Performing Perception - Staging Aesthetics of Interaction

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Dalsgaard, Peter; Hansen, Lone Koefoed

2008-01-01

In interaction design for experience-oriented uses of technology, a central facet of aesthetics of interaction is rooted in the user's experience of herself “performing her perception.” By drawing on performance (theater) theory, phenomenology and sociology and with references to recent HCI...... experience. We argue that this 3-in-1 is always already shaping the user's understanding and perception of her interaction as it is staged through her experience of the object's form and expression. Through examples ranging from everyday technologies utilizing performances of interaction to spatial...... contemporary artworks, digital as well as analogue, we address the notion of the performative spectator and the spectating performer. We demonstrate how perception is also performative and how focus on this aspect seems to be crucial when designing experience-oriented products, systems and services....

Participation after acquired brain injury: Associations with everyday technology and activities in daily life.

Science.gov (United States)

Fallahpour, Mandana; Kottorp, Anders; Nygård, Louise; Lund, Maria Larsson

2015-01-01

The development of the information society has led to increased use of everyday technology and changed the conditions for participation. Enabling participation in everyday life situations is an important rehabilitation goal after acquired brain injury (ABI). Identifying factors associated with individuals' experienced participation and problems therein is therefore essential. This study aimed at exploring the relationship between perceived difficulty in everyday technology use, perceived ability in the activities of daily living (ADL), and perceived participation, and participation problems in persons with ABI. Eighty-one persons with ABI participated in the study and were assessed by the Impact on Participation and Autonomy questionnaire, the Everyday Technology Use Questionnaire, and the ADL taxonomy. Findings showed that the combined model of difficulty in everyday technology (ET) use, ADL ability, and the interaction between them explained both participation in various domains of everyday life, and also overall level of perceived participation and the perceived problems. The findings underscore the importance of evaluating individuals' ability in both ET use and ADL after ABI to increase the probability of explaining these persons' participation in desired everyday life situations and, also, for rehabilitation design.

New technology in everyday life - social processes and environmental impact

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Røpke, Inge

2001-01-01

In the environmental debate it is increasingly acknowledged that our way of life has profound environmental consequences. Therefore, it becomes ever more important to focus on and to understand how everyday life is formed and how it changes over time. Changing technology constitutes an important...... of several of the dynamic forces behind consumption and thus contribute to the growing quantities of consumption, which counteract the environmental improvements. Secondly, because some of the technological changes are integrated with the processes which change everyday life more profoundly and thus...

Web Aesthetics and Usability: An Empirical Study of the Effects of White Space

OpenAIRE

Constantinos K. Coursaris; Konstantinos Kripintris

2012-01-01

Usability has been an essential component of the Web User Experience (UX) and a focal research topic. In recent years, the penetration of interactive technologies in all aspects of everyday life challenges the way UX is understood and designed. The past decade, Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) scholars have been continuously attempting to introduce and explore new and non-traditional factors in the UX arena, such as aesthetics, emotions, affect, and trust. This study contributes to the field ...

Hollywood's Conversion to Color: The Technological, Economic and Aesthetic Factors.

Science.gov (United States)

Kindem, Forham A.

1979-01-01

Discusses the film industry's conversion to color cinematography in the period between the 1920s and 1960s. Cites economic considerations, technological modifications, and aesthetic preferences by audiences as factors in this development. (JMF)

Soulful Technologies

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Fausing, Bent

2010-01-01

Samsung introduced in 2008 a mobile phone called "Soul" made with a human touch and including itself a "magic touch". Through the analysis of a Nokia mobile phone TV-commercials I want to examine the function and form of digital technology in everyday images. The mobile phone and its digital camera...... and other devices are depicted by everyday aesthetics as capable of producing a unique human presence and interaction. The medium, the technology is a necessary helper of this very special and lost humanity. Without the technology, no special humanity, no soul - such is the prophecy. This personification...... or anthropomorphism is important for the branding of new technology. Technology is seen as creating a techno-transcendence towards a more qualified humanity which is in contact with fundamental human values like intuition, vision, and sensing; all the qualities that technology, industrialization, and rationalization...

Ten years of a model of aesthetic appreciation and aesthetic judgments : The aesthetic episode - Developments and challenges in empirical aesthetics.

Science.gov (United States)

Leder, Helmut; Nadal, Marcos

2014-11-01

About a decade ago, psychology of the arts started to gain momentum owing to a number of drives: technological progress improved the conditions under which art could be studied in the laboratory, neuroscience discovered the arts as an area of interest, and new theories offered a more comprehensive look at aesthetic experiences. Ten years ago, Leder, Belke, Oeberst, and Augustin (2004) proposed a descriptive information-processing model of the components that integrate an aesthetic episode. This theory offered explanations for modern art's large number of individualized styles, innovativeness, and for the diverse aesthetic experiences it can stimulate. In addition, it described how information is processed over the time course of an aesthetic episode, within and over perceptual, cognitive and emotional components. Here, we review the current state of the model, and its relation to the major topics in empirical aesthetics today, including the nature of aesthetic emotions, the role of context, and the neural and evolutionary foundations of art and aesthetics. © 2014 The British Psychological Society.

Nuclear technology in research and everyday life

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

2015-12-01

The paper.. discusses the impact of nuclear technology in research and everyday life covering the following issues: miniaturization of memory devices, neutron radiography in material science, nuclear reactions in the universe, sterilization of food, medical applies, cosmetics and packaging materials using beta and gamma radiation, neutron imaging for radioactive waste analysis, microbial transformation of uranium (geobacter uraniireducens), nuclear technology knowledge preservation, spacecrafts voyager 1 and 2, future fusion power plants, prompt gamma activation analysis in archeology, radiation protection and radioecology and nuclear medicine (radiotherapy).

The Creative Pathways of Everyday Life

Science.gov (United States)

Tanggaard, Lene

2015-01-01

This paper presents two studies of how the conduct of life in itself can be a creative act. Very often, creativity research is concerned with the study of what enables people to express themselves creatively or aesthetically or to produce creative ideas and products. Creativity as it arises in the mundane processes of everyday life is, however,…

Aesthetic Response and Cosmic Aesthetic Distance

Science.gov (United States)

Madacsi, D.

2013-04-01

For Homo sapiens, the experience of a primal aesthetic response to nature was perhaps a necessary precursor to the arousal of an artistic impulse. Among the likely visual candidates for primal initiators of aesthetic response, arguments can be made in favor of the flower, the human face and form, and the sky and light itself as primordial aesthetic stimulants. Although visual perception of the sensory world of flowers and human faces and forms is mediated by light, it was most certainly in the sky that humans first could respond to the beauty of light per se. It is clear that as a species we do not yet identify and comprehend as nature, or part of nature, the entire universe beyond our terrestrial environs, the universe from which we remain inexorably separated by space and time. However, we now enjoy a technologically-enabled opportunity to probe the ultimate limits of visual aesthetic distance and the origins of human aesthetic response as we remotely explore deep space via the Hubble Space Telescope and its successors.

The technological socio-materiality of kindergarten children’s conduct of everyday life

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Chimirri, Niklas Alexander

a four-month researcher participation in a kindergarten practice. It argues that the relevance of media technologies can only be investigated in relation to the various perspectives of the other practice participants. The main focus is put on the children’s perspectives, as it is their conduct......The conduct of everyday life concept has been enormously fruitful for theorizing how persons come to live their lives across diverse social contexts as participants in and contributors to social practices. However, social practice research still needs to investigate in a more detailed manner...... the relevance of material artifacts for conducting one’s everyday life. Everyday artifacts such as media technologies heavily shape the concrete socio-material arrangements in specific practices, hence co-constituting the scope of imaginable action possibilities. The presentation builds on insights drawn from...

Fine-tuning our senses with (sound) art for aesthetic experience

OpenAIRE

Fonseca, Nuno

2017-01-01

UID/EAT/00693/2013 UID/EAT/00472/2013 After a long and widespread overlapping, in traditional accounts of aesthetic experience, between the realms of the artistic and the aesthetic, it’s becoming increasingly consensual that not only artworks, but also non-artistic objects - natural phenomena, natural landscapes and human environments, perhaps even everyday activities - can be the focus of valuable, arousing, cognitively and emotionally engaging sensory experiences. Not merely do I advo...

Processes of aesthetic transformation in ordinary landscapes

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Krarup, Jonna Majgaard

2004-01-01

it was distributed systematically as an almost industrially produced landscape element. Windbreaks are now regarded as a traditional element in the Danish agricultural landscape. As a landscape element it is an international phenomenon known and used in Germany, France, England etc. Originally local farming...... practices, natural conditions, techniques and national legislation in the respective countries, formed the aesthetic expression. In this respect one could speak of the impact of northern nature on the aesthetic expression of the Danish windbreaks, as well as the impact from national phenomena....... These features determined the specific aesthetic and architectural identity of ordinary Danish, i.e. Nordic, landscapes. Contemporary cultural changes such as the aesthetification of everyday life and of ordinary landscape, i.e. farming landscape, are now manifest in the way the windbreaks are motivated...

A prototype to study cognitive and aesthetic aspects of mixed reality technologies

OpenAIRE

Gunia, Artur; Indurkhya, Bipin

2017-01-01

Mixed reality systems integrate virtual reality with real-world perception and cognition to offer enhanced interaction possibilities with the environment. Our aim is to demonstrate that mixed reality technologies strongly affect our aesthetic sense and mental models. So, in designing such technologies, we need to incorporate perspectives from different disciplines. We present different approaches and implementations of cognitive enhancement and cognitive technologies, consider some practical ...

Ability to manage everyday technology : a comparison of persons with dementia or mild cognitive impairment and older adults without cognitive impairment.

OpenAIRE

Malinowsky, Camilla; Almkvist, Ove; Kottorp, Anders; Nygård, Louise

2010-01-01

Purpose: The ability to manage technology is important for performance and participation in everyday activities. This study compares the management of technology in everyday activities among people with mild-stage dementia or MCI with older adults without known cognitive impairment (OA). Method: Persons with mild-stage dementia (n=38), MCI (n=34) and OA (n=45) were observed and interviewed when managing their everyday technology at home by using the Management of Everyday Technology Ass...

Making use of research: clinical views on an evaluation of everyday technology use.

Science.gov (United States)

Nygård, Louise; Kottorp, Anders; Rosenberg, Lena

2015-01-01

The study aim was to investigate how and when an evaluation of perceived difficulty in use of everyday technology (Everyday Technology Use Questionnaire, ETUQ) could be used in clinical occupational therapy. Eight focus-group interviews were undertaken with a total of 42 participants (occupational therapists), and data were analysed with a constant comparative approach. The findings are presented in four main categories, including (i) appropriate purposes and contexts for using ETUQ, (ii) standardization versus individual flexibility, (iii) approaching everyday technology use and occupation as one whole, and (iv) synthesizing and documentation. In conclusion, the participants considered ability to use technology to be an important topic for occupational therapy, particularly in investigations of clients with subtle disabilities and in connection with discharge from hospital - but not in inpatient care. They had different views on how to integrate ETUQ with evaluations of occupational performance, and new ideas on how information about clients' ability to use technology could be utilized in interventions. They held standardized evaluations in high regard, but a paradox appeared in that many of them would use ETUQ in a non-standardized way, while simultaneously asking for a standardized output to be used in clients' medical files and to guide interventions.

Aesthetic experience and the emotional content of paintings

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Slobodan Marković

2010-03-01

Full Text Available In this study we investigated the relationship between aesthetic experience and other emotional qualities judged in paintings. Aesthetic experience was defined as an exceptional state of mind in which a person is focused on a particular object, transcending its everyday uses and meanings and losing the awareness of surroundings and even of himself/herself. In this state a person has an exceptional emotional experience, that is a feeling of unity with the object. Our basic idea is that aesthetic experience is not reducible to pleasure or a positive hedonic tone, but a person can equally be fascinated with both pleasant and unpleasant objects. In preliminary studies we specified the stimulus set of figural and semi-figural paintings, and a set of descriptors of emotions, feelings and aesthetic experience. Participants judged the paintings on descriptors (seven-point scales. Factor analysis revealed two large factors: the bipolar factor Affective Tone (descriptors on the positive pole: lovely, charming, cheerful, etc; descriptors on the negative pole: scary, disgusting, hateful etc. and Aesthetic Experience (descriptors: exceptional, profound, unique, etc.. Additional analyses have shown no significant correlation between the two factors. These findings confirmed our idea that aesthetic experience is independent of pleasure or affective attraction, and that it can be induced by both pleasant and unpleasant paintings.

