'. This idea of sound leading our attention to the images has underpinned much of the collaborative work between composer and sound designer, Geoffrey Cox, and documentary filmmaker, Keith Marley. It is in this context that the article will analyse an extract of A Film About Nice (Marley and Cox 2010), a contemporary re-imagining of Jean Vigo’s silent documentary, 'A propos de Nice' (1930). Reference will be made throughout to the historical context, and the filmic and theoretical influences that have informed the way music and creative sound design have been used to place emphasis on hearing a place, as much as seeing it

Listening to limericks: a pupillometry investigation of perceivers’ expectancy

What features of a poem make it captivating, and which cognitive mechanisms are sensitive to these features? We addressed these questions experimentally by measuring pupillary responses of 40 participants who listened to a series of Limericks. The Limericks ended with either a semantic, syntactic, rhyme or metric violation. Compared to a control condition without violations, only the rhyme violation condition induced a reliable pupillary response. An anomaly-rating study on the same stimuli showed that all violations were reliably detectable relative to the control condition, but the anomaly induced by rhyme violations was perceived as most severe. Together, our data suggest that rhyme violations in Limericks may induce an emotional response beyond mere anomaly detection

Shifting Core and Slipping Foundation: An Uncertain Future of Landscape Architecture in European Universities

Faced with the dual and often conflicting necessity to be scientific and design practices the discipline of landscape architecture today is challenged to re-examine its core and intellectual foundation. There is a growing trend toward design as reflective practice. The discipline is maturing and needs autonomous theories and methods. Global and social externalities favor attention to landscape and landscape-based design. Landscape is not only an integrative and evolving concept and practice but also a trans-disciplinary cultural concern. Under such circumstances the core of landscape architecture is shifting and its intellectual foundation is questione

"Who Are We? Where Are We?": Contact and Literary Navigation in The Maine Woods

This essay argues that Thoreau witnesses a series of clashes across the three essays collected in "The Maine Woods" and that Thoreau positions himself with a variety of contact zones, enabling him both to navigate the landscapes of northern Maine and recount his experiences to his audiences

ABILITY TO ANALYZE THE CHARACTERISTICS OF THE POETRY "MUNAJAT 212" STUDENTS OF THE UNA FKIP

This study aims to describe the ability to analyze poetic linguistic characteristics "Munajat 212" by Indonesian language and literary education study program students, especially students who sit in semester 6. Representation analyzes the linguistic characteristics of poetry covering several aspects, including 1) Language Compaction, 2) Election Typical words, 3) concrete words, 4) Study, 5) Rhythm or Rhythm, and 6) Typography. The short-term goal of this study is that students are able to know how to analyze the linguistic characteristics of poetry, especially the poem "Munajat 212".While the long-term goal in this study is that students are able to apply their abilities in analyzing the linguistic characteristics of poetry in school students and being able to become a reliable poet by applying the linguistic characteristics of the poem. The data for discourse analysis obtained mean values of 83.51, mode 83, median 83, variance 1.11, SD 1.05, highest score 86, and lowest value 82.Based on the results obtained and the results of interviews, it was found several obstacles faced by students in analyzing the linguistic characteristics of poetry "Munajat 212", namely: student mastery in analyzing the linguistic characteristics of poetry is still low as evidenced by the data obtained from the analysis of poetic language characteristics, and the lack of understanding of students about analyzing the linguistic characteristics of poetry.Keywords: Ability, Analyzing, Characteristics of Poetry Languag

Gaming the Network Poetic: Networking and Code in Art Games

Videogames have historically used networking either to connect players for competition or cooperation or to provide an ephemeral connection to allow the upload, comparison, or assessment of single-player achievement data. The majority of videogames take place on a screen and on established platforms each of which have physical, technical, and sociocultural constraints that dictate how a player will interact. Recent art games, such as those by Jason Rohrer and the Atari VCS games of Ian Bogost highlight experiments in a more focused use of the medium from concept to interaction, both between the player and the software but also foregrounding the code (both social codes and actual software) of the games. These artists are part of a growing movement of videogame creators that are involved not only as designers but also as cultural critics invested in the analysis of platforms and the distribution of their games. This thesis documents the development and exhibition of Gaming the Network Poetic, a series of five videogames developed by the author. This was itself an experiment in both the use of networking and in the exhibition of a cohesive art object incorporating these games. The work is then contextualized through the analysis of game-based art movements, the contemporary independent (or Indie ) games movement, and contemporary software/code-based art. Also, given that much of the theory around videogames is rooted in literary criticism, philosophy, and cultural history, these disciplines are also referenced throughout the discussion. Further, this thesis will address questions about the aesthetic, mechanical, and audience-related considerations of developing and installing videogames in a contemporary art space that shows mostly static work. What roles does the audience play in such an environment? How can videogames create meaning? How does one communicate emotion through a single videogame? How does the open networking of several videogames quickly add complexity, and how can that complexity be managed? What are the issues involved in choosing particular hardware and software platforms on which to present the work