Media Aesthetics

Lecture #1

Defining Media Aesthetics & Importance of Context

Roots of “Aesthetics”

•      Greek, from the verb aisthanomai (I perceive) & the noun aisthetike (sense perception).

Traditional Aesthetics

•      A philosophical concept dealing with the perception, understanding, and appreciation of “beauty.”

•       

•      An attempt to establish a set of criteria from which to judge the beauty of art.

–   painting

–   sculpture

–   architecture

Applied Media Aesthetics

•      media elements (for this class) = primarily television, videotape, & film

•      a process (not just a static concept)

•      “a process in which we examine media elements and our perceptual reactions to them”

•      allows us to assess the communicative effectiveness of existing media elements as well as for creating them (analysis & synthesis)

Fundamental Media Elements

•      light & color

•      two-dimensional space

•      three-dimensional space

•      time/motion

•      sound

•      The study of these phenomena should provide you with “an aesthetic vocabulary and language that will allow you to speak with optimum clarity and impact” about the media you both consume and create.

Aesthetics and Context

•      Aesthetic experiences are part of everyday life.

•      Art draws on life for creation.

•      Life’s experiences are not art.

•      Everyday experiences serve as the raw material for the creation of art.

•      Media artists clarify, intensify, and interpret human experience for exhibition to audiences.

•      They do this for a variety of communicative purposes.

Aesthetics and Context

•      Media’s aesthetic elements should not be assessed in a vacuum.

•      They are not absolutes.

•      Aesthetics are best understood when taken into account with the context in which they were created.

–   time  (year/era/historical context)

–   situation/purpose/probable viewing circumstances

–   preferred reading (intentions of the media creator)

Aesthetics and Context

•      Media’s aesthetic elements function in changing contextual relationships.

•      We can isolate them for analysis, but they do not function in isolation.

•      They work in concert with each other to create a communicative “whole.”

–    a particular film/video

–    a particular TV production

•      They must be chosen and analyzed as part of this “whole.”

Summary

•      Applied media aesthetics differs from traditional aesthetics (process, analysis & synthesis).

•      Everyday human experience provides media artists with raw material.

•      Media artists clarify, intensify, & interpret human experience for communicative purposes.

•      We perceive and judge aesthetic phenomena within a contextual frame of reference.

•      Basic media aesthetic elements are light, space, time/motion, and sound.