Everyday Aesthetics Research Articles

‘Yanhuo Chi’: An everyday aesthetic tourism experience

‘Yanhuo Chi’ (烟火气), rooted in Chinese culture, symbolizes the aesthetically rich atmosphere of everyday life. This study conceptualizes Yanhuo Chi as a unique everyday tourism experience, expanding the boundaries of the ‘everyday’ in Everyday Aesthetics to include non-routine settings like tourism. By integrating Eastern Living Aesthetics with Western Everyday Aesthetics, it enriches the discourse and challenges Western ideological frameworks in tourism aesthetics studies. The research also broadens borderline aesthetic experiences by identifying diverse aesthetic tensions within tourists' Yanhuo Chi experiences. This phenomenological exploration reveals how Yanhuo Chi offers a nuanced understanding of aesthetic experiences in tourism, contributing to a more inclusive and culturally diverse appreciation of everyday aesthetics.

A Brief Inquiry into the History of Everyday Aesthetic Ideas. Care of the Home in the Thought of Socrates and Xenophon

Emerged as a new philosophical trend, Everyday Aesthetics shifts focus from Arts to daily practices and objects. However, its historical dimension remains relatively unexplored. Adopting a historical approach inspired by Tatarkiewicz, this paper addresses this gap by examining the notions of home care in the thoughts of Greek philosophers Socrates and Xenophon. Analyzing Xenophon’s works reveals how ancient concepts of order and beauty apply to daily life, enriching contemporary Everyday Aesthetics discussions on cleanliness and domestic care.

Gillo Dorfles, An Everyday Aesthetician

This paper introduces the Italian thinker Gillo Dorfles (1910-2018) as an early formulator of “la estetica del quotidiano” (Everyday Aesthetics) from the 1960s onwards. Throughout his extensive body of work, Dorfles gradually combined analyses of very different forms of aesthetic production and behavior while at the same time developing a line of aesthetic thought that offered an alternative to idealistic approaches. His approach centers on the interplay between the mythopoetic and the mythagogic, or between the synchronic and the diachronic.

Cleaning: Practicing Everyday Aesthetics and Care

Performing various tasks to manage our daily lives does not fit comfortably with the predominant model of aesthetics, which consists of a disinterested spectator making a judgment on the aesthetic value of an object. Taking ‘cleaning’ as an example, this paper illuminates its rich aesthetic potential, which includes sensory and bodily engagement, development of aesthetic sensibility, activation of imagination, and cultivation of a care relationship with other people and the world.

О трудной проблеме в эстетике

<p>Aesthetics, like other branches of philosophy, has its fundamental problems. At different points in the history of aesthetics, such problems have been taste as a form of aesthetic judgment, the limits of art, the possibilities of aesthetic method, and others. Today we can distinguish at least three fundamental problems that are solved in aesthetics with varying degrees of success. The first is a set of problems of aesthetic experience, including the problem of its existence and the problem of its analysis. The second is the problem of art as a special object of aesthetic experience. The third has not yet been clearly defined, but today it is labeled as the problem of the everyday aesthetics, the aesthetics of the environment, or the aesthetics of atmosphere. Within a problem field there may be a problem that is the essence of the field but has not been solved yet. Within the set of problems of aesthetic experience there is a hard problem. It is based on the distinction between sensory and aesthetic experiences. The essence of this problem: what is the necessity of the existence of aesthetic experience on a par with sensory xperience? This problem seems to be unsolved. But if we do not solve this problem, we will have to admit that aesthetic experience is accidental, that there is no need for its existence, that it is reducible to other forms of experience, and that it has no characteristic of its own.</p>

Transcending the Drone Gaze in Environmental Photography: From the Toxic Sublime to Everyday Aesthetics and the Collective in Wu Guoyong’s No Place to Place (2018)

Transcending the Drone Gaze in Environmental Photography: From the Toxic Sublime to Everyday Aesthetics and the Collective in Wu Guoyong’s <i>No Place to Place</i> (2018)

The Aesthetic Dimension of Reading: An Embodied-Ecological Approach

This paper aims at integrating insights from ecological psychology, pragmatism, and embodied cognitive science to shed light on the aesthetic dimension underlying daily activities. For this purpose, we discuss conceptions of the aesthetic developed by authors from diverse traditions, including Dewey’s pragmatism, Carroll’s cognitivism, and Saito’s everyday aesthetics. We focus on the activity of reading, which has traditionally been conceived as involving the establishment of letter-sound correspondences and the rule-based deduction of information. However, an embodied framework opens up a more ecological understanding of this activity encompassing dynamic, multimodal perceptual engagement which is dependent on: (i) who the reader is (ii) the task or purpose, and (iii) what the person-environment-system affords. This form of engagement, even in mundane everyday-reading, we argue, brings forth an aesthetic dimension to it. Specifically, we explore how bodily engagement such as olfactory, tactile, and prosodic processes, saturate even logical judgements and reasoning. This integration of embodied and aesthetic processes in a particular context, we claim, can effectively emphasise and cultivate an aesthetic attitude. This, in turn, will provide insight into how the aesthetic dimension of reading can be cultivated intelligently, enriching the overall experience and will also illuminate why we read at all.