Typically the Best? Perceived Typicality and Aesthetic Appraisal of Product Appearances

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Blijlevens, J.

2011-01-01

In this dissertation, it is investigated how the current knowledge that people possess about a certain product category influences perception and aesthetic appraisal of product appearances within this product category. Through the reoccurring exposure to product appearances in everyday life people

Aesthetics of Mundane Interactions

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Vyas, Dhaval; Hassenzahl, M.

2008-01-01

John Dewey’s pragmatist aesthetics is used as a conceptual basis for designing new technologies that support staff-members’ mundane social interactions in an academic department. From this perspective, aesthetics is seen as a broader phenomenon that encompasses experiential aspects of staff-members’

‘All the beautiful things’ : trauma, aesthetics and the politics of Palestinian childhood.

OpenAIRE

Marshall, D.J.

2013-01-01

This paper examines the ways in which Palestinian children variously perform and transform the discourse of trauma and the aesthetic of suffering that have come to dominate representations of Palestinian childhood, and the Palestinian struggle in general. I argue that everyday beauty in the lives of Palestinian refugee children, as found in mundane spaces and enacted through interpersonal relationships, constitutes an aesthetic disruption to the dominant representation of trauma as put forwar...

Design simplicity influences patient portal use: the role of aesthetic evaluations for technology acceptance

Science.gov (United States)

Watkins, Ivan; Mackert, Michael S; Xie, Bo; Stephens, Keri K; Shalev, Heidi

2016-01-01

Objective This study focused on patient portal use and investigated whether aesthetic evaluations of patient portals function are antecedent variables to variables in the Technology Acceptance Model. Methods A cross-sectional survey of current patient portals users (N = 333) was conducted online. Participants completed the Visual Aesthetics of Website Inventory, along with items measuring perceived ease of use (PEU), perceived usefulness (PU), and behavioral intentions (BIs) to use the patient portal. Results The hypothesized model accounted for 29% of the variance in BIs to use the portal, 46% of the variance in the PU of the portal, and 29% of the variance in the portal’s PEU. Additionally, one dimension of the aesthetic evaluations functions as a predictor in the model – simplicity evaluations had a significant positive effect on PEU. Conclusion This study provides evidence that aesthetic evaluations – specifically regarding simplicity – function as a significant antecedent variable to patients’ use of patient portals and should influence patient portal design strategies. PMID:26635314

Ability to manage everyday technology after acquired brain injury.

Science.gov (United States)

Kassberg, Ann-Charlotte; Malinowsky, Camilla; Jacobsson, Lars; Lund, Maria Larsson

2013-01-01

To investigate and describe how persons with an acquired brain injury (ABI) manage everyday technology (ET) in their daily activities and to explore whether the ability to manage ET was related to the severity of the disability. Eighty-one persons with ABI were observed while managing ET by using the Management of Everyday Technology Assessment (META). The Glasgow Outcome Scale-Extended (GOSE) was used to assess the severity of disability after the ABI. A computer application of a Rasch measurement model was used to generate measures of the participants' ability to manage ET and the measures were compared groupwise with analysis of covariance (ANCOVA). The degree of severity of disability had a significant main effect on the ability to manage ET. The groups with severe and moderate disability exhibited a significantly lower ability to manage ET compared to the group with good recovery. The result indicates that the ability to manage ET in daily activities can be related to the global severity of disability after ABI. This demonstrates the importance of considering the ability to manage ET to support the performance of activities at home, at work and in society in persons with ABI.

Everyday complexities and sociomaterialities of learning, technology, affects and effects

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Hansbøl, Mikala

design with particular intended educational purposes (e.g. educational technology and technology education), the everyday complexities and sociomaterialities of learning and technology intermingles with how students/professionals become affected by digital technology and hence also which matters......This paper starts out with the challenge of establishing and researching relationships between educational design, digital technology and professional learning. The paper is empirical and takes point of departure in case examples from two development projects with a focus on professional education....... Both projects focus on new waysto build relationships between digital technologies, professional education and learning. Each project takes a different take on how to approach and position digital technology and it’s relationships with the educational programs and students’ learning. Project Wellfare...

Perceived difficulty in use of everyday technology in persons with acquired brain injury of different severity: a comparison with controls.

Science.gov (United States)

Fallahpour, Mandana; Kottorp, Anders; Nygård, Louise; Lund, Maria Larsson

2014-07-01

To compare the perceived difficulty in use of everyday technology in persons with acquired brain injury with different levels of severity of disability with that of controls. This comparison study recruited 2 samples of persons with acquired brain injury and controls, comprising a total of 161 participants, age range 18-64 years. The long and short versions of the Everyday Technology Use Questionnaire and the Extended Glasgow Outcome Scale were used to evaluate participants. Persons with acquired brain injury demonstrated lower mean levels of perceived ability in use of everyday technology than controls (F = 21.84, degrees of freedom = 1, p technology between persons with severe disability and good recovery, between persons with severe disability and controls, and between persons with moderate disability and controls. No significant mean difference was found between persons with severe disability and moderate disability, between persons with moderate disability and good recovery, and between persons with good recovery and controls. Perceived difficulty in using everyday technology is significantly increased among persons with acquired brain injury with severe to moderate disability compared with controls. Rehabilitation services should consider the use of everyday technology in order to increase participation in everyday activities after acquired brain injury.

Aesthetics in Young Children's Lives: From Music Technology Curriculum Perspective

Science.gov (United States)

Ko, Chia-Hui; Chou, Mei-Ju

2013-01-01

Music technology is a term commonly used to refer to electronic form of the musical arts, particularly devices and computer software that enable the facilitation, playback, recording, composition, storage, and performance of various musical compositions. There has been a growing awareness of the importance of aesthetics in early childhood…

The Dance of the Now—Poetics of Everyday Human Movement

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Lis Engel

2008-05-01

Full Text Available The inspiration for this paper comes from an interest in the living movement of everyday life and from an interest in the stories of the felt sense of embodiment, subjectivity and culture. A phenomenological approach is used to get an embodied and experiential understanding of sensitive form and meaning. How are embodiment as performance of expressive form and cultural identities interwoven? How are intersubjectivity and culture performed? The living body images are analysed from an aesthetic-phenomenological perspective highlighting the living body as an inter-subjective, "vibrational" field that deepens the experiential understanding of everyday movement as performance of dynamic repertoires of existence. These become everyday events expressed as the dance of the now. URN: urn:nbn:de:0114-fqs0802355

Virtual reality - aesthetic consequences

OpenAIRE

Benda, Lubor

2014-01-01

In the present work we study aesthetic consequences of virtual reality. Exploring the fringe between fictional and virtual is one of the key goals, that will be achieved through etymologic and technologic definition of both fiction and virtual reality, fictional and virtual worlds. Both fiction and virtual reality will be then studied from aesthetic distance and aesthetic pleasure point of view. At the end, we will see the main difference as well as an common grounds between fiction and virtu...

An Evolution of Sustainable Aesthetics

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Donovan, Elizabeth

2017-01-01

. This paper is framed within the understanding that while sustainable architecture has showcased ethical technology, it lacks the holistic aesthetic language needed for the discipline to progress. A discussion of literature concerning sustainability, architecture, and aesthetics, articulating the particularly...

Older adults and the arts: the importance of aesthetic forms of expression in later life.

Science.gov (United States)

Wikström, Britt-Maj

2004-09-01

The purpose of this study was to examine the importance of aesthetic forms of expression in a randomly selected Swedish population age 65 to 89. Data were based on semi-structured interviews with 166 participants. Results revealed dance, music, literature, and pictures were important for this group of elderly individuals in promoting successful aging, and the connection to their everyday life was apparent. Participants considered viewing natural scenes and looking in a photo album as important aesthetic activities. The aesthetic forms of expression contributed to physical and intellectual activities, as well as to interaction with other individuals. Aesthetic experiences were related to feelings of timelessness and spacelessness, and served as sources of gratification.

Earth at Rest. Aesthetic Experience and Students' Grounding in Science Education

Science.gov (United States)

Østergaard, Edvin

2017-07-01

Focus of this article is the current situation characterized by students' de-rootedness and possible measures to improve the situation within the frame of education for sustainable development. My main line of argument is that science teachers can practice teaching in such a way that students are brought in deeper contact to the environment. I discuss efforts to promote aesthetic experience in science class and in science teacher education. Within a wide range of definitions, my main understanding of aesthetic experience is that of pre-conceptual experience, relational to the environment and incorporated in students' embodied knowledge. I ground the idea of Earth at rest in Husserl's phenomenological philosophy and Heidegger's notion of science' deprivation of the world. A critique of the ontological reversal leads to an ontological re-reversal that implies giving lifeworld experience back its value and rooting scientific concepts in students' everyday lives. Six aspects of facilitating grounding in sustainability-oriented science teaching and teacher education are highlighted and discussed: students' everyday knowledge and experience, aesthetic experience and grounding, fostering aesthetic sensibility, cross-curricular integration with art, ontological and epistemological aspects, and belongingness and (re-)connection to Earth. I conclude that both science students and student-teachers need to practice their sense of caring and belonging, as well as refining their sensibility towards the world. With an intension of educating for a sustainable development, there is an urgent need for a critical discussion in science education when it comes to engaging learners for a sustainable future.

Perceived difficulties using everyday technology after acquired brain injury: influence on activity and participation.

Science.gov (United States)

Lindén, Anita; Lexell, Jan; Lund, Maria Larsson

2010-12-01

Using everyday technology (ET) is a prerequisite for activities and participation at home and in the community. It is well known that persons with an acquired brain injury (ABI) can have limitations in activities of daily living but our knowledge of their difficulties using ET is not known. Thirty-six persons (27 men and 9 women, mean age 44 years, age range 26-60) with an ABI (2-10 years post injury) were interviewed, using the Everyday Technology Use Questionnaire (ETUQ), about their perceived difficulties using ET and how these difficulties influenced their everyday activities and their possibilities to participate at home and in the community. A majority (78%) of the persons reported difficulties using ET. The most common difficulties were related to the use of telecommunication and computers. Despite these difficulties, a majority still used most objects and services independently. Twenty-six participants (72%) perceived that their difficulties using ET influenced their everyday activities and their possibility to participate at home and in the community. The results indicate that rehabilitation following an ABI should consider whether clients' use of ET influences their activity and participation and adopt interventions accordingly. The results also indicate that difficulties using ET need to be considered in the design of community services to prevent societal barriers.

Design simplicity influences patient portal use: the role of aesthetic evaluations for technology acceptance.

Science.gov (United States)

Lazard, Allison J; Watkins, Ivan; Mackert, Michael S; Xie, Bo; Stephens, Keri K; Shalev, Heidi

2016-04-01

This study focused on patient portal use and investigated whether aesthetic evaluations of patient portals function are antecedent variables to variables in the Technology Acceptance Model. A cross-sectional survey of current patient portals users (N = 333) was conducted online. Participants completed the Visual Aesthetics of Website Inventory, along with items measuring perceived ease of use (PEU), perceived usefulness (PU), and behavioral intentions (BIs) to use the patient portal. The hypothesized model accounted for 29% of the variance in BIs to use the portal, 46% of the variance in the PU of the portal, and 29% of the variance in the portal's PEU. Additionally, one dimension of the aesthetic evaluations functions as a predictor in the model - simplicity evaluations had a significant positive effect on PEU. This study provides evidence that aesthetic evaluations - specifically regarding simplicity - function as a significant antecedent variable to patients' use of patient portals and should influence patient portal design strategies. © The Author 2015. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Medical Informatics Association. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com.

The radiofrequency frontier: a review of radiofrequency and combined radiofrequency pulsed-light technology in aesthetic medicine.

Science.gov (United States)

Sadick, Neil; Sorhaindo, Lian

2005-05-01

Radiofrequency (RF) and combined RF light source technologies have established themselves as safe and effective treatment modalities for several dermatologic procedures, including skin tightening, hair and leg vein removal, acne scarring, skin rejuvenation, and wrinkle reduction. This article reviews the technology, clinical applications, and recent advances of RF and combined RF light/laser source technologies in aesthetic medicine.

Notes towards a 'social aesthetic': Guest editors' introduction to the special section.

