Sunday, June 2, 2013

AED 200

From watching Aesthetics: Philosophy of the Arts, I learned about different philosophers and the different ways they interpreted art. We went over Plato, Aristotle, Francis Hutcheson, Kant to Leon Battista Alberti, Stendhal, and Tolstoy. Each had their own different take on art. I related more to Kant's take on that beauty. Kant who was a German philosopher from the 18th century believed that beauty cannot be judged by a set of standards. It is subjective and based on feeling, and therefore cannot be scientifically mesaured.

The other video:
CARTA: Neurobiology Neurology and Art and Aesthetics discussed more about aesthetics and how the brain acts towards beauty and art.
I think

Ramachandran was able to relay his information better than Changeux, at least in my opinion. I feel asleep the first time around and had rewatch it. It was very interesting to see that animals are aesthetically pleased by "super images". For example Ramachandran talked about how the seagull recognized the beak with a red stripe on it and went crazy happy when it saw just a plane beakshaped object with three red stripes on it. It made me think of how Greek and Roman sculptures would always exaggerate their models making them look like perfect human beings. It also made me think of comic book heroes, and how people aspire to be them. The thing that I found most interesting is that the human mind seems to prefer the journey more than the reward. Ramachadran used the shower curtain as an example. You see a beautiful women behind the shower curtain, and you go to pull it back. Everything you do up until the point where you pull the curtain back, your brain enjoys more than actually seeing what's behind the curtain. I can see a little bit where he's coming from with this, but I think I prefer the reward more than I do the journey, at least that's my opinion.

These two videos and the text: Living With Art kind of go hand in hand, because they both go over the same material. The videos go more into detail about aesthetics and how the brain reacts to art and beauty while the book kind drones more about the different examples of art. But like I said before, the idea that animals prefer a super image of themselves made me think back to the different sculptures that were produced in Greece. They all liked to exaggerate the human form. In all found both the videos and the readings difficult to get through. I don't know perhaps it's because I was too tired when I was watching them, but I do enjoy that they kind of go hand in hand, in that they bring up topics I read in the book. I found myself looking for paintings and sculptures that were in the text in the videos.

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