A Study of Everyday Aesthetics and (De)Alienation in Wim Wenders’ Alice in the Cities

A Study of Everyday Aesthetics and (De)Alienation in Wim Wenders’ Alice in the Cities

Everyday Aesthetics and the Dichotomy Between Routine and Charisma

Everyday aesthetics, at its core, is based on the supposed dichotomy between art and life, considering life as something routine-like, and art as the breaking of the routine, something charismatic. Different authors of everyday aesthetics use different words to describe this dichotomy. For example, in his article “What is ‘Everyday’ in Everyday Aesthetics?”, Ossi Naukkarinen simply uses everydayness and non-everyday-like, while Arto Haapala, in his “On the Aesthetics of the Everyday: Familiarity, Strangeness, and the Meaning of Place” uses the terms familiarity and strangeness. The authors also propose different ways of bridging this dichotomy. However, as the paper shows, the real question is not how to bridge the dichotomy itself but rather whether the dichotomy exists in the first place. Moreover, the paper suggests a change of direction in future investigations of everyday aesthetics, and focusing on the nuances that exist on the routine-charisma and charismatic-routine spectrum, supported by academic research and the personal account of the paper’s author art project. Moreover, the implications of this shift extend beyond the boundaries of everyday aesthetics.

A New Nursing Aesthetic.

Conceptions of the art and aesthetics of nursing traditionally focus on the nurse and nursing practice. My purpose here is to propose a shift in thinking from this traditional focus that dominates the "art of nursing" literature, to consider a new nursing aesthetic that focuses on human beings proper: health as wellbecoming. I present a framework based on everyday aesthetics, feminist aesthetics, and Deweyan perspectives, along with attention to the nursing disciplinary perspective of health and well-being. I conclude with a look ahead to philosophical questions and scientific issues regarding theorizing and scientific inquiry about the health as wellbecoming aesthetic to advance nursing knowledge.

The re-construction of urban space in the place between art and architecture: Selected paradigms of in situ art of the period 1950–2000

&#x0D; This study investigates in situ art of recent art history and its potential regarding the reconstruction of public space and its meanings. Paradigms of art and architecture conjugation in site specific interventions are examined with a view to answer questions such as the transformative role art can play when it constitutes a plastic phenomenon functioning in a complementary or reactive way as a part of the urban and social space. In situ’s art sculptural objects, due to their transitional form, serve as metaphors for space and time and their condition of constant change in the everyday life of the city. They constitute a physical input in the urban space that seeks to redefine its material boundaries and highlight the interaction between the individual and the city seen as an incomplete entity in a constant re-casting. Through the practice of repetition and movement, sculptural objects are put in dialogue with the objects we come into contact daily, taking part into a new aesthetic reality. It is about a process of re-configurating of the everyday aesthetics of the city, challenging the relationship between art and architecture and thus offering new modes of spatialisation. By examining specific paradigms from the in situ art of the second half of the twentieth century (e.g. Aldo Van Eyck, Daniel Buren, Rachel Whiteread), this paper, seeks to unveil the process of activating the coexistence of the visible and the invisible, the inside and the outside, the private and the collective that this specific artistic process offers in material terms. The main question that this paper seeks to answer is how in situ art- e specially when oscillating between art and architecture- affect the everyday flow of the undifferentiated space and time? How does it shape the coexistence and interaction between city’s objects and subjects? Which alternative – discursive – reality does it offer?

Aesthetics of everyday life and its related factors among older adults in Kashan (2021–2022)

BackgroundAesthetics of everyday life are associated with the physical, mental, and social health of older adults, leading them to experience a successful old age. This study aimed to examine the aesthetics of everyday life and its related factors among older adults in Kashan from 2021 to 2022.MethodsThis cross-sectional study consisted of 350 older adults who were referred to Urban Comprehensive Health Service Centers (UCHSC) in Kashan. Sampling was done by a two-stage method (cluster, random). The data collection was performed with a background information questionnaire and the Elderly’s Perception of Everyday Aesthetics scale (EPEA-S). Data were analyzed using an independent t-test, analysis of variance, Pearson’s correlation coefficient, and multiple linear regression tests in the SPSS software.ResultsThe mean age of the participants was 69.56 ± 6.63 years. The mean score of aesthetics of everyday life in older adults was 133.02 ± 14.73, with the family and others subscale receiving the highest score. The univariate test indicated a statistically significant correlation between age, employment status, education, income, smoking, social activities, physical activities, interest in artistic works, and the aesthetics of everyday life in older adults (P < 0.01). Multivariate linear analysis showed that age, employment status, smoking, income, social activities, physical activities, and interest in artistic works predicted and explained 28% of the variance of life aesthetics in older adults (R2 = 0.28).ConclusionsThe aesthetics of everyday life of the Iranian older adults were in a good range. Healthcare providers and families of older adults can use this concept to enhance the elderly’s physical, mental, and social health.