Science.gov (United States)

Olcese, Cristiana; Savage, Mike

2015-12-01

There is an emerging 'aesthetic turn' within sociology which currently lacks clear focus. This paper reviews the different issues feeding into this interest and contributes to its development. Previous renderings of this relationship have set the aesthetic up against sociology, as an emphasis which 'troubles' conventional understandings of sociality and offers no ready way of reconciling the aesthetic with the social. Reflecting on the contributions of recent social theorists, from figures including Bourdieu, Born, Rancière, Deleuze, and Martin, we argue instead for the value of a social aesthetic which critiques instrumentalist and reductive understandings of the social itself. In explicating what form this might take, the latter parts of the paper take issue with classical modernist conceptions of the aesthetic which continue to dominate popular and sociological understandings of the aesthetic, and uses the motif of 'walking' to show how the aesthetic can be rendered in terms of 'the mundane search' and how this search spans everyday experience and cultural re-production. We offer a provisional definition of social aesthetics as the embedded and embodied process of meaning making which, by acknowledging the physical/corporeal boundaries and qualities of the inhabited world, also allows imagination to travel across other spaces and times. It is hoped that this approach can be a useful platform for further inquiry. © London School of Economics and Political Science 2015.

Designers as Determinant for Aesthetic Innovations

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Fjællegaard, Cecilie Bryld; Beukel, Karin; Alkærsig, Lars

2015-01-01

The innovation literature states that scientists are core ingredients in creating technological innovations. This paper investigates whether the hiring of a designer generates aesthetic innovations by a firm. Further we investigate what the level of design knowledge of the receiving firm means...... for the firms? absorptive capacity, in terms of turning the hiring of the designer into aesthetic innovations. We explore a unique dataset containing information on firms, their hiring of designers and aesthetic innovations measured by design applications (design patents). Our findings show that hiring...... a designer does increase firms? likelihood of producing aesthetic innovations. Secondly, firms with prior experience of aesthetic innovations are more likely to apply for design registrations. Thirdly, there is a positive moderating effect of firms with prior experience of generating aesthetic innovations...

Nuclear technology in research and everyday life; Kerntechnik in Forschung und Alltag

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

NONE

2015-12-15

The paper.. discusses the impact of nuclear technology in research and everyday life covering the following issues: miniaturization of memory devices, neutron radiography in material science, nuclear reactions in the universe, sterilization of food, medical applies, cosmetics and packaging materials using beta and gamma radiation, neutron imaging for radioactive waste analysis, microbial transformation of uranium (geobacter uraniireducens), nuclear technology knowledge preservation, spacecrafts voyager 1 and 2, future fusion power plants, prompt gamma activation analysis in archeology, radiation protection and radioecology and nuclear medicine (radiotherapy).

Designers as the Determinants of Aesthetic Innovations

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Alkærsig, Lars; Fjællegaard, Cecilie Bryld; Beukel, Karin

the growing interest of firms in aesthetic innovations, knowledge on the ir determinants is limited. Work on labor mobility with in the innovation studies literature focuses mainly on discussion of scientists as crucial for creating technological innovations. This paper adds to work on labor mobility......Aesthetic innovations have become increasingly important appropriation mechanisms for firms. Since 2003, the number of design patent applications (to protect aesthetic innovations) has tripled compared to doubling in the numbers of both patent and trademark applications. However, despite...... and innovation by examining whether this holds in the case of designers' mobility and aesthetic innovations. Does the hiring of a new designer generate more aesthetic innovations than in a matched firm, which does not hire a designer? What is the importance of prior experience with aesthetic innovation...

The Human Technology

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Fausing, Bent

 Bent Fausing  "The Humane Technology", abstract (for The Two Cultures: Balancing Choices and Effects Oxford University July 20-26, 2008). The paper will investigate the use of technology in everyday aesthetics such as TV-commercials for mobile phones for Nokia, which slogan is, as it is well known......, "Nokia - connecting people". Which function does this technology get in narratives, images, interactions and affects here?      The mobile phone and its digital camera are depicted as being able to make a unique human presence and interaction. The medium, the technology is a necessary helper to get...... towards this very special and lost humanity. Without the technology, no special humanity is the prophecy. This personification or anthropomorphism is important for the branding of new technology. The technology is seen as creating a technotranscendens towards a more qualified humanity, which is in contact...

Contributions of the organizational aesthetics to research about gastronomic organizations

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Lídia Cunha Soares

2014-11-01

Full Text Available The aim of this study is show the contributions of the organizational aesthetics to research about gastronomic organizations. Through metatheory, the data was collected using books and papers of scientific journals important to the study area. The gastronomy is part of cultural heritage of a region and for this reason is also an object of tourist studies. The tourism and the gastronomy are environments where is possible to see the everyday life due to both are always considered as “practices”. The fields of management and organization studies has been focusing to “practices” studies inside of Practice Based-Studies approach. It is a scientific field that enables the theorization, which has many lens of study, among them the organizational aesthetics. The organizational aesthetics offers a new view which is possible assume the embodiment and the materiality of organizational life. All these aspects are favorable to the study of gastronomic organizations where the taste, the sight, the touch, the hearing and the smell are a differential in the gastronomic experience.

Cultural history and aesthetics of nursing care.

Science.gov (United States)

Siles González, José; Ruiz, Maria del Carmen Solano

2011-01-01

The aim of this study was to clarify the role of aesthetics in the organization and motivation of care through history. The guiding questions were: What values and aesthetic feelings have supported and motivated pre-professional and professional care? and Based on what structures has pre-professional and professional care been historically socialized? Primary and secondary sources were consulted, selected according to established criteria with a view to avoiding search and selection bias. Data analysis was guided by the categories: "habitus" and "logical conformism". It was found that the relation between social structures and pre-professionals (motherhood, religiosity) and professional aesthetic standards (professionalism, technologism) of care through history is evidenced in the caregiving activity of the functional unit, in the functional framework and the functional element. In conclusion, in social structures, through the socialization process, "logical conformism" and "habitus" constitute the aesthetic standards of care through feelings like motherhood, religiosity, professionalism, technologism and humanism.

Underprivileged citizens´use of technology for everyday health management

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Madsen, Jacob Østergaard

In this doctoral thesis, I address the problem of inequality in health by focusing on how underprivileged citizens experience and manage health-related problems in their everyday lives. Particularly, I focus on the citizen’s use of technology for engaging in health-related occupation. The field...... of research for the thesis is occupational science (OS), while Deweyan pragmatism is called upon as a theoretical frame. The overall aim of this thesis is to develop conceptual knowledge on how to support underprivileged citizens’ engagement in health-related occupation, with attention to these citizens...

Changes in Everyday and Digital Health Technology Use Among Seniors in Declining Health.

Science.gov (United States)

Levine, David M; Lipsitz, Stuart R; Linder, Jeffrey A

2018-03-14

U.S. seniors' digital health and everyday technology use when their health declines are unknown. Longitudinal cohort using the National Health and Aging Trends Study, a nationally representative, annually administered sample of community-dwelling Medicare beneficiaries (n = 4,037). We used difference-in-differences to assess the adjusted difference (AD) in technology use from 2011 to 2014 between those with and without health declines. Health decline measures included new-onset dementia; new-onset depression; decreases in activities of daily living (ADLs), short physical performance battery (SPPB), grip strength, and self-reported health; relocation to nursing facility; increased hospitalizations; and new-onset comorbidity. Digital health included use of the Internet to research health conditions, contact clinicians, fill prescriptions, and address insurance matters. Between 2011 and 2014, seniors experiencing health decline used various digital health technologies at low absolute rates (range: 1%-20%). Between 2011 and 2014, use of everyday technology decreased significantly among seniors with new-onset dementia (from 73% to 51%; AD, -26%), decreased ADLs (from 76% to 67%; AD, -10%), decreased SPPB (from 88% to 86%; AD, -3%), and relocation to a nursing facility (from 49% to 22%; AD, -31%) compared to seniors without comparable decline (all p seniors with new-onset probable dementia (from 9% to 4%; AD, -6%) and decreased SPPB (from 24% to 25%; AD, -4%; all p senior experiences predicts technology use, which may allow better targeting of digital health to specific seniors. Seniors with new dementia, relocation to a nursing home, and declining physical performance seem especially poor candidates for technology interventions.

Aesthetic Perception of Visual Textures: A Holistic Exploration using Texture Analysis, Psychological Experiment and Perception Modeling

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Jianli eLiu

2015-11-01

Full Text Available Modeling human aesthetic perception of visual textures is important and valuable in numerous industrial domains, such as product design, architectural design and decoration. Based on results from a semantic differential rating experiment, we modeled the relationship between low-level basic texture features and aesthetic properties involved in human aesthetic texture perception. First, we compute basic texture features from textural images using four classical methods. These features are neutral, objective and independent of the socio-cultural context of the visual textures. Then, we conduct a semantic differential rating experiment to collect from evaluators their aesthetic perceptions of selected textural stimuli. In semantic differential rating experiment, eights pairs of aesthetic properties are chosen, which are strongly related to the socio-cultural context of the selected textures and to human emotions. They are easily understood and connected to everyday life. We propose a hierarchical feed-forward layer model of aesthetic texture perception and assign 8 pairs of aesthetic properties to different layers. Finally, we describe the generation of multiple linear and nonlinear regression models for aesthetic prediction by taking dimensionality-reduced texture features and aesthetic properties of visual textures as dependent and independent variables, respectively. Our experimental results indicate that the relationships between each layer and its neighbors in the hierarchical feed-forward layer model of aesthetic texture perception can be fitted well by linear functions, and the models thus generated can successfully bridge the gap between computational texture features and aesthetic texture properties.

Reshaping Spectatorship: Immersive and Distributed Aesthetics

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Edwina Bartlem

2005-01-01

Full Text Available Although discourses of immersive aesthetics and distributed aesthetics may evoke associations with different media, creative processes, modes of audience engagement and even political ideologies, artists using these aesthetics often share similar interests in transforming and enhancing notions of the body and perception through technological intervention. This paper undertakes a comparison between immersive and distributed aesthetics in relation to Virtual Reality (VR and Networked Art (net.art, particularly networked installation art. It focuses on the ways in which both VR and networked installations immerse the viewer in states of perceptual and cognitive transition. Central to this article is the argument that VR and net.art are able to generate immersive experiences in the viewer by creating the sensation of being (tele-present in an electronically mediated environment that is illusionistic and sometimes remote from the physical body of the participant. Furthermore, the immersive and distributed aesthetics generated by specific VR and net.art projects have revolutionary consequences for traditional aesthetic theories of spectatorship and art appreciation that assert the need for critical and physical distance.

Meanings and experiences of assistive technologies in everyday lives of older citizens

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Dahler, Anne Marie; Maling Rasmussen, Dorte; Andersen, Pernille Tanggaard

2016-01-01

. Results: Review of these studies show that older people generally have positive attitudes towards AT, but also that acceptance of technologies is a potentially stressful process where trust towards technologies and other people are of importance. Older people have ambivalent experiences with technology......Purpose: The purpose of this study was to synthesize the available qualitative studies on the meanings of assistive technologies (AT) in elderly people's everyday lives in order to identify central concepts, themes, and findings from existing research. Method: A systematic search of the literature...... was conducted, using predetermined search strategies. Exclusion criteria were, in accordance with the meta-interpretive approach, developed iteratively during the reading of abstracts and articles. Interpretations from the included studies were used as data for thematic analysis and synthesis of findings...

Augmenting Everyday Artefacts to Support Social Interaction Among Senior Peers

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Nazzi, Elena; Sokoler, Tomas

2015-01-01

Novel technological possibilities emerge when tangible and social computing come together. This paper explores the potential of such technology when designing for seniors and their social interaction. Our research is guided by the concept of twitterIDo, which is to make seniors’ everyday activities...... and displays designed to start a dialogue with the seniors on how twitterIDo-technology may fit into their everyday situations. Our findings point out how augmented everyday artefacts can make a positive difference when designing technology in a domain such the one of seniors’ and their social interaction...... more visible by augmenting everyday artefacts to communicate the ongoing activity they are used for. We engaged a local community of seniors in a living lab to explore the possibilities of twitterIDo in real life situations. This paper presents a series of interactive prototypes of everyday artefacts...

Return to work in people with acquired brain injury: association with observed ability to use everyday technology.

