Wonder and the Everyday: : Hepburnian Considerations and Beyond

Peer reviewe

Aesthetics, Ethics, and the Meaning of Place

In the concept of place the problems of ethics and aesthetics overlap in a particularly interesting and fruitful way. When an area or site becomes a place for us, we are not indifferent to it. A place is something to which we have a strong and significant relation; in my usage of the term “place”, place is defined by our personal connections to an area. Not every environment suits everyone. Although we can visually familiarise ourselves with many milieus, “placing” ourselves somewhere is something else, and requires compatibility between individual and environment. Place is a place for me – its significance arises largely, although not exclusively, from meanings and values it gains through me. This has both ethical and aesthetic consequences: our judgments are based on the personal attachment we have to a place, and these judgments are strongly determined by our interests.In the concept of place the problems of ethics and aesthetics overlap in a particularly interesting and fruitful way. When an area or site becomes a place for us, we are not indifferent to it. A place is something to which we have a strong and significant relation; in my usage of the term “place”, place is defined by our personal connections to an area. Not every environment suits everyone. Although we can visually familiarise ourselves with many milieus, “placing” ourselves somewhere is something else, and requires compatibility between individual and environment. Place is a place for me – its significance arises largely, although not exclusively, from meanings and values it gains through me. This has both ethical and aesthetic consequences: our judgments are based on the personal attachment we have to a place, and these judgments are strongly determined by our interests

Alemmat ja ylemmät : rajankäynnin ongelmia

Aineisto on Keskustakampuksen kirjaston digitoimaa ja kirjasto vastaa aineiston käyttöluvista

Yrjö Hirnin taidefilosofia ja estetiikka

Aineisto on Opiskelijakirjaston digitoimaa ja Opiskelijakirjasto vastaa aineiston käyttöluvist

Taidearvostelmista

Aineisto on Opiskelijakirjaston digitoimaa ja Opiskelijakirjasto vastaa aineiston käyttöluvist

Esteettiset arvot muuttuvassa ympäristössä

Peer reviewe

O estetiki vsakdanjosti: domačnost, tujost in pomen kraja

The essay develops a phenomenological account of everyday aesthetics starting from some concepts put forward by Martin Heidegger. The aim is to understand the very nature of the everyday itself, in all its dullness and greyness, and to point out that there is an aesthetic aspect in the very everydayness. The aesthetics of the everyday is not only “extraordinary in the ordinary.” To understand the whole range of everyday aesthetics we have to explore the phenomenon of the ordinary and the everyday. In this essay the ontology of human everyday existence is explained by the notions of place, life world, familiarity, and strangeness. The aesthetic aspect of the quotidian is based on these existential structures. Human existence most of the time takes place in a familiar place – be it at home, the work place, or the familiar quarters of one’s home town. There is an experience of rootedness and safety when moving around on one’s home turf. The surprise element, which is sometimes connected with a feeling of anxiety or even fear, is lacking. The very fact that there are no surprises, that things go as smoothly as one expects, is pleasurable. Doing things in a routine way has certain patterns that are satisfying and have an aesthetic aspect in themselves. The aesthetics of the everyday exists in the absence of the extraordinary, in the fact that one feels at home and in control. The aesthetics of the familiar is an aesthetics of lacking, the quiet fascination of the absence of demands from one’s surroundings.Članek poda fenomenološki prispevek k estetiki vsakdanjosti, pri čemer izhaja iz nekaterih konceptov, ki jih je razvil Martin Heidegger. Cilj je razumeti pravo naravo same vsakdanjosti v vsej njeni dolgočasnosti in sivini ter poudariti, da v vsakodnevnosti obstaja estetski vidik. Estetika vsakdanjosti ni le »izjemno v navadnem«. Da bi razumeli celoten obseg estetike vsakdanjosti, moramo raziskati fenomen navadnega in vsakdanjega. V pričujočem članku je ontologija človekove vsakdanje eksistence razložena s pojmi kraja, življenjskega sveta, domačnosti in tujosti. Estetski vidik vsakdanjega temelji na teh eksistencialnih strukturah. Človekova eksistenca se večino časa godi na domačem kraju – ki je lahko dom, delovni prostor ali pa poznani predeli v domačem mestu. Ko se premikamo po domačem območju, občutimo izkustveno ukoreninjenost in varnost. Element nepričakovanosti, ki je včasih povezan z občutkom tesnobe ali celo strahu, umanjka. Prav to dejstvo, da ni nobenih presenečenj, da stvari potekajo gladko, kot pričakujemo, je prijetno. Početi stvari na rutinski način ima določene vzorce, ki so zadovoljujoči, v njih pa je tudi estetski vidik. Estetika vsakdanjosti se nahaja v odsotnosti izjemnega, v občutku počutiti se doma in imeti nadzor. Estetika domačega je estetika manka, tiha fascinacija z odsotnostjo zahtev iz okolice

Perceived Environmental Aesthetic Qualities Scale (PEAQS) : A self-report tool for the evaluation of green-blue spaces

Aesthetic qualifies of urban green and blue spaces have received considerable attention in scientific literature but are operationalized in multiple ways and lack clear assessment and measurement techniques. To fill in this gap, we developed a Perceived Environmental Aesthetic Qualifies Scale (PEAQS). Based on previous literature both in philosophy and empirical sciences we created a questionnaire with 36 statements and three open questions focusing on the perceived aesthetic qualifies of environments. This questionnaire was used to sample 331 respondents in three sites different in their level of naturalness, human intervention and design: a natural-like but managed urban forest, a partly human-made and intensively managed bay-park and a completely human-made green roof. These sites were selected to represent a variety of urban green and blue infrastructure common in cities. The results suggest a scale that consists of 23 statements and five factors that reflect perceived aesthetic qualifies of urban green spaces: Harmony, Mystery, Multisensority & Nature, Visual Spaciousness and Visual Diversity, and Sublimity. We give guidelines for further development and testing of the scale in order to prove its potential to develop the field of environmental aesthetics and to demonstrate its usefulness for adaptive, evidence-based urban planning and design.Peer reviewe

Exploring Machine Learning Methods to Automatically Identify Students in Need of Assistance

ABSTRACT Methods for automatically identifying students in need of assistance have been studied for decades. Initially, the work was based on somewhat static factors such as students' educational background and results from various questionnaires, while more recently, constantly accumulating data such as progress with course assignments and behavior in lectures has gained attention. We contribute to this work with results on early detection of students in need of assistance, and provide a starting point for using machine learning techniques on naturally accumulating programming process data. When combining source code snapshot data that is recorded from students' programming process with machine learning methods, we are able to detect high-and low-performing students with high accuracy already after the very first week of an introductory programming course. Comparison of our results to the prominent methods for predicting students' performance using source code snapshot data is also provided. This early information on students' performance is beneficial from multiple viewpoints. Instructors can target their guidance to struggling students early on, and provide more challenging assignments for high-performing students. Moreover, students that perform poorly in the introductory programming course, but who nevertheless pass, can be monitored more closely in their future studies