About the Need for a More Adequate Way to Get an Understanding of the Experiencing of Aesthetic Items.

We live in times when neuroscientific methods have become standard methods that many researchers can easily use. While this offers excellent opportunities to understand brain activities linked with aesthetic processing, we face the problem of using sophisticated techniques without a proper and valid theoretical foundation of aesthetics. A further problem arises from sophisticated methods often demanding strict constraints in presenting and experiencing aesthetic stimuli. However, when experiencing aesthetic items, contextual factors matter, e.g., social and situational affordances are essential in triggering a true and deep "Kunsterlebnis" (Experience of Art). Additionally, in Art, it is often not the artwork as an object that matters but the close relationship with and the processing of the artwork. However, art is only one facet of the whole aesthetic domain, beside, e.g., design, architecture, everyday aesthetics, dance, literature, music, and opera. In the present paper, I propose a dynamic and holistic aesthetic perspective that includes the respective context, situation, cognitive and affective traits and state of the beholder, ongoing processes of understanding, Zeitgeist, and other cultural factors, which can be applied to different aesthetic domains. When ignoring such temporal and dynamic factors, we will not understand the qualia of aesthetic processing. These considerations might help researchers in the field of aesthetics to better understand the experiencing of aesthetic items of all kinds-if we ignore these factors, we are missing the essence of experiencing aesthetic items, especially artworks. We aim to sensitize and inform readers about these ideas to inspire a deeper understanding of experiencing aesthetic items and the advancement of a theoretical framework addressing the experiencing of aesthetics from different domains.

Society Bites: Phenomenological Aesthetics of the Ordinary and the Ordinary Cannibal

Abstract Drawing on phenomenological aesthetics and on the haptic aesthetics of eating as a form of everyday aesthetics, I examine the phenomenon of eating our own as meaningful in three dimensions: vital/natural, somatic/individual, and cross-cultural. Usually conceived as a concrete, rare, and foreign practice, I show how cannibalism is present in our daily lives, both symbolically and as a liminal possibility towards which – as Freud noticed in 1913 – we all tended as children. Cannibalism is present not only in cinematic, literary, or visual art, and in anthropological research that situates it far from “us,” but through narratives and carnal dispositifs of differentiation/assimilation of the Same and the Other, fundamental for our subjective constitution. I conclude with a reflection on how the classical aesthetics of the sovereign subject develops towards alternative models like Pelluchon’s gourmet ego that re-establish the connexion and moral engagement lost by solipsism by means of alimentary metaphors, but also romanticizing them, failing to address the problem of voracity and overconsumption, both at a social and at an individual level. This is more suitably addressed by Viveiros de Castro’s idea of a cannibal cogito, but even better understood by Emmanuel Levinas’ enjoyment-contact model of subjectivity.

“Darn It, This Pen Leaks! But Wasn’t It a Pretty Design?” Tracing Contours of the Aesthetic in One Young Woman’s Letters Home From Camp

Everyday aesthetics offers a way to disclose the complexity of a seemingly routine activity like doing the dishes. In this article, I consider the aesthetic allure of one 15-year-old’s letters home from camp preserved in a university’s archives. By returning aesthetics to experience, philosophical hermeneutics restores the experience of understanding to its multi-sensuous materialization. When things speak to us and we in turn respond to them, we are both transformed. Betty Kaufman’s letters vividly depict her experiences at the Laurel Falls Camp for Girls. How, I wondered, does aesthetics perform its mode of being? What are its topological contours? What might qualitative researchers co-responding with archival materials gain from this form of entanglement with understanding?

Scenographic ‘stuff’: attending to everyday objects in performance (and beyond)

ABSTRACT In part responding to our increasingly material world, this article presents scenographic strategies as a highly appropriate and effective means for cultivating an attentiveness towards everyday objects, or stuff. The centrality of physical matter within performances is garnering more credit, in correspondence with a growing critical, new materialist interest in the potential of non-human entities. In such discourse, objects usually perceived as passive or inert are instead recognised for their affectivity. This article takes a specific look at everyday objects that, caught up within capitalist commodification, are often solely valued for their ability to assist human action and yet can be seen to demonstrate aesthetic-affective potential – a potential that, as illustrated here, can be appreciated through scenography. Drawing on the philosophies of Jane Bennett’s vibrant matter, Maurizia Boscagli’s unruly stuff and Yuriko Saito’s everyday aesthetics, an original conceptual framework is developed and tested out on three examples of performance practice. This process of critical analysis foregrounds scenographic sensibilities – that orient spectators towards the latent vitalities, hybridity and ecologies of stuff – and reveals how alternative, attuned experiences, that interrupt consumer capitalist logic, can be fostered through performances as well as filtering out beyond them.