Science.gov (United States)

Larsson-Lund, Maria; Kottorp, Anders; Malinowsky, Camilla

2017-07-01

The aim of this study was to explore how the observed ability to use everyday technology (ET), intrapersonal capacities and environmental characteristics related to ET use contributes to the likelihood of return to work in people with ABI. The aim was also to explore whether these variables added to the likelihood of return to work to earlier defined significant variables in the group: age, perceived ADL ability and perceived ability in ET use. A cross-sectional study. The Management of Everyday Technology Assessment (META), the short version of the Everyday Technology Use Questionnaire (S-ETUQ) and a revised version of the ADL taxonomy were used to evaluate 74 people with ABI. Individual ability measures from all assessments were generated by Rasch analyses and used for additional statistical analysis. The univariate analyses showed that the observed ability to use ET, as well as intrapersonal capacities and environmental characteristics related to ET use were all significantly associated with returning to work. In the multivariate analyses, none of these associations remained. The explanatory precision of return to work in people with ABI increased minimally by adding the observed ability to use ET and the variables related to ET use when age, perceived ability in ET use and ADL had been taken in account.

Orthodontics in the "Art" of Aesthetics.

Science.gov (United States)

Thomas, Mayuri

2015-01-01

Aesthetics in dentistry has of late become an awakening/actor among patients and often serves as a major reason for seeking dental treatment and care. Ever since the introduction of orthodontics as a separate specialty branch in dentistry, a variety of techniques have evolved, and methods developed both in the type of devices/instruments used and treatments planned. The discipline of orthodontic aesthetics involves micro and macro aesthetics, gingival, and facial aesthetics. This article helps focus on the artistic part of the orthodontic science. It brings out various important factors involved in customizing aesthetic orthodontic treatment planning according to the individual needs of the patient. Through this kind of treatment planning not only are the functional and biological needs of the patient met, they also provide a stable and durable results. Less invasive treatment planning makes it easier for the patient to select future treatment options as new technologies keep evolving. The review was selected by typing aesthetic orthodontics in the Google search engine, Pubmed, and Pubmed Central. Literature review of articles reflecting history, different analysis, factors responsible, and the latest technique was conducted.

Perceived difficulty in the use of everyday technology: relationships with everyday functioning in people with acquired brain injury with a special focus on returning to work.

Science.gov (United States)

Larsson Lund, Maria; Nygård, Louise; Kottorp, Anders

2014-01-01

The aim was to explore the relationships between difficulties in the use of everyday technology (ET) and the ability to perform activities of daily life (ADL) in the home and in society and in the workplace in people with acquired brain injury (ABI). The investigation comprises an explorative cross-sectional study of 74 people with ABI. The short version of the Everyday Technology Use Questionnaire (S-ETUQ) and a revised version of the ADL taxonomy were used to evaluate the participants. Rasch-generated person ability measures of ET use and ADL were used in correlation analyses, in group comparisons by ANOVA and in logistic regressions. Difficulty in the use of ET was significantly correlated with ADL limitations. People who worked full- or part-time had significantly higher ability to use ET than those with some type of full-time, long-term sickness compensation. The ability to use ET, ADL ability and age were significantly related to return to work. The ability to use ET is related to all areas of everyday functioning in people with ABI. Therefore, a patient's ability to use ET needs to be considered in rehabilitation strategies following an ABI to enhance the patient's performance of activities in the home and in society and to support his or her likelihood of returning to work.

Digital media and aesthetical learning in day care education

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Holm, Søren

from a aesthetic view wherein the digital media can be used as a resource for the child to learn about body awareness and better understanding and remembrance of their own subjectivity, while still gaining the knowledge education the Danish system demands. In this paper I will use an existential...... that the child should no longer be seen as a user with an ipad, but instead should the ipad while in use be seen as an extension of the users subject. The importance comes in how the pedagog helps the user not to lose awareness of the body while this takes place, but instead let the user experience both the body......Digital media and aesthetical learning in day care education. The digital media is one of the major subjects that are to be included in everyday life in the Danish day care. This is a strategy from the Danish government, who view it as a necessary step in educating children for the future. In 2013...

Lasers in Facial Aesthetics- A Review

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Dishant Shah

2014-01-01

Full Text Available Background: Lasers and optical technologies play a significant role in aesthetic and reconstructive surgery. The unique ability of optical technologies to target specific structures and layers in tissues to effect chemical, mechanical or thermal changes make them a powerful tool in cutaneous rejuvenation, hair removal, fat removal and treatment of vascular lesions such as port-wine stains, among many other procedures. With the development of adjunct techniques such as epidermal cooling, lasers and optical technologies have become more versatile and safe. The constant improvement of existing applications and the emergence of novel applications such as photodynamic therapy, nanoparticles, spectroscopy and noninvasive imaging continue to revolutionize aesthetic medicine by offering a minimally invasive alternative to traditional surgery. In the future, therapies will be based on individualized, maximum, safe radiant exposure to deliver optimal dosimetry. Lasers and optical technologies are headed toward safer, easier and more quantifiable individualized therapy.

Aesthetic interaction

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Petersen, Marianne Graves; Iversen, Ole Sejer; Krogh, Peter

2004-01-01

, as it promotes aesthetics of use, rather than aesthetics of appearance. We coin this approach in the perspective of aesthetic interaction. Finally we make the point that aesthetics is not re-defining everything known about interactive systems. We provide a framework placing this perspective among other...

Experiencing-in-the-World : Using Pragmatist Philosophy to Design for Aesthetic Experience

OpenAIRE

Vyas, Dhaval; Heylen, Dirk K.J.; Eliens, A.P.W.; Eliëns, A.; Nijholt, Antinus; Kames, J.M.; Novotny, M.

2007-01-01

With the growing use of personal and ubiquitous computing technology, an increase is seen in utilizing aesthetic aspects for designing interactive systems. The use of aesthetic interpretations, however, has differed in different applications, often lacking a coherent and holistic meaning of aesthetics. In this paper we provide an account on aesthetics, utilizing the pragmatist perspective, which can be used as a framework to design for aesthetic experience in interactive systems. We discuss s...

Stability of person ability measures in people with acquired brain injury in the use of everyday technology: the test-retest reliability of the Management of Everyday Technology Assessment (META).

Science.gov (United States)

Malinowsky, Camilla; Kassberg, Ann-Charlotte; Larsson-Lund, Maria; Kottorp, Anders

2016-01-01

To evaluate the test-retest reliability of the Management of Everyday Technology Assessment (META) in a sample of people with acquired brain injury (ABI). The META was administered twice within a two-week period to 25 people with ABI. A Rasch measurement model was used to convert the META ordinal raw scores into equal-interval linear measures of each participant's ability to manage everyday technology (ET). Test-retest reliability of the stability of the person ability measures in the META was examined by a standardized difference Z-test and an intra-class correlations analysis (ICC 1). The results showed that the paired person ability measures generated from the META were stable over the test-retest period for 22 of the 25 subjects. The ICC 1 correlation was 0.63, which indicates good overall reliability. The META demonstrated acceptable test-retest reliability in a sample of people with ABI. The results illustrate the importance of using sufficiently challenging ETs (relative to a person's abilities) to generate stable META measurements over time. Implications for Rehabilitation The findings add evidence regarding the test-retest reliability of the person ability measures generated from the observation assessment META in a sample of people with ABI. The META might support professionals in the evaluation of interventions that are designed to improve clients' performance of activities including the ability to manage ET.

Smartphones and hyper everyday life

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Bernardo Amigo

2016-07-01

Full Text Available In this paper we present some results from our research on technological media convergence and everyday life. The results suggest that new changes would be happening on the space-temporal dimension of daily experience on people and in the way in which those give stability, structure and meaning to the intersubjective world, as a consequence of uses, appropriations and meanings about smartphones. We propose the concept of enriched everyday life or hyper everyday life in order to explain what we consider one of the principal transformations in daily life to people in the contemporary world related to the incorporation of smartphones.

Robot Aesthetics

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Jochum, Elizabeth Ann; Putnam, Lance Jonathan

This paper considers art-based research practice in robotics through a discussion of our course and relevant research projects in autonomous art. The undergraduate course integrates basic concepts of computer science, robotic art, live performance and aesthetic theory. Through practice...... in robotics research (such as aesthetics, culture and perception), we believe robot aesthetics is an important area for research in contemporary aesthetics....

Aesthetics, Usefulness and Performance in User--Search-Engine Interaction

Science.gov (United States)

Katz, Adi

2010-01-01

Issues of visual appeal have become an integral part of designing interactive systems. Interface aesthetics may form users' attitudes towards computer applications and information technology. Aesthetics can affect user satisfaction, and influence their willingness to buy or adopt a system. This study follows previous studies that found that users…

Estetica e oggetti quotidiani ?

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Elisabetta Di Stefano

2014-06-01

Full Text Available According to Hegel and to the romantic theory, Aesthetics is a philosophy of art. However, nowadays we can experience the beauty not only with art, but also with every product (fashion, videogames, cars, technological products. So we can query if the realm of aesthetics should hold also everyday products and how this could transform the traditional aesthetic categories.This essay aim to answer these questions. It aim furthermore to sketch the product’s theoretical foundations referring to national and international debate which have dealt with everyday aesthetics according to different point of view.

Interventions aimed at improving the ability to use everyday technology in work after brain injury.

Science.gov (United States)

Kassberg, Ann-Charlotte; Prellwitz, Maria; Malinowsky, Camilla; Larsson-Lund, Maria

2016-01-01

The aim of this study was to explore and describe how client-centred occupational therapy interventions may support and improve the ability to use everyday technology (ET) in work tasks in people with acquired brain injury (ABI). A qualitative, descriptive multiple-case study was designed, and occupation-based interventions were provided to three working-age participants with ABI. Multiple sources were used to collect data throughout the three intervention processes, including assessments, field notes, and interviews. The Canadian Occupational Performance Measure and the Management of Everyday Technology Assessment were administered before the interventions, after the interventions and at a follow-up session 2-3 months subsequent to the interventions. The three intervention processes initially consisted of similar actions, but subsequently the actions took on a different focus and intensity for each case. All of the goals in each of the three case processes were achieved, and both perceived and observed abilities to use ET in work tasks improved. Client-centred occupational therapy interventions might have the potential to improve the ability to use ET in work tasks in people with ABI.

Environmental Aesthetics

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Svabo, Connie; Ekelund, Kathrine

2015-01-01

The philosophical subfield environmental aesthetics can contribute to the design of sustainable futures. Environmental aesthetics provides a conceptual framework for understanding the relationship between nature and culture. Current positions in environmental aesthetics are lined out and used...

Aesthetic chills: Knowledge-acquisition, meaning-making and aesthetic emotions

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Leonid Perlovsky

2016-08-01

Full Text Available This article addresses the relation between aesthetic emotions, knowledge-acquisition, and meaning-making. We briefly review theoretical foundations and present experimental data related to aesthetic chills. These results suggest that aesthetic chills are inhibited by exposing the subject to an incoherent prime prior to the chill-eliciting stimulation, and that a meaningful prime makes the aesthetic experience more pleasurable than a neutral or an incoherent one. Aesthetic chills induced by narrative structures seem to be related to the pinnacle of the story, to have a significant calming effect and subjects describe a strong empathy for the characters. We discuss the relation between meaning-making and aesthetic emotions at the psychological, physiological, narratological, and mathematical levels and propose a series of hypotheses to be tested in future research.

[What is beauty? : Manifest for an aesthetic character medicine].

Science.gov (United States)

Harth, W

2017-12-01

Aesthetic medicine has in recent decades attained a growing social significance and firm place in the medical profession image. In a short time, a variety of technical procedures and processes have been developed and applied by specialized physicians. A further leading medical discussion regarding the central question "What is beauty" is missing compared with the technologically innovative progress. Beauty is characterized by an individual and subjective pleasure. Social media and fashion trends exert a central influence on common beauty ideals and aesthetic medicine. In practice, the artificial intervention must accord to the individual personality. Therefore, the professional term Aesthetic Medicine is insufficient and should be replaced by "Aesthetic Character Medicine". The particular purpose is the aim of graceful aging and a sustained adequate result which outlasts the zeitgeist. This requires medical know how and clear aesthetic self-conception of the physician. "Aesthetic Character Medicine" can be realized in a discourse, with the 10-step plan presented in this article.

HD aesthetics and digital cinematography

OpenAIRE

Flaxton, T.

