Positive Aesthetic Experience Research Articles

Aesthetic experience in technology education – the role of aesthetics for learning in lower secondary school robotic programming

IntroductionWithin the technology education research field, aesthetics has primarily been treated as either related to artifacts, design processes and innovation, or as related to students’ enjoyment, appreciation, and participation in technology and technology education. This study focuses on the role of aesthetics in technology learning more specifically the learning of programming. Previous research has pointed to aesthetics as important for the learning of programming, e.g., that programming activities in higher education typically involve experiences of frustration. While previous research is primarily based on student reports, there is a need for further exploration of processes of learning to program. The aim of this study is to explore the role of aesthetics for student learning to program in and what these processes may mean in relation to a disciplinary aesthetics of the technology subject.MethodsThe study was part of a design-based study with the overall purpose to develop the teaching of programming in lower secondary school. Data was collected from a programming task designed and implemented in school-year 9 (the students were aged 15–16) in Technology in two lower secondary classes. In total, three teachers participated in the implementation. The students pair-programmed Lego robots that should perform specific movements, such as following a curved line. Each group recorded their coding process along with audio, resulting in videos that documented the gradual evolution of their programs. These videos, capturing the real-time programming and associated student and teacher conversations, serve as the data for this study. In order to analyze the role of aesthetics in classroom conversations a Practical Epistemology Analysis was applied.ResultsThe results show that aesthetic judgments were important for orienting learning toward (1) the movement of the robot and (2) the ways to be in the programming activity. During the programming activity, the students expressed feelings of frustration but also joy and humor.DiscussionThe findings concur with previous research and contribute to further understanding the role of negative and positive aesthetic experiences in the teaching and learning of programming. The importance of the objects of aesthetic experience found in this study are discussed as part of a disciplinary aesthetic of programming.

Sparsity in an artificial neural network predicts beauty: Towards a model of processing-based aesthetics.

Generations of scientists have pursued the goal of defining beauty. While early scientists initially focused on objective criteria of beauty ('feature-based aesthetics'), philosophers and artists alike have since proposed that beauty arises from the interaction between the object and the individual who perceives it. The aesthetic theory of fluency formalizes this idea of interaction by proposing that beauty is determined by the efficiency of information processing in the perceiver's brain ('processing-based aesthetics'), and that efficient processing induces a positive aesthetic experience. The theory is supported by numerous psychological results, however, to date there is no quantitative predictive model to test it on a large scale. In this work, we propose to leverage the capacity of deep convolutional neural networks (DCNN) to model the processing of information in the brain by studying the link between beauty and neuronal sparsity, a measure of information processing efficiency. Whether analyzing pictures of faces, figurative or abstract art paintings, neuronal sparsity explains up to 28% of variance in beauty scores, and up to 47% when combined with a feature-based metric. However, we also found that sparsity is either positively or negatively correlated with beauty across the multiple layers of the DCNN. Our quantitative model stresses the importance of considering how information is processed, in addition to the content of that information, when predicting beauty, but also suggests an unexpectedly complex relationship between fluency and beauty.

The aesthetic effects of a new lesson design approach: Mathematical stories

Research suggests that high school students often have negative experiences with mathematics. To address this challenge, this paper shares findings of a design-based research project in which researchers and teachers developed and used a narrative approach to lesson planning in order to design lesson experiences that provide opportunities for high school students to become captivated with mathematical content (“CMLs”). The goal of this approach is to provide students positive aesthetic opportunities, such as inspiring student curiosity, while maintaining cognitive demand and coherence. Overall, students reported more positive, varied aesthetic experiences (e.g., suspense, surprise) in CMLs than in other lessons with the same teacher and students. These findings provide evidence that designing lessons as mathematical stories shows promise and can offer students more positive aesthetic experiences in mathematics.

