In the video, Aesthetics: Philosophy of the Arts, the key concepts that I learned about included the definition of aesthetics, who the major philosophers who contributed to the discussions of aesthetics and what thier individual theories are. I also learned about the contemporary and modern ideas on aesthetics including what is believed to constitute as art today when we have visual images bombarding us from all sorts of media everyday.
In the "CARTA" video, I learned many new concepts on the "science of art" as stated by scientists, Jean Pierre Changuex and Vilayanur Ramachandra. Changeux explained the key concepts on the human brain and the synthesis of multiple nested reprocesses. His theories dealt also with the processing of visual images, bottom-up processing in the brain and how these relate to feeling and emotions when one sees a piece of art. Ramachandra's key points were on the laws of art that he stated were biological inherited and span all cultures and humanity. His eight laws of art include grouping, peak-shift principal, contrast, "attention", perceptual problem solving, symmetry and art as a metaphor.
From the first video on aesthetics, I found the most important philosopher to be Immanuel Kant, who was from Prussia and lived during the late 18th century, otherwise known in history as the Enlightenment period. Kant's ideas rejected the rules of beauty that other philosophers had laid out by stating that judgement of beauty is about the individual feeling and completely subjective. In this way there can be no exact science of beauty. He was also the first to philosophize on the beauty of the sublime and the ultimate genious of nature.
I thought it was interesting how the scientists from the CARTA video explained the connection between art and our neurobiological functions. I think they made a lot of good and well researched points, however, I do not think that there can really be a true science to art. Like Kant, I think art is too emotional and subjective to set such laws to. I am sure that a lot of the points they made an be seen as scientific fact, but I dont think you can generalize the way everyone views art in such ways. One point however that I agreed with and found very interesting was Ramachandra's theory on metaphor.
These videos related to the text of "Living with Art" from chapter's 1-3 in that they both discussed the key ideas of aesthetics. The videos went into detail about certain domains of aesthetics, the philosophical and the scientific. I think both videos added a lot of depth to the discussion of art by giving us both a historical and scientific knowledge on the subject.
No comments:
Post a Comment