2015-01-01

This chapter is accompanied by a series of online interviews entitled ‘A Verbatim History of the Aesthetics, Technology and Techniques of Digital Cinematography’. This online resource seeks to circumscribe and circumlocute the wide variety of interests and usages of incoming digital media with specific relation to the effects of increased resolution being offered by emerging digital technologies and can be found here: www.visualfields.co.uk/indexHDresource.htm

FCJ-132 Towards a Performative Aesthetics of Interactivity

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Simon Penny

2011-12-01

Full Text Available This paper places contemporary modalities of digital interaction in an historical context of sixty years of intersections between technological development and artistic experimentation. Specific technological developments are identified as context-defining historical markers and specific works are discussed as exemplars of significant milestones in the engineering and the aesthetics of interaction. The shortage of theorisation of non-instrumental interaction is lamented. The process of naturalisation to increasingly sophisticated digital tools and appliances in the current period of ubiquitous computing is noted. A number of theoretical issues are drawn out and discussed in terms of cognitive and sensorimotor dynamics. Woven through the discussion is the proposal that a synthesis of performance theory and neuro-cognitive studies might provide a basis for a performative ontology around which an aesthetics of interaction might be constructed. As the paper progresses a theoretical framework for an ontologically performative aesthetics of interaction and ubiquity is formulated.

Critical Aesthetic Realism

Science.gov (United States)

McMahon, Jennifer A.

2011-01-01

A clear-cut concept of the aesthetic is elusive. Kant's "Critique of Judgment" presents one of the more comprehensive aesthetic theories from which one can extract a set of features, some of which pertain to aesthetic experience and others to the logical structure of aesthetic judgment. When considered together, however, these features present a…

Brain and Aesthetic Attitude: How to Integrate "Old" and "New" Aesthetics

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Gianluca Consoli

2014-01-01

Full Text Available At present, various efforts are being put forward to naturalize aesthetics. One of the most controversial disciplines of aesthetics is neuroaesthetics. The first applications of neuroimaging of the aesthetic experience of paintings occurred ten years ago. Over this decade, neuroscientific findings have determined three common centers of visual aesthetic experience: top-down processing; reward and evaluation; and cortical sensory processing. Undoubtedly, these common centers require better identification and further investigation. However, the experimental data currently available make it possible to falsify or corroborate traditional philosophical theories of aesthetic perception and evaluation. Within an integrated approach to aesthetics, this selective function might constitute a future role for neuroaesthetics in humanities research.

Experiencing-in-the-World : Using Pragmatist Philosophy to Design for Aesthetic Experience

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Vyas, Dhaval; Heylen, Dirk K.J.; Eliens, A.P.W.; Eliëns, A.; Nijholt, Antinus; Kames, J.M.; Novotny, M.

2007-01-01

With the growing use of personal and ubiquitous computing technology, an increase is seen in utilizing aesthetic aspects for designing interactive systems. The use of aesthetic interpretations, however, has differed in different applications, often lacking a coherent and holistic meaning of

Designers as determinants for aesthetic innovation

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Fjællegaard, Cecilie Bryld; Beukel, Karin; Alkærsig, Lars

The innovation literature states that scientists are core ingredients in creating technological innovations. This paper investigates whether the hiring of a designer generates aesthetic innovations by a firm. Further we investigate what the level of design knowledge of the receiving firm means fo...

Kin-aesthetic Space-making

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Brabrand, Helle

2016-01-01

Body Space Object Symposium 26.02.2016 Strand: The (Moving) Body as Archive Title: Kin-aesthetic Space-making The paper presents a cross-medial practice exchanging body movement and tectonic space. Working with a performative model of gesture, the practice takes up a dialogue with Jean......’s How the Body Shapes the Mind forms part of the theoretical approach to motile kin-aesthetical forces of art-making, underlying this paper. In my practice I work with body- and space gestures, interchanging through a ‘third’ material, featured on screens. The hybrid production includes animated 2 and 3......D drawings, video sequences, and technological treatment constituted by movement of camera, light and diverse editing. Creating a mutable changing sensory surface, the modelling gestures draw attention to their actual occurring in space-time, articulating and transforming space-time configurations...

Cyborgs in the Everyday: Masculinity and Biosensing Prostate Cancer.

Science.gov (United States)

Haddow, Gill; King, Emma; Kunkler, Ian; McLaren, Duncan

2015-10-02

An in vivo biosensor is a technology in development that will assess the biological activity of cancers to individualise external beam radiotherapy. Inserting such technology into the human body creates cybernetic organisms; a cyborg that is a human-machine hybrid. There is a gap in knowledge relating to patient willingness to allow automated technology to be embedded and to become cyborg. There is little agreement around what makes a cyborg and less understanding of the variation in the cyborgisation process. Understanding the viewpoint of possible beneficiaries addresses such gaps. There are currently three versions of 'cyborg' in the literature (i) a critical feminist STS concept to destabilise power inherent in dualisms, (ii) an extreme version of the human/machine in science-fiction that emphasises the 'man' in human and (iii) a prediction of internal physiological adaptation required for future space exploration. Interview study findings with 12 men in remission from prostate cancer show a fourth version can be used to describe current and future sub-groups of the population; 'everyday cyborgs'. For the everyday cyborg the masculine cyborg status found in the fictionalised human-machine related to issues of control of the cancer. This was preferred to the felt stigmatisation of being a 'leaker and bleeder'. The willingness to become cyborg was matched with a having to get used to the everyday cyborg's technological adaptations and risks. It is crucial to explore the everyday cyborg's sometimes ambivalent viewpoint. The everyday cyborg thus adds the dimension of participant voice currently missing in existing cyborg literatures and imaginations.

Investigation of Environmental Topics in the Science and Technology Curriculum and Textbooks in Terms of Environmental Ethics and Aesthetics

Science.gov (United States)

Lacin Simsek, Canan

2011-01-01

In order to solve environmental problems, it is thought that education should be connected with values. For this reason, it is emphasized that environmental issues should be integrated with ethical and aesthetic values. In this study, 6th, 7th and 8th grade science and technology curriculum and textbooks were investigated to find out how much…

Dynamics of aesthetic appreciation

Science.gov (United States)

Carbon, Claus-Christian

2012-03-01

Aesthetic appreciation is a complex cognitive processing with inherent aspects of cold as well as hot cognition. Research from the last decades of empirical has shown that evaluations of aesthetic appreciation are highly reliable. Most frequently, facial attractiveness was used as the corner case for investigating aesthetic appreciation. Evaluating facial attractiveness shows indeed high internal consistencies and impressively high inter-rater reliabilities, even across cultures. Although this indicates general and stable mechanisms underlying aesthetic appreciation, it is also obvious that our taste for specific objects changes dynamically. Aesthetic appreciation on artificial object categories, such as fashion, design or art is inherently very dynamic. Gaining insights into the cognitive mechanisms that trigger and enable corresponding changes of aesthetic appreciation is of particular interest for research as this will provide possibilities to modeling aesthetic appreciation for longer durations and from a dynamic perspective. The present paper refers to a recent two-step model ("the dynamical two-step-model of aesthetic appreciation"), dynamically adapting itself, which accounts for typical dynamics of aesthetic appreciation found in different research areas such as art history, philosophy and psychology. The first step assumes singular creative sources creating and establishing innovative material towards which, in a second step, people adapt by integrating it into their visual habits. This inherently leads to dynamic changes of the beholders' aesthetic appreciation.

Conceptualizing Aesthetics in Design

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Folkmann, Mads Nygaard

2018-01-01

The aim of this chapter is to introduce and discuss aesthetics as an approach to understand how design frames experience. In doing so, the chapter combines two philosophical interests in design, design phenomenology and design aesthetics, in order to promote a framework for discussing the impact...... of aesthetic meaning construction on experience. First, the chapter raises the phenomenological question of the relationship between design and experience, specifically, how design conditions experience. Second, in looking at aesthetics in terms of a) the sensual appeal of design, b) design objects...... as aesthetic media that frame modes of understanding, and c) contextual factors, such as media, influencing what is regarded as aesthetic, it is the thesis of the chapter that a reflective concept of design aesthetics can be employed to differentiate between three different ways in which design frame our...

A New Kind of Aesthetics —The Mathematical Structure of the Aesthetic

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Akihiro Kubota

2017-06-01

Full Text Available This paper proposes a new approach to the investigation into aesthetics. Specifically, it~argues that it is possible to explain the aesthetic and its underlying dynamic relations with an~axiomatic structure (the octahedral axiom-derived category based on contemporary mathematics (namely category theory, and through this argument suggests the possibility for discussion about the mathematical structure of the aesthetic. If there were a way to describe the structure of the aesthetic with the language of mathematical structures and mathematical axioms---a~language completely devoid of arbitrariness---then we would make possible a universal argument about the essential human activity of ``the aesthetic'', and we would also gain a new method and viewpoint into the philosophy and meaning of the act of creating a work of art and artistic activities. This paper presents one mathematical structure as a foundation in constructing the science of dynamic aesthetics based on axiomatic functionalism, which is in turn based on a new interdisciplinary investigation into the generative structure of the aesthetic.

Bioeconomy analysis in Aesthetic Dentistry

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Andreea Dana Tudose

2015-12-01

Full Text Available Bioeconomy is currently an area of great and mighty power development. High complexity of this field is to combine the use of technologies that use biological resources in the range of human values involved. This study requires that objective SWOT analysis applied in dental esthetics with strict reference to the quality of work in relation to aesthetic and functional effectiveness of the treatment, the life, the method of reconstruction, working technique, the degree of invasiveness of treatment in relation to conservation dental tissues ,execution costs, costs of resources used in dental anterior segment reconstruction and economic analysis of the modalities of treatment techniques reported the need and level of understanding of patients on treatment aesthetic-functional complexity. As material and method took into account the interaction of four factors: Strenghts-Weaknesses-Opportunities -Hazards. In group “Strengths” we have included successful treatment aesthetic-functional execution moderate cost, short time working on the seat, which shows limited use of natural resources. In group “Weaknesses” I included invasiveness of biological treatment, increased during execution of the work, aesthetic-functional failure , lack of training practitioners in dental aesthetics, lack of existant cabinets to promote interest in aesthetic dental medicine. “Op-portunities” referred to the minimally invasive treatment of dental tissue in existing clinical context with predictable results, as higher interest of patients for dental esthetics, raising the standard of care internationally. on group “Risks” (threats I listed: low resistance while works (weak predictability, decreasing purchasing power, changing customer preferences, increase service quality standards. In the second chapter we presented a report on the economic analysis - term labor - cost - average degree of patient satisfaction . In order to establish an economic plan to make a

The disconnect in the appropriation of new technologies into students’ everyday lives. A three country comparison.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

André H. Caron

2011-12-01

Full Text Available There is little doubt that students eagerly appropriate new technologies into their lives.  However, the authors wanted to explore what steps would be needed to ensure a proper appropriation of new technologies when applied to academic settings.  This paper presents a 3-country comparison of students reporting on their academic activities and technology use in everyday life. Though the numbers vary slightly within each country, the final results show an overall disconnect between the amount of time students allot to technology use and academic activities. Overall, the findings shed some much needed statistical light on the current reality of students’ technological and academic habits. The authors propose possible next steps to take in order to better understand this phenomenon. Ultimately, this study urges educators and students alike to gather more information about the role social media plays in students’ lives. A better understanding of the situation could eventually lead to the successful integration of new technologies in academia.

Affective responses to music in depressed individuals : Aesthetic judgments, emotions, and the impact of music-evoked autobiographical memories

OpenAIRE

Sakka, Laura Stavroula

2018-01-01

Music’s powerful influence on our affective states is often utilized in everyday life for emotion regulation and in music-therapeutic interventions against depression. Given this ability of music to influence emotions and symptoms in depressed people, it appears imperative to understand how these individuals affectively respond to music. The primary aim of this thesis is to explore whether depressed individuals have distinct affective responses to music, in terms of aesthetic judgments, emoti...

Investigating how everyday people experience security

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Mathiasen, Niels Raabjerg

In this paper I propose a method for analyzing everyday people's experiences with IT-security. I furthermore report how I applied the method. The proposal is motivated by work of other researchers and their efforts to get beyond secure behavior, and to get an insight in secure or insecure...... experiences that everyday users of technology encounter. The background for introducing this method is a project under the heading of IT Security for Citizens, which bridges between research competencies in HCI and security. In this project we develop methods and concepts to analyze digital signature systems...... and security sensible systems in a broad sense, from the point of view of contemporary CHI. The project includes literature studies of usable security, as well as empirical investigations and design work. This paper reports on my method to target user experiences of and with security technology....