Aesthetic experience enhances first-person spatial representation

Episodic autobiographical memories are characterized by a spatial context and an affective component. But how do affective and spatial aspects interact? Does affect modulate the way we encode the spatial context of events? We investigated how one element of affect, namely aesthetic liking, modulates memory for location, in three online experiments (n = 124, 79, and 80). Participants visited a professionally curated virtual art exhibition. They then relocated previously viewed artworks on the museum map and reported how much they liked them. Across all experiments, liking an artwork was associated with increased ability to recall the wall on which it was hung. The effect was not explained by viewing time and appeared to modulate recognition speed. The liking-wall memory effect remained when participants attended to abstractness, rather than liking, and when testing occurred 24 h after the museum visit. Liking also modulated memory for the room where a work of art was hung, but this effect primarily involved reduced room memory for disliked artworks. Further, the liking-wall memory effect remained after controlling for effects of room memory. Recalling the wall requires recalling one's facing direction, so our findings suggest that positive aesthetic experiences enhance first-person spatial representations. More generally, a first-person component of positive affect transfers to wider spatial representation and facilitates the encoding of locations in a subject-centered reference frame. Affect and spatial representations are therefore important, and linked, elements of sentience and subjectivity. Memories of aesthetic experiences are also spatial memories of how we encountered a work of art. This linkage may have implications for museum design.

Negative Aesthetic Experiences of Prosecuting the Barely Alive

Abstract Theories of negative aesthetics claim that some aesthetic qualities like disgust, ugliness, and repulsiveness are instrumentally valuable, and can be justified as a necessary means to producing what might be considered an ultimately positive aesthetic experience. In an international criminal trial, the presentation of “ugly” visual and oral evidence may be justified in service of the aims of the trial. But when the “barely alive” are prosecuted, however, a justification for a negative aesthetic experience may not exist. In this paper, I argue that due to their vulnerability and the need to protect their dignity, individuals who have been accused of mass atrocity crimes but who are nearing the end of their lives should generally not be subjected to public trial and punishment. The negative aesthetic experiences generated by displaying someone close to death in that setting cannot be justified by positive aesthetic or moral experiences.

Feeling the Way to Revelation: Patterns of Doubt and Persuasion in Tibetan Buddhist Auto/biographical Treasure Narratives

Abstract In the Tibetan Buddhist Treasure (gter ma) tradition, communities cohere around the marking of certain visions as offering insight into the proper method of ritual practices, the veracity of reincarnation claims, decisions about institutional structures, assertions of lineage relationships, and most importantly for the purposes of this article, the phenomenology of Buddhist enlightenment for readers lacking such experience. There is a long and robust history of doubt around such visions and their narrative accounts. Doubters seek to debunk and disenfranchise those whose visions they dispute. This article analyzes the emotional dynamics and aesthetic charge of five exemplary visionary accounts from the 17th–20th century, with a focus on how doubts are overcome through intense positive sensory experiences within their life stories. Such narratives generate a sense of religious belonging in Tibetan Buddhist Treasure communities, beginning with the visionary him- or herself whose successful navigation of doubt is resolved by the persuasive power of intensely positive aesthetic experience.

The Impact of Motor Imageries on Aesthetic Judgment of Chinese Calligraphy: An fMRI Study.

Previous behavioral studies on aesthetics demonstrated that there was a close association between perceived action and aesthetic appreciation. However, few studies explored whether motor imagery would influence aesthetic experience and its neural substrates. In the current study, Chinese calligraphy was used as the stimuli to explore the relationship between the motor imagery and the aesthetic judgments of a participant using functional magnetic resonance imaging. The imaging results showed that, compared with the baseline, the activation of the brain regions [e.g., anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), putamen, and insula] involved in perceptual processing, cognitive judgments, aesthetic emotional, and reward processing was observed after the participants performed motor imagery tasks. The contrast analyses within aesthetic judgments showed that the kinesthetic imagery significantly activated the middle frontal gyrus, postcentral gyrus, ACC, and thalamus. Generally, these areas were considered to be closely related to positive aesthetic experience and suggested that motor imagery, especially kinesthetic imagery, might be specifically associated with the aesthetic appreciation of Chinese calligraphy.

Mixing pleasure and beauty: positive aesthetic experience in Old English poetry

This article analyses 23 different lexical items in Old English denoting positive aesthetic emotion, more specifically, related to the expression of appearance, moral qualities, and personal pleasant experience with the aim of gaining a better understanding of aesthetic standards in Anglo-Saxon England. Using different lexical tools, corpora and software, I have built a database where I have annotated the attestations from the corpus taking into account different sociolinguistic criteria. An in-depth analysis of these fragments and their statistical treatment has shown that descriptions of beauty in Old English poetry have two main routes: a) one that addresses the object’s aesthetic qualities objectively and b) another that focuses on the subject’s response to it. Furthermore, these two alternatives were often complementary in texts of a religious nature.