Experiencing Revulsion: Aesthetic Discomfort and Ordinary Life

Abstract Drawing on recent theories and debates concerning the everydayness of non-artistic and even private aesthetic experiences, this article aims at differentiating new ways of dealing with revulsion at the intersection of negative and everyday aesthetics, as another manner of extending or transcending the scope of traditional art-oriented aesthetics. The paradigms that I will trace in the history of negative aesthetics are not mere occurrences of disgust or repulsiveness in art and in everyday life, but ways of addressing the repulsive in relation to the culturally variable scope of art and aesthetics. Besides the classical paradigm that associates repugnant subjects with their pleasure-inducing imitations in art, and the transgressions of modern and contemporary art that increasingly shocked their audience, revulsion can also be regarded as a form of displeasure linked to the quotidian, yet aesthetically relevant forms of life. By virtue of this ordinary nature, which is not unfamiliar to other (non-Western) cultures, revulsion could be placed at the core of everyday aesthetics, since it confirms both the transition from contemplation to action in recent aesthetics, that is, the practical preoccupation with the aesthetic quality of living, and the broader redefinition of aesthetics in terms of sensory reactions.

Delineating beauty: On form and the boundaries of the aesthetic

AbstractPhilosophical aesthetics has recently been expanding its purview—with exciting work on everyday aesthetics, somaesthetics, gustatory aesthetics, and the aesthetics of imperceptibilia like mathematics and human character—reclaiming territory that was lost during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, when the discipline begun concentrating almost exclusively on the philosophy of art and restricted the aesthetic realm to the distally perceptible. Yet there remains considerable reluctance towards acknowledging the aesthetic character of many of these objects. This raises an important question—partly made salient again by the ongoing expansion of the aesthetic domain, and partly by the fact that many still seem resistant to this aesthetic diversification—which aestheticians seem to avoid: what, if anything, constrains the scope of beauty or the aesthetic? I argue that form, construed as comprising a degree, however minimal, of experienceable complexity, is necessary and sufficient for an object's candidature for the possession of aesthetic properties. Such a condition serves to discriminate between attempts to expand the scope of the aesthetic that are legitimate and those that are not. If correct, my view suggests that the aesthetic realm, though not limitless, is very broad indeed—but this, I think, is as it should be.

Beyond the Art Museum: A Phenomenological-Hermeneutic Account of Everyday Aesthetics

Abstract The article presents a phenomenological-hermeneutic account of everyday aesthetics based on the Playful Eye, an experiential method for encountering the “Other” through contemplative, somatic, and embodied practices informed by the concept of play. The experiences co-curated with participants—illustrated here by a Playful Eye event held in Osh, Kyrgyzstan—are grounded in an understanding of the relationship between the self and Other, cultivating a sense of inner truth that is unconcealed when the sensing agent experiences itself through being sensed. It is contended that everyday aesthetics provides a muted, fleeting experience of the Other, the seamless and ceaseless succession of the parts that constitute the totality of engagement with the world. This transformative understanding as “extended self,” also evident in many Indigenous traditions, can provide the common ground for dialogue, empathy, and compassion in contexts where conflicting values and beliefs might otherwise result in indifference or hostility.

Everyday aesthetics from an occupational perspective

ABSTRACT Mentions of aesthetic experiences tied to occupation in everyday life appear in the occupational science literature but aesthetic experiences have not been a focus of study. Building on the definition of aesthetic emotion, we draw on key conceptual sources from anthropology, philosophy, psychology, and the science of neuroaesthetics to explore everyday aesthetics from the perspective of occupation. Objects are critical to an aesthetic event and significant at an occupational, societal, and cultural level. The neurological process of object appraisal is a key source of aesthetic emotion in everyday life. We propose everyday aesthetics as a useful concept for identifying and describing aesthetic experiences that stir humans to act in ways related to occupation and social interaction. Reactions to aesthetic emotions stimulated by the appraisal of objects and events result in acts that potentially support or undermine health and well-being. Everyday aesthetic experiences are a source of motivation present in creative acts and in occupation. Aesthetic emotional processing in everyday life is an aspect of decision-making impacting pleasure, displeasure, agency, and subjective quality of life.