Aesthetic experience of dance performances

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Vukadinović Maja

2012-01-01

Full Text Available In this study the aesthetic experience of dance performances is investigated. The study includes construction of an instrument for measuring the aesthetic experience of dance performances and an investigation of the structure of both dancers’ and spectators’ aesthetic experience. The experiments are carried out during eight different performances of various dance forms, including classical ballet, contemporary dance, flamenco and folklore. Three factors of aesthetic experience of dance performances are identified: Dynamism, Exceptionality and Affective Evaluation. The results show that dancers’ aesthetic experience has a somewhat different factorial structure from that of the spectators’. Unlike spectators’ aesthetic experience, dancers’ aesthetic experience singles out the Excitement factor. The results are discussed within the context of dancers’ proprioception and spectators’ exteroception since these findings confirm the idea of a significant role of proprioception in dancers’ aesthetic experience.

Balance, cogito and dott : Exploring media modalities for everyday-life reflection

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Mols, I.; Van Den Hoven, Elise; Eggen, J.H.

2017-01-01

Reflection in and on everyday life can provide selfinsight, increase gratitude and have a positive effect on well-being. To integrate reflection in everyday life, media technologies can provide support. In this paper, we explore how both media creation & use in different modalities can support

Transcendental in Hans Urs von Balthasar’s theological aesthetics and its significance for Chinese academic aesthetics

OpenAIRE

Peng, Sheng-Yu

2013-01-01

This thesis begins a dialogue between Hans Urs von Balthasar’s theological aesthetics and Chinese academic aesthetics. We identify a tension between aesthetics and religion in Chinese academic aesthetics, and argue that a dialogue with von Balthasar’s work has the potential to contribute to the development of Chinese academic aesthetics with regard to overcoming that tension. In order to set a ground for the dialogue, von Balthasar’s theological aesthetics is examined in Par...

Aesthetic Communication

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Thyssen, Ole

2012-01-01

Based on Niklas Luhmann's systems theory, aesthetics is defined as a manner of reinforcing the connectivity, or Anschlusswert, of communication. Without changing the content, a message can be made more attractive, strengthening the receiver's willingness to be attentive and accepting. As communic......Based on Niklas Luhmann's systems theory, aesthetics is defined as a manner of reinforcing the connectivity, or Anschlusswert, of communication. Without changing the content, a message can be made more attractive, strengthening the receiver's willingness to be attentive and accepting....... As communication inevitably makes use of a sensuous medium, such as light or sound, all communication has an aesthetic dimension. In the 19th Century, an important distinction was made between pure and applied art, following Immanuel Kant's separation of theory of knowledge, moral theory and aesthetic theory....... Whereas pure art is produced in order to be observed, applied art has to fulfill practical purposes as well. Modern organizations, defined as systems of communication, may use art works to embellish and define themselves. But they inevitably use applied art as a practical tool in their normal...

Theses on Distributed Aesthetics. Or, What a Network is Not

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Geert Lovink

2005-01-01

Full Text Available In this essay Lovink and Munster set forward a number of proposals for a distributed aesthetics. If new media artistic practice and aesthetic experience were most often characterised by recourse to computational culture, then distributed aesthetics is dominated by networks. Networked media and technologies help to disperse experience so that we never seem to be having our experiences in the one place anymore. However, the authors suggest, most of the images and rhetoric attempting to characterise this distributed experience are drawn from the cartographic traditions of geographic information systems and/or conceptions of biological networking and growth. These do not assist in coming to terms with the specifically social aspects of online networking. The authors speculate that a distributed aesthetics must take into account the collective and personal 'aesthesia' of online networks - the experience of labouring towards new forms of social collectivity that produces not only euphoria but also boredom and frustration.

Evaluating aesthetics in design

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Folkmann, Mads Nygaard

2010-01-01

: an aesthetics of sensual relation and an aesthetics of communicative self-reflection. Following these concepts the article raises questions of dealing with design as a structure of sensual appearance, and of design as an act of communication that can contain an aesthetic coding in letting an idea or content...

Esteetilise suhtumise mõiste Nõukogude Eesti esteetikas. The Concept of Aesthetic Approach in Soviet Estonian Aesthetics

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Marek Volt

2012-04-01

Full Text Available This nostalgic yet analytic article discusses the topic of aesthetic approach in the aesthetic literature of Soviet Estonia (authors Borev, Kagan, Stolovich and others. Firstly, the aesthetic approach engages man’s creative/reshaping activities in relation to the world (following Marx’s slogan that ’man also produces in accordance with the laws of beauty’. Secondly, an artistic meaning can be distinguished, followed by a third, the subjective aesthetic meaning, which indicates the actual application of aesthetic categories (such as ’beauty’, ’sublimity’, etc.. Since the subjective aesthetic meaning is fundamental in relation to the other meanings, the article focuses on the specific characterisation of this category. The first important characteristic is the appraisability, which is born from the usage of the categories; the number of categories has been subject to historical change, reflecting the development of man’s aesthetic approach. Aesthetic approach was mainly defined through the five conditions (sensuousness, direct contact with the concrete object, selflessness, and the appraisal of the object in comparison with the ideal. Analysis of the aesthetic approach in a historical dialectic relation to theoretical, utilitarian and ethical approaches indicates that aesthetical feelings only arose towards the end of the Paleolithic era. Peoples on a lower developmental level didn’t know of aesthetic appraisal, or their aesthetic appraisals were still very closely connected with the utilitaristic. Even though all approaches at times are exhibited in their ‘pure’ forms, Soviet aesthetics generally held to the opinion that they arose simultaneously in daily practice and were intertwined with one another. The societal and practical meanings are what constitute the aesthetic approach – meaning that they define what man will begin to consider beautiful (in its more radical forms, this meant reducing the beauty of an object to

Expanding the conduct of everyday life concept for psychological media research with children

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Chimirri, Niklas Alexander

2013-01-01

The concept conduct of everyday life has lately been discussed with regards to how children are engaged with participating in the manifold practices that constitute their daily living. They coordinate their actions with others (adults and children) in order to increasingly influence the conditions......, the article shows how the concept is fruitful for investigating how kindergarten children use media technologies for conducting their everyday lives in the mutually shared kindergarten practice. Finally, it argues that the concept needs to be expanded in order to comprehensively grasp the intersubjective...... and material mediatedness of an everyday life with media technologies....

The Plug-in Concept: Technology and Aesthetics of Change

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Peter Šenk

2013-01-01

Full Text Available The architecture concept of plug-in is based on the duality of the infrastructure system and units or elements connected to it. In the context of megastructures, the concept was most vividly characterised by works of Archigram and Japanese Metabolists in the 1960s and early 1970s. Blurring the boundary between the building and the city, the plug-in concept outgrew architectural boundaries and was slowly transformed into an urbanistic concept.The paper presents the cultural context relevant to contemporaneity, which influenced specific development of the technology-driven concept of plug-in in the British Archigram Group and Japanese Metabolists. Based on the aesthetics of change and incompleteness, which was characterised by similar architectural manifestations despite entirely different cultural backgrounds, the plug-in concept foreshadowed social transformation based on freedom, individualisation and mobility in an utopian manner and held a promise of urban development with adaptability to unpredictable needs and desires of residents, who would become its co-creators with an active approach.Although the revolutionary sixties are quite some time behind, the plug-in concept in its commodified form has become and remained operational and relevant at least on the metaphorical level; in the contemporary space it is evident primarily in urbanism and not as much in its original architectural form.

Aesthetic Emotions Across Arts: A Comparison Between Painting and Music

Science.gov (United States)

Miu, Andrei C.; Pițur, Simina; Szentágotai-Tătar, Aurora

2016-01-01

Emotional responses to art have long been subject of debate, but only recently have they started to be investigated in affective science. The aim of this study was to compare perceptions regarding frequency of aesthetic emotions, contributing factors, and motivation which characterize the experiences of looking at painting and listening to music. Parallel surveys were filled in online by participants (N = 971) interested in music and painting. By comparing self-reported characteristics of these experiences, this study found that compared to listening to music, looking at painting was associated with increased frequency of wonder and decreased frequencies of joyful activation and power. In addition to increased vitality, as reflected by the latter two emotions, listening to music was also more frequently associated with emotions such as tenderness, nostalgia, peacefulness, and sadness. Compared to painting-related emotions, music-related emotions were perceived as more similar to emotions in other everyday life situations. Participants reported that stimulus features and previous knowledge made more important contributions to emotional responses to painting, whereas prior mood, physical context and the presence of other people were considered more important in relation to emotional responses to music. Self-education motivation was more frequently associated with looking at painting, whereas mood repair and keeping company motivations were reported more frequently in relation to listening to music. Participants with visual arts education reported increased vitality-related emotions in their experience of looking at painting. In contrast, no relation was found between music education and emotional responses to music. These findings offer a more general perspective on aesthetic emotions and encourage integrative research linking different types of aesthetic experience. PMID:26779072

Aesthetic Emotions Across Arts: A Comparison Between Painting and Music.

Science.gov (United States)

Miu, Andrei C; Pițur, Simina; Szentágotai-Tătar, Aurora

2015-01-01

Emotional responses to art have long been subject of debate, but only recently have they started to be investigated in affective science. The aim of this study was to compare perceptions regarding frequency of aesthetic emotions, contributing factors, and motivation which characterize the experiences of looking at painting and listening to music. Parallel surveys were filled in online by participants (N = 971) interested in music and painting. By comparing self-reported characteristics of these experiences, this study found that compared to listening to music, looking at painting was associated with increased frequency of wonder and decreased frequencies of joyful activation and power. In addition to increased vitality, as reflected by the latter two emotions, listening to music was also more frequently associated with emotions such as tenderness, nostalgia, peacefulness, and sadness. Compared to painting-related emotions, music-related emotions were perceived as more similar to emotions in other everyday life situations. Participants reported that stimulus features and previous knowledge made more important contributions to emotional responses to painting, whereas prior mood, physical context and the presence of other people were considered more important in relation to emotional responses to music. Self-education motivation was more frequently associated with looking at painting, whereas mood repair and keeping company motivations were reported more frequently in relation to listening to music. Participants with visual arts education reported increased vitality-related emotions in their experience of looking at painting. In contrast, no relation was found between music education and emotional responses to music. These findings offer a more general perspective on aesthetic emotions and encourage integrative research linking different types of aesthetic experience.

Aesthetic emotions across arts: A comparison between painting and music

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Andrei C. Miu

2016-01-01

Full Text Available Emotional responses to art have long been subject of debate, but only recently have they started to be investigated in affective science. The aim of this study was to compare perceptions regarding frequency of aesthetic emotions, contributing factors and motivation which characterize the experiences of looking at painting and listening to music. Parallel surveys were filled in online by participants (N = 971 interested in music and painting. By comparing self-reported characteristics of these experiences, this study found that compared to listening to music, looking at painting was associated with increased frequency of wonder and decreased frequencies of joyful activation and power. In addition to increased vitality, as reflected by the latter two emotions, listening to music was also more frequently associated with emotions such as tenderness, nostalgia, peacefulness and sadness. Compared to painting-related emotions, music-related emotions were perceived as more similar to emotions in other everyday life situations. Participants reported that stimulus features and previous knowledge made more important contributions to emotional responses to painting, whereas prior mood, physical context and the presence of other people were considered more important in relation to emotional responses to music. Self-education motivation was more frequently associated with looking at painting, whereas mood repair and keeping company motivations were reported more frequently in relation to listening to music. Participants with visual arts education reported increased vitality-related emotions in their experience of looking at painting. In contrast, no relation was found between music education and emotional responses to music. These findings offer a more general perspective on aesthetic emotions and encourage integrative research linking different types of aesthetic experience.

A dual-process perspective on fluency-based aesthetics: the pleasure-interest model of aesthetic liking.

Science.gov (United States)

Graf, Laura K M; Landwehr, Jan R

2015-11-01

In this article, we develop an account of how aesthetic preferences can be formed as a result of two hierarchical, fluency-based processes. Our model suggests that processing performed immediately upon encountering an aesthetic object is stimulus driven, and aesthetic preferences that accrue from this processing reflect aesthetic evaluations of pleasure or displeasure. When sufficient processing motivation is provided by a perceiver's need for cognitive enrichment and/or the stimulus' processing affordance, elaborate perceiver-driven processing can emerge, which gives rise to fluency-based aesthetic evaluations of interest, boredom, or confusion. Because the positive outcomes in our model are pleasure and interest, we call it the Pleasure-Interest Model of Aesthetic Liking (PIA Model). Theoretically, this model integrates a dual-process perspective and ideas from lay epistemology into processing fluency theory, and it provides a parsimonious framework to embed and unite a wealth of aesthetic phenomena, including contradictory preference patterns for easy versus difficult-to-process aesthetic stimuli. © 2015 by the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, Inc.