The Unconscious Grounds of Aesthetic Experience

ABSTRACT Aesthetic experience is an emotional response to the spontaneous interpretation of an object/situation as symbolic of either the fulfilment of an impossible but inalienable desire (positive aesthetic experience) or the inescapability of that to which we are ineluctably averse (negative aesthetic experience). In both cases it is an emotional response to situations for which there is no appropriate practical response; hence the perception of the response as “disinterested,” though, since aesthetic experience is a matter of value and emotion, it cannot actually be “disinterested” in the sense of unconnected with desire. Insofar, then, as it is an emotional response—a perception of objects or situations as value-laden—that the subject cannot account for in terms of any conscious desires, we must take aesthetic experience to be the outcome of an unconscious process. We may surmise the form that this unconscious process takes from the nature of aesthetic experience itself. It is precipitated by the spontaneous interpretation of objects/situations in terms of enduring and insatiable desires, which either arise from, or we are convinced arise from, the conditions of our existence. This interpretation invests the object/situation with a meaning that we do not wish to consciously acknowledge. In the case of positive aesthetic experience, this projection of the value arises from a desire to objectify that value by disowning as far as possible one’s own role in creating it. In the case of negative aesthetic experience, it is a matter of containing the perceived value within a specific, avoidable, object.

Action Study of Community-Based Aesthetic Education Course Design and Practice for Senior Citizens

Aesthetic education is currently an educational issue receiving substantial attention, and to increase the accessibility of aesthetic education, working to implement aesthetic education programs should be for all age groups. The aesthetic education for senior citizens, providing the participants with positive aesthetic experiences not only increases sensory stimulation but also facilitates new connections to the world, are critical in maintenance of senior citizens’ physical and social functions. In the literature, few aesthetic education studies have targeted senior citizens, despite the increase in senior-activity-center-related projects and programs since 2015 in Taiwan. Most individuals who attend programs at senior activity centers are senior citizens from nearby communities. Systematic arrangement and planning of aesthetic courses at these centers may further community-based aesthetic education efforts. This study chose a Taipei City senior activity center for an action study exploring design approaches for aesthetic education community-based classes and activities for 25 senior citizens. The findings include understanding the initial experiences of senior citizens in collective art projects, adjustment of instruction method through reflection and conversation, senior citizens’ class participation and feedback enhanced aesthetic literacy and interpersonal interaction, future course improvement and enrichment. The researcher reviewed feasible approaches for promoting senior aesthetic education to provide useful information to community senior activity centers and their managers and senior aesthetic education promoters.

The impact of preferences of inhabitants of settlements for developers activities

Urban community contributes to the development of any city, but it is essential that its residents can live, work and relax in a friendly environment. The source of their well-being and positive aesthetic experience is a harmonious landscape, shaped by the functional spatial layout of streets, blocks of buildings and structures and the accompanying elements of nature and development, ensuring the rational development of urban space. The need to knowing of public expectations in relation to residence, is an important step in planning new investments by developers and construction companies. In order to carry out of research cooperation has been established with the construction company. Cooperation allowed to gain experience in the commercialization and implementation of research and carry out analysis and evaluation of spatial structures in terms of urban development and functional housing estates, with special emphasis on the needs of society. The observations focused in particular on ecological building and the necessity of the creation and development of green areas, sports and recreation to residential areas. We know that every square meter of land designated for housing carries a possible profit for the developer. The more will be built and sold apartments the more earn the investor. However, to the apartment were popular meet the demands of customers concerning not only the housing unit, but also the environment in which the building is situated. It is therefore important that the settlements were attractive and meet the social needs of society. Social needs are related to satisfying the expectations of the inhabitants of the settlements related to the comfort of the apartment, being, rest and recreation living within the zone of residence. As part of the research work carried study work and field research. They consisted gain knowledge about work organization in the enterprise and hearing the reasons and scope of the activities the developer, as well as get acquainted with trends in designing and developing residential areas. The studies included: observations of the work carried out on construction sites, carried out surveys among residents of the estate, assessments and analyzes social preferences in relation to settlements was made, the proposed model zoning settlements and their location was developed. These analyzes were performed using multi-parametric method, in which the accepted criteria describe the conditions to be met by location. Analysis of the criteria also may show that some of them are only partially fulfilled, and the degree of fulfilment also be laid down. The knowledge so gained can be transferred to real estate development enterprises in order to improve the quality of services provided by them.

