#aesthetic value

[betterthanfive]

to care not for fear and not for doubt and just for those i care about

[fanhackers]

If we cannot locate aesthetic value of texts in themselves (...) yet do not want to abolish questions of value altogether, it needs to be located elsewhere. The author, pronounced dead in post-structuralism, and in any case conspicuously absent in most mass-mediated forms of textuality, has proven an unsuitable basis for textual interpretation and evaluation. However, if we can distinguish texts and meaning creation as radically as Jenkins’s (1992) distinction between exceptional texts and exceptional readings suggests, the reader appears to be a no-better indicator of the aesthetic value of texts, since exceptional readings would thus appear to be based upon form of audience activity quite independent of texts themselves. If we cannot locate aesthetic value in the author, text, or reader alone, it is in the process of interaction between these that aesthetic value is manifested.

Sandvoss, C. (2007). The death of the reader: literary theory and the study of texts in popular culture. In Gray, J. A., Sandvoss, C., & Harrington, C. L. (Eds.). Fandom: Identities and communities in a mediated world. NYU Press. In some ways this is a meta-paper about some big questions that the Cultural Studies turn to the active audience - and to fans specifically - raises. The key question Sandvoss is grappling with is, how do we judge the aesthetic value of a text? How do we know if it's any good? He raises several challenges to such aesthetic judgements that Cultural Studies has come up against. One is the vastly expanded definition of "text": Cultural Studies doesn't just look at novels and poems, which is what we might ordinarily imagine as texts. It investigates TV shows, songs, games, ads and even, on occasion, crisp packets. Another challenge is the "death of the author" - the idea that what the author intended doesn't actually matter hugely when it comes to what a reader or an audience gets out of a text. Not only that, but the author becomes an incredibly nebulous concept when we start thinking about texts like video games or TV shows. So authorial intent doesn't really help us in judging the aesthetic value of a text. Neither, says Sandvoss, does the text itself, as Cultural Studies has become increasingly sceptical of the idea that the text has any intrinsic meaning: rather meaning is made by the audience. (Have a look at some of our previous posts for some ideas on how this is done in fanfiction.) So aesthetic value isn't a feature of the author, the text, or the reader on their own. It must therefore lie in the interaction between the three. Sandvoss goes on to argue that aesthetic value can be measured in the gap or distance between reader and text. How much of a challenge is the text to the reader's preconcieved notions about the world? How much does it make the reader think, feel, re-evaluate what they thought they knew? That's where Sandvoss ultimately pins aesthetic value. What do you think?

[nazilak]

The Silent Power of Beauty

🍁 The Silent Power of Beauty

[nazilak]

🪔 When Art Lingers: What Makes a Work Unforgettable?

Home Some works of art do not demand attention — they linger. They return quietly, like a scent, or a dream.There’s an old postcard I once found and framed. Just a rusted bicycle, abandoned, its rider long gone. But something about its stillness, its forgottenness, made it unforgettable. I keep it on my wall, inside a Persian khatamkari frame — where memory and craft now hold space…

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[nazilak]

What Is Beautiful? On Aesthetics, Art, and the Mystery of Meaning

Home Where beauty does not beg to be understood — it simply waits to be seen. What makes something beautiful? And what makes something… not? When we look at the work of artists like Kandinsky, Picasso, or Pollock, something strikes us — sometimes a harmony, sometimes chaos. But what’s undeniable is this: before them, no one had created anything quite like it. Their work didn’t just reflect…

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[whereishermes]

Plato on Art as Imitation

Plato’s Allegory of the Cave – Alex Gendler Mimesis in Ancient Greek Philosophy The word “Mimesis” comes from Greek and means “imitation.” Plato and Aristotle talked about mimesis as the representation of nature. The root word is ‘mimos’; from this, we get mimesthia, mimesis, mimetes, mimetikos, and mimema. Mimesthia means imitation, representation, or portrayal; mimos and mimetes are the…

Plato on Art as Imitation

[itsmightyfunny]

For, ultimately, this power of the work of art to alienate us once again from the alienated world is itself an aspect of illusion; this real world from which we become alienated is not negated in its alienated character but, in a certain sense, left in precisely that state because we withdraw from it. And this is indeed where we find that conflict – if I may put it somewhat grandiloquently – between the moral, namely the aim to change the world, and the specifically aesthetic, namely the intolerability of the world as it is.

Adorno