A qualitative study of the influence of poor dental aesthetics on the lives of young adults.

Science.gov (United States)

Josefsson, Eva; Lindsten, Rune; Hallberg, Lillemor R-M

2010-01-01

Although many countries offer some publicly funded orthodontic treatment for children, not all conditions receive treatment and some adolescents enter adulthood with persisting poor dental aesthetics or malocclusions. The aim of this study was to generate a theory highlighting the main concerns of young adults, either native-born or of immigrant background, with poor dental aesthetics and the measures they adopt to manage their condition in everyday life. A qualitative method, classic grounded theory, was applied in order to generate a substantive theory highlighting the main concerns and managing mechanisms of 13 strategically selected 19- and 20-year-olds with poor dental aesthetics. Open interviews were conducted with each participant, the topics covering different aspects of social and dental conditions. A core category and three conceptual categories were generated. The core category was labelled "Being under the pressure of social norms" and was related to categories explaining three different ways in which these young adults handle their main concern: (1) avoiding showing their teeth; (2) minimizing the importance of appearance; and (3) seeking orthodontic treatment. The theory offers the potential for improved understanding of young adults who, despite poor dental aesthetics, are managing well with life, and also of those who have not adjusted well. In early adolescence it may be problematic to make decisions about orthodontic treatment. Undisclosed dental fear can be an important barrier. Some of the young adults in the present study would probably benefit from treatment.

Designing self-care for everyday life

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Verdezoto, Nervo; Nunes, Francisco; Grönvall, Erik

2014-01-01

Managing chronic conditions can be challenging. People in such conditions, and the people around them, have to: deal with symptoms, adapt to the resulting disability, manage emotions, and change habits to keep the condition under control. Self-care technologies have the potential to support self-care...... and mediate the relationship between patients (and caregivers) and the condition. However, these technologies often disregard the complexity of the settings in which they are used and fail to become integrated in everyday life. In this workshop we will discuss how to design self-care technologies...

Probing a Proactive Home: Challenges in Researching and Designing Everyday Smart Environments

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Frans Mäyrä

2006-01-01

Full Text Available Based on the results of a 3-year interdisciplinary study, this article presents an approach in which proactive information technology was introduced into homes, and discusses the derived design principles from a human-centered perspective. The application of proactive computing in homes will face particularly sensitive conditions, as familiar and reliable household elements remain strongly preferred. Since there is considerable resistance towards the increase of information technology in homes, both the calm system behaviors and the degree of variety in aesthetic designs will play major roles in the acceptance of proactive technology. If proactive technology will be an embedded part of a home’s structures and furniture, it needs to blend with the normal, cozy standards of a real living environment and aim to enhance the homeyness or the key social and aesthetic qualities of homes.

That perverse second skin: ethics, aesthetics and politics in dress according to Jean-Jacques Rousseau Perversa segunda piel. Ética, estética y política en el vestido según Jean-Jacques Rousseau

OpenAIRE

Jorge LÓPEZ LLORET

2012-01-01

Rousseau’s influence on Western culture in the second half of the eighteenth century was particularly important because the ability to translate his generic philosophical concepts to specific areas of everyday life. A prime plot in which he did was to design clothes, where he refused the luxury and fashion in the name of a rustic aesthetic. This rustic aesthetic was the manifestation of a social and political change. The society constantly hinders us, especially when it says us how we must dr...

Learning: The role of aesthetics in education | Adu-Agyem | Journal ...

African Journals Online (AJOL)

Journal of Science and Technology (Ghana) ... transmit the value of art in enhancing creativity through aesthetics in children and consequently enhance their learning. ... efforts to develop children's creativity and learning through art education.

A Road to Aesthetic Stylistics

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Samir Al-Sheikh

2016-08-01

Full Text Available Being a linguistic phenomenon, poetry is marked by the defamilarization of language in a poetic discourse there is an aesthetic distortion of  the normal codes, in which the aesthetic value is the most prominent function of the poetic texture . This study is a new  adventure in correlating linguistics to aesthetics by and through the so-called approach Aesthetic stylistics( As. Aesthetic stylistics is the application of the theory of beauty to the intentionally violated components in literary text. It proceeds with the hypothesis that John Keats's Ode on a Grecian Urn and Kabbani's Maritime Poem are disinterested poetic experiences which create ecstatic responses to the reader's awareness, therefore, the judgment of the reader's taste is aesthetic. The study aims at highlighting the stylistic-aesthetic factors which generate the judgment of taste. While drawing heavily on the aestheticism of the Prague Linguistic Circle and Halliday's Functional Linguistics (FL, or what has come to be called the Traditional European Functionalism, the study will analyze Keats' Ode and Kabbani's poem in terms of Kant's Kritik der Urteilstraft, KdU. The two circles of the linguistic description and aesthetic interpretation will be internally interlinked to create the coherence of the stylistic process. The study consists of an introduction, two parts, one in theory and the other in analysis; it is eventually rounded up with concluding remarks elicited from the semiotic quest.  Keywords: Stylistics, Functionalism, Aesthetics

Aesthetics and Learning

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Austring, Bennyé D.; Sørensen, Merete

This paper is built on our book "Aesthetics and Learning", Hans Reizels Publishers, Copenhagen 2010. In this book we describe the relationship between aesthetic creative activities and children’s development and learning, based on among other the theories of Malcolm Ross (1988), Hansjörg Hohr (2000...

On the aesthetic illusion.

Science.gov (United States)

Balter, L

1999-01-01

The aesthetic illusion--the experience of the content of a work of art as reality--occurs through the mobilization and intensification of typical infantile fantasies in the beholder. This necessarily evokes intrapsychic conflict in the mature adult. Two illusion-producing strategies ameliorate this conflict and effect the aesthetic illusion. The first illusion is that the artist's proffered fantasy is the beholder's own personal and private fantasy. This isolates the beholder from the shame- and guilt-evoking social surround. The second illusion is that the protagonist depicted in the work is an actual person. This defends the beholder from the painful emotions attendant upon his instinctually gratifying identification with the protagonist. The first illusion is necessary for the establishment of the second, but it is the second that establishes the aesthetic illusion. The aesthetic illusion exists in a highly unstable dynamic equilibrium with the beholder's usual reality orientation. If either orientation is too powerful, the dynamic equilibrium is disrupted and the aesthetic experience as such is abolished.

Materialities shape practices and notions of comfort in everyday life

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Madsen, Line Valdorff

2018-01-01

The development of residential energy technologies aims to ensure thermal comfort in an increasingly energy-efficient manner. This development influences everyday practices related to comfort in everyday life in dwellings. Therefore, an empirical analysis of interviews with residents in three types...... in heating systems between the housing types and shows how changes in technologies and material structures shape the practices of heating and airing. A shift in technology from radiators to underfloor heating was found to make a clear difference in both how houses are heated and thermal comfort is perceived...... of Danish detached houses, related to the building age, is used to understand how changes in technologies influence residents’ practices and notions of comfort. Detached houses are the most widespread type of housing in Denmark, constituting 44% of the housing stock. The analysis focuses on differences...

Integrating the philosophy and psychology of aesthetic experience: development of the aesthetic experience scale.

Science.gov (United States)

Stamatopoulou, Despina

2004-10-01

This study assessed the dynamic relationship between person and object in aesthetic experience. Patterns of the structure of aesthetic experience were derived from a conceptual model based on philosophical and psychological ideas. These patterns were further informed by interviewing individuals with extensive involvement in aesthetic activities and 25 secondary students. Accordingly, patterns were tested by developing a large pool of items attempting to identify measurable structural components of aesthetic experience. Refined first in a pilot study, the 36-item questionnaire was administered to 652 Greek students, aged from 13 to 15 years. Correlation matrices and exploratory factor analyses on principal components were used to examine internal structural relationships. The obliquely rotated five-factor solution of the refined instrument accounted for the 44.1% of the total variance and was combatible with the conceptual model of aesthetic experience, indicating the plausibility of both. The internal consistency of the items was adequate and external correlational analysis offered preliminary support for subsequent development of a self-report measure that serves to operationalize the major constructs of aesthetic experience in the general adolescent population. The results also raise theoretical issues for those interested in empirical aesthetics, suggesting that in experiential functioning, expressive perception and affect may play a more constructive role in cognitive processes than is generally acknowledged.

Recent research on the aesthetics of knowledge in science and in religion

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Arianna Borrelli

2017-11-01

Full Text Available As an introduction to the case studies collected in the current special issue, this review article provides a brief, and by no means exhaustive, overview of research that proves to be relevant to the development of a concept of an aesthetics of knowledge in the academic study of religion and in science and technology studies. Finally, it briefly discusses recent work explicitly addressing the aesthetic entangle-ment of science and religion.

Design and the question of aesthetics

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Friberg, Carsten

2014-01-01

In the article an approach to aesthetics is suggested with the focus on the education of the designer rather than on the outcome of the design. Design is taken to be an interpretative intervention into a social context which requires a sensibility for the context. The forming of this sensibility...... in the social context a central issue of aesthetics. Here, is the argument, is the link to an aesthetic education understood as an education of our senses through cultural products which is also a link to a perspective that appears to be absent in present debates on aesthetics in relation to design. Taking up...... is the goal of an aesthetic education. Through discussions of different approaches to aesthetics like Grant Kester’s dialogical aesthetics and Kant’s critique of the faculty of judgement, it is emphasized how sensibility as the key focus of aesthetics rather than art and beauty makes the ability to manoeuvre...

Long Memory of Pathfinding Aesthetics

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Ron Coleman

2009-01-01

Full Text Available This paper investigates a new dynamic (i.e., space-time model to measure aesthetic values in pathfinding for videogames. The results we report are important firstly because the artificial intelligence literature has given relatively little attention to aesthetic considerations in pathfinding. Secondly, those investigators who have studied aesthetics in pathfinding have relied largely on anecdotal arguments rather than metrics. Finally, in those cases where metrics have been used in the past, they show only that aesthetic paths are different. They provide no quantitative means to classify aesthetic outcomes. The model we develop here overcomes these deficiencies using rescaled range (R/S analysis to estimate the Hurst exponent, . It measures long-range dependence (i.e., long memory in stochastic processes and provides a novel well-defined mathematical classification for pathfinding. Indeed, the data indicates that aesthetic and control paths have statistically significantly distinct signatures. Aesthetic paths furthermore have more long memory than controls with an effect size that is large, more than three times that of an alternative approach. These conclusions will be of interest to researchers investigating games as well as other forms of entertainment, simulation, and in general nonshortest path motion planning.

Aesthetic procedures in office practice.

Science.gov (United States)

Small, Rebecca

2009-12-01

Since the approval of botulinum toxin, dermal fillers, and lasers for cosmetic use, minimally invasive aesthetic procedures have rapidly become the treatments of choice for age-related facial changes. In the past 10 years, aesthetic procedures have increased nearly five-fold. Of the 10.2 million aesthetic treatments performed in 2008, 83 percent were minimally invasive procedures. Botulinum toxin and dermal filler injections, laser hair reduction, chemical peels, laser skin resurfacing, microdermabrasion, and intense pulsed light photorejuvenation were the most commonly performed procedures in 2008. These procedures are effective and associated with minimal discomfort, and they have a low incidence of adverse effects and short recovery times. High patient and physician satisfaction have contributed to their growing popularity and availability in the primary care setting. As patient demand for aesthetic treatments increases, family physicians should be familiar with common minimally invasive aesthetic procedures when advising patients or incorporating aesthetic care into office practice.

Everyday imagery

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Peters, Chris; Allan, Stuart

2016-01-01

the gradual disappearance of media from personal consciousness in a digital age. If ceaselessness is a defining characteristic of the current era, our analysis reveals that the use of smartphone cameras is indicative of people affectively and self-consciously deploying the technology to try to arrest......User-based research into the lived experiences associated with smartphone camera practices – in particular, the taking, storing, curating, and sharing of personal imagery in the digital media sphere – remains scarce, especially in contrast to their increasing ubiquity. Accordingly, this article...... social bonds, and encompass a future-oriented perspective. Relatedly, in terms of photographic composition, visual content tends to circulate around the social presence of others, boundedness of event, perceived aesthetic value, and intended shareability. Our findings question certain formulations about...

Aesthetic activities and aesthetic attitudes: influences of education, background and personality on interest and involvement in the arts.