Ethics and aesthetics–Philosophical perspectives

European intellectual history teaches us that beauty is not just an adornment to life but is also a major source of strength for our life. Moreover, the positive aesthetic experience also has healing power. That beauty is a highly effective antidote to life's suffering, i.e. acts as an anti-depressant, has been documented in the tradition of philosophical aesthetics from Plato to Bloch. Beauty reveals truth and goodness (Plato), it shows the harmonious order and the glory of things (Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite), it is one of the transcendental names of God (Thomas of Aquinas), in beauty the world appears in its perfection (Baumgarten), beauty is the daughter of freedom (Schiller), it offers a temporary escape from the suffering of existence (Schopenhauer), aesthetic values are the only values that withstand nihilism and the meaninglessness of existence and are thus the actual stimulus of life (Nietzsche), the beautiful is the sensual appearance of the idea (Hegel), beauty is an anti-depressant and Weckamin of being, it tears people out of their forgetfulness of Being (Heidegger), there is a close relationship between the shining forth of the Beautiful and the evidentness of the Understandable (Gadamer), in an artwork and through the aesthetic attitude the Other, foreign, the non-identical that is mangled and mutilated in the administered world is preserved and saved (Adorno). Many more positive affirmative descriptions from the tradition of philosophical aesthetics demonstrate that beauty and the aesthetic have a therapeutic dimension.Disclosure of interestThe author declares that he has no competing interest.

Social aesthetics and mental health–Theory and practice

The Hows of dealing with life and with our fellow human beings is the main focus of scientific endeavor of social aesthetics as a multidisciplinary research domain. This knowledge about the Hows of our social coexistence in general and in preventative and curative medicine in particular provides the indispensable social aesthetics foundation for therapeutic interventions in which the individual once more becomes the measure of all things and activities. European intellectual history teaches us that beauty is not just an adornment to life but is also a major source of strength for our life. Moreover, the positive aesthetic experience also has healing power. Social aesthetics that wishes also to be understood as the science of beauty in interpersonal relationships provides us with knowledge that in medical-therapeutic practice becomes a key pillar of human-centred approaches to prevention and treatment.Disclosure of interestThe author declares that he has no competing interest.

Beyond the visual and verbal: Using participant-produced photographs in research on the surroundings for care at the end-of-life

The web of relationships between wellbeing and the environments in which people live has long been recognized. However, relatively little research has been conducted about end-of-life surroundings from the perspective of the dying person. In this study, we investigate which aspects of their surroundings are particularly meaningful for the people inhabiting them in the last phases of life, based on participant-produced photographs with follow-up interviews. Twenty-three people were purposefully recruited via specialized in-patient palliative care/hospice units, specialized palliative care home care teams, and residential care facilities for the elderly. Participants were given a digital camera, and asked to take pictures of that which was meaningful for them in their surroundings. The interviewer later viewed the photographs with the participant, asking: “what is this picture of?” and “why is it meaningful to you?” The database consists of 76 photographs with follow-up interviews, which were analyzed qualitatively in an iterative process. These empirical data demonstrate how a sense of being valued, and of being able to maintain contacts with one's daily life and sense of identity appear supported or hindered by features of the care surroundings. These features include a positive aesthetic experience incorporating both sensory stimulation using one's body as well as general ambiance; support appropriate for maintaining a sense of functional independence; and connections with one's past, present and future as a person within a wider world. Corporeality appears crucial for understanding, negotiating and interacting in one's surroundings, while maintaining both physical and social function. This data collection approach was found to offer alternative forms of expression as verbal ability decreases and symptom burden increases, making it useful in end-of-life research and practice development.

Association of Sociodemographic and Perceived Environmental Factors with Public Bicycle Use among Taiwanese Urban Adults.

Background: This study examined the sociodemographic and perceived environmental factors associated with public bicycle use among Taiwanese urban adults. Methods: A random-digit-dialing telephone-based cross-sectional survey was administered to Taiwanese urban adults aged 20–64 years in 2015. Data on sociodemographic variables, perceived environmental factors (for attributes identified in the International Physical Activity Questionnaire-Environmental Module), and public bicycle use were obtained from 1002 adults in three cities. Adjusted logistic regression was used. Results: After adjustment for potential confounders, the results showed that adults aged 20–29 years (odds ratio (OR) = 4.42) with a university degree or higher (OR = 2.03) were more likely to use public bicycles. In addition, adults living in Kaohsiung City were less likely to use public bicycles (OR = 0.24). Adults who saw people being active (OR = 1.76; 95% CI: 1.05–2.86) and had positive aesthetic experiences of their environment (OR = 1.69) were more likely to use public bicycles. Conclusions: Our findings suggest that seeing physically active people and positive aesthetic perceptions of the environment are key factors for developing transportation policies and intervention strategies for promoting public bicycle use among Taiwanese urban adults.

Aesthetic Insight: The Aesthetic Value of Damaged Environments

In this paper I will start by assuming that positive aes- thetic experiences of damaged nature are possible and I will try to motivate the idea that the aesthetic pleasure derived from that con- templation might reveal something of the environment's overall character. I hope to show that, sometimes, positive aesthetic ex- periences help to promote emotional attitudes that can have an in- sightful role in the configuration of other non-aesthetic attitudes. In order to do so, I will critically appeal to some of the thoughts Kant articulated about the notion of aesthetic experience and its relation- ship to cognition and morality. I think the sort of experience I am after in this paper cannot be easily accommodated within a Kantian framework and that the possibility of positive aesthetic experience of damaged nature will show that the relationships between the aes- thetic and the cognitive or the moral are more complex and enrich- ing than they have been acknowledged. 1. The Possibility of Positive Aesthetic Experiences of Damaged Na- ture

A model of aesthetic appreciation and aesthetic judgments

Although aesthetic experiences are frequent in modern life, there is as of yet no scientifically comprehensive theory that explains what psychologically constitutes such experiences. These experiences are particularly interesting because of their hedonic properties and the possibility to provide self-rewarding cognitive operations. We shall explain why modern art's large number of individualized styles, innovativeness and conceptuality offer positive aesthetic experiences. Moreover, the challenge of art is mainly driven by a need for understanding. Cognitive challenges of both abstract art and other conceptual, complex and multidimensional stimuli require an extension of previous approaches to empirical aesthetics. We present an information-processing stage model of aesthetic processing. According to the model, aesthetic experiences involve five stages: perception, explicit classification, implicit classification, cognitive mastering and evaluation. The model differentiates between aesthetic emotion and aesthetic judgments as two types of output.

Pools, riffles, and channelization

The addition of regularly spaced deeps (pools) and shallows (riffles) that provide a variety of flow conditions, areal sorting of stream-bed material, cover for wildlife, and a positive aesthetic experience, may be desirable in many channel projects. Such designs will reduce adverse environmental impacts of stream channel modifications. Analysis of variance for pool-to-pool spacing data suggests that there is no significant difference with respect to channel width between pools that form in natural streams and those in streams affected by a variety of human uses. Short of channelization, which changes the channel width, pools and riffles, within limits, are not particularly sensitive to environmental stress. Experiments in Gum Branch near Charlotte, North Carolina, support the hypothesis that channel form and process evolve in harmony and that manipulation of cross-channel morphology can influence the development of desired channel processes. Planned manipulation of its channel form induced Gum Branch to develop as desired. Morphologic stability consisting of incipient point bars, pools, and riffles was maintained over a period of high magnitude flood events, only to be degraded later by a wave of sediment derived from upstream construction and stream-bank failures. Thus, environmentally desirable channel morphology in urban streams cannot remain stable if changes in the sediment load or storm-water runoff exceed the limits of the stream's ability to make internal adjustments while maintaining morphologic stability.