Science.gov (United States)

McManus, I C; Furnham, A

2006-11-01

There have been few studies of why some people are frequently involved in aesthetic activities such as going to the theatre, reading or playing musical instruments, whereas others are less involved. This study assesses the broad roles of education, personality and demographic factors such as social class, age and sex. More aesthetic activity was associated with music and art education, whereas science education had a substantial negative relationship with aesthetic activity, both directly and also indirectly via reduced art education. More aesthetic activity was particularly related to higher scores on the personality factor of openness, and also to lower scores on agreeableness and conscientiousness. Higher parental social class was also associated with more aesthetic activity, as also was lower age. Sex had no relationship to aesthetic activity, as neither did masculinity-femininity. Positive aesthetic attitudes were also related moderately to aesthetic activity, but were particularly strongly related to openness to experience, and somewhat less to extraversion. Class, age and sex had no direct relationship to aesthetic attitudes.

Coevolutionary aesthetics in human and biotic artworlds.

Science.gov (United States)

Prum, Richard O

2013-01-01

This work proposes a coevolutionary theory of aesthetics that encompasses both biotic and human arts. Anthropocentric perspectives in aesthetics prevent the recognition of the ontological complexity of the aesthetics of nature, and the aesthetic agency of many non-human organisms. The process of evaluative coevolution is shared by all biotic advertisements. I propose that art consists of a form of communication that coevolves with its own evaluation. Art and art history are population phenomena. I expand Arthur Danto's Artworld concept to any aesthetic population of producers and evaluators. Current concepts of art cannot exclusively circumscribe the human arts from many forms of non-human biotic art. Without assuming an arbitrarily anthropocentric perspective, any concept of art will need to engage with biodiversity, and either recognize many instances of biotic advertisements as art, or exclude some instances of human art. Coevolutionary aesthetic theory provides a heuristic account of aesthetic change in both human and biotic artworlds, including the coevolutionary origin of aesthetic properties and aesthetic value within artworlds. Restructuring aesthetics, art criticism, and art history without human beings at the organizing centers of these disciplines stimulate new progress in our understanding of art, and the unique human contributions to aesthetics and aesthetic diversity.

Interpretation and the Aesthetic Dimension

Science.gov (United States)

Mortensen, Charles O.

1976-01-01

The author, utilizing a synthesis of philosophic comments on aesthetics, provides a discourse on the aesthetic dimension and offers examples of how interpreters can nurture the innate sense of beauty in man. Poetic forms, such as haiku, are used to relate the aesthetic relationship between man and the environment. (BT)

Everyday cryptography fundamental principles and applications

CERN Document Server

Martin, Keith M

2012-01-01

Cryptography is a vital technology that underpins the security of information in computer networks. This book presents a comprehensive introduction to the role that cryptography plays in providing information security for technologies such as the Internet, mobile phones, payment cards, and wireless local area networks. Focusing on the fundamental principles that ground modern cryptography as they arise in modern applications, it avoids both an over-reliance on transient currenttechnologies and over-whelming theoretical research.Everyday Cryptography is a self-contained and widely accessible in

Anytime-Anywhere? Mobile Communicative Practices and the Management of Relationships in Everyday Life

Science.gov (United States)

Moreno Becerra, Tabita Alejandra

2015-01-01

The present study examines how mobile practices of social-media use are integrated into individuals' everyday lives as a way to manage their relationships. Mobile communication technologies and social-media use intersect in people's everyday communicative practices, allowing individuals to engage in continuous interactions that take place on the…

Balancing bioethics by sensing the aesthetic.

Science.gov (United States)

Macneill, Paul

2017-10-01

This article is critical of "bioethics" as it is widely understood and taught, noting in particular an emphasis given to philosophical justification, reason and rationality. It is proposed that "balancing" bioethics be achieved by giving greater weight to practice and the aesthetic: Defined in terms of sensory perception, emotion and feeling. Each of those three elements is elaborated as a non-cognitive capacity and, when taken together, comprise aesthetic sensitivity and responsiveness. This is to recognise the aesthetic as a productive element in bioethics as practice. Contributions from the philosophy of art and aesthetics are drawn into the discussion to bring depth to an understanding of "the aesthetic". This approach is buttressed by philosophers - including Foucault and 18th century German philosophers (in particular Kant) - who recognized a link between ethics and aesthetics. The article aims to give substance to a claim that bioethics necessarily comprises a cognitive component, relating to reason, and a non-cognitive component that draws on aesthetic sensibility and relates to practice. A number of advantages of bioethics, understood to explicitly acknowledge the aesthetic, are proffered. Having defined bioethics in conventional terms, there is discussion of the extent to which other approaches to bioethics (including casuistry, virtue ethics, and narrative ethics) recognize aesthetic sensitivity in their practice. It is apparent that they do so to varying extents although not always explicitly. By examining this aspect of applied ethics, the paper aims to draw attention to aesthetic sensitivity and responsiveness as integral to ethical and effective health care. © 2017 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Troiage Aesthetics

Science.gov (United States)

Brown, Sheldon

As the world around us is transformed into digitally enabled forms and processes, aesthetic strategies are required that articulate this underlying condition. A method for doing so involves a formal and conceptual strategy that is derived from collage, montage and assemblage. This triple "age" is termed "troiage", and it uses a style of computational apparency which articulates the edges of our current representational forms and processes as the semantic elements of culture. Each of these component aesthetics has previously had an important effect upon different areas of contemporary art and culture. Collage in painting, montage in film, assemblage in sculpture and architecture, are recombined via algorithmic methods, forefronting the structure of the algorithmic itself. The dynamic of the aesthetic is put into play by examining binary relationships such as: nature/culture, personal/public, U.S/Mexico, freedom/coercion, mediation/experience, etc. Through this process, the pervasiveness of common algorithmic approaches across cultural and social operations is revealed. This aesthetic is used in the project "The Scalable City" in which a virtual urban landscape is created by users interacting with data taken from the physical world in the form of different photographic techniques. This data is transformed by algorithmic methods which have previously been unfamiliar to the types of data that they are utilizing. The Scalable City project creates works across many media; such as prints, procedural animations, digital cinema and interactive 3D computer graphic installations.

Aesthetic occiput augmentation using methylmethacrylate.

Science.gov (United States)

Song, Yong Tai

2015-01-01

Cranioplasty for only aesthetic reasons has not been commonly performed to date. However, recently there has been a new focus by the public on a more aesthetically pleasing head shape with frequent patient requests for purely aesthetic contouring of the occiput, an important definer of cosmetic head shape. For example, in Asia, where the normal cranial shape is mesocephalic or brachycephalic and often with a planar occiput, requests for its aesthetic correction are increasingly common. Accordingly, the author developed a minimally invasive occiput augmentation using methylmethacrylate. In this study, the indications for aesthetic occiput contouring were planar occiput, left-right asymmetric occiput, and grooved occiput. Under local anesthesia, soft methylmethacrylate is subperiosteally inserted through a small incision (about 5-cm length), manually and precisely contoured in situ through the scalp to the desired occipital shape. All is performed as an outpatient procedure, and a quick recovery is the case. Between March 2007 and October 2013, 959 patients received such aesthetic occiput augmentation. The mean follow-up period was 49 months (range, 3-84 months). Nearly all patients were satisfied with the outcome, and complications were very rare. Only 5 patients (0.5%) needed additional corrective procedures. The author has concluded that aesthetic occiput augmentation using methylmethacrylate yields consistent, predictable, and satisfactory results. Additional long-term follow-up is required for a final conclusion, however.

Creating aesthetically resonant environments for the handicapped, elderly and rehabilitation: Sweden

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Brooks, Tony; Hasselblad, Stefan

2005-01-01

CARE HERE (Creating Aesthetically Resonant Environments for the Handicapped, Elderly and Rehabilitation) was realised as a full European IST (Information Society Technologies) project, involving adults and children with learning disability, PMLD (Profound and Multiple Learning Disability...

The psychology of Kant's aesthetics.

Science.gov (United States)

Guyer, Paul

2008-12-01

Contrary to both his own intentions and the views of both older and more recent commentators. I argue that Kant's aesthetics remains within the confines of eighteenth-century aesthetics as a branch of empirical psychology, as it was then practiced. Kant established a plausible connection between aesthetic experience and judgment on the one hand and cognition in general on the other, through his explanatory concept of the free play of our cognitive powers. However, there is nothing distinctly 'a priori' or 'transcendental' in his claim that this state of mind is what causes our pleasure in beauty or other aesthetic properties. Nor did Kant establish a genuinely a priori or transcendental principle that all human beings have the same disposition to experience a free play of their cognitive powers, let alone in response to the same objects. This failure, however, in no way limits the continuing significance of Kant's aesthetic theory.

Aesthetic Diagnosis in Gestalt Therapy.

Science.gov (United States)

Roubal, Jan; Francesetti, Gianni; Gecele, Michela

2017-10-17

The diagnostic process in psychotherapy using the aesthetic evaluation is described in this article. Unlike the classical diagnostic process, which presents a result of comparing clinicians´ observations with a diagnostic system (DSM, ICD, etc.), the aesthetic evaluation is a pre-reflexive, embodied, and preverbal process. A Gestalt Therapy theoretical frame is used to introduce a concept of the aesthetic diagnostic process. During this process, the clinicians use their own here-and-now presence, which takes part in the co-creation of the shared relational field during the therapeutic session. A specific procedure of the aesthetic evaluation is introduced. The clinical work with depressed clients is presented to illustrate this perspective.

Aesthetic Engagement, Ecosophy C, and Ecological Appreciation

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Cheng Xiangzhan

2013-01-01

Full Text Available With the aim of healing the earth and sustain a healthy ecosystem for all life forms, not humankind alone, ecoaesthetics emerges as a critique of Enlightenment mentality and of modern aesthetics as it is embodied in it. This mentality contributes greatly to the global ecological crisis and to other problem areas, such as population, economic, political and religious ones. In my understanding of aesthetics, ecoaesthetics is defined as the theory of ecological aesthetic appreciation.[1] With ecoaesthetics as my research horizon, there are at least two reasons for me to pay special attention to American philosopher Arnold Berleant’s conception of aesthetic engagement and his aesthetic theory based on it, an aesthetics of engagement. The first is our shared theme, which is the critique of modern aesthetics. The second reason is more complex for it involves the crucial question of the proper manner of aesthetic appreciation. From the perspective of ecoaesthetics, the contemplation of objects by a separated perceiver, an approach that is based on the modern philosophical dualism of subject and object, is unsatisfactory and inadequate. Berleant’s aesthetic engagement is a more satisfactory account of appreciation that is aesthetic and ecological. This emphasizes the ecological continuity or interrelatedness between the human appreciator and objects. Of course, any theory can occasion critique and development. Based on Berleant’s idea of aesthetic engagement, I would like to propose Ecosophy C. This can be contrasted with Ecosophy T proposed by the Norwegian, Arne Naess, and with traditional Chinese aesthetic wisdom. In contrast with these, I would like to develop my own view of ecological understanding. In order to construct a more comprehensive and reasonable ecoaesthetics, my Ecosophy C contains eight points that are crucial in building an ecological model of aesthetic appreciation for this period of ecological crisis.

Caught: Critical versus everyday perspectives on television

OpenAIRE

Hermes, Joke

2013-01-01

The ‘televisual’ names a media culture generally in which television’s multiple dimensions have shaped and continue to alter the coordinates through which we understand, theorize, intervene, and challenge contemporary media culture. Televisual culture is a culture which both encompasses and crosses all aspects of television from its experiential dimensions to its aesthetic strategies, from its technological developments to its crossmedial consequences. Concepts like liveness, media event, aud...

Encountering the Everyday

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

life traditions such as Chicago sociology, phenomenology, American pragmatism, symbolic interactionism, existentialism and critical everyday life sociologies, but also to the later developments by Erving Goffman, French everyday life thinkers, the ethnomethodologists, conversation analysts...... and the absurdists. Finally, a section deals with the most recent approaches such as the specifically Scandinavian everyday life perspectives, the sociology of emotions, social semiotics, cultural studies and postmodern interpretive interactionism. The chapters all accessibly introduce the reader to the ‘core...

Beyond Postmodernism? Prince and Some New Aesthetic Strategies

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Christian Bielefeldt

2006-12-01

Full Text Available Former postmodernist Prince’s album Musicology (2004 re-occupies authorship and history, evoking a »real«, non-technological kind of music in the line of funk and hip-hop. The article is reading that as a strategy of »reflexive modernism«, an aesthetic challenging the postmodern denial of ontology with interim ontologies marked as such.

Mobile Information Systems for the Private Everyday Life

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Oliver Bohl

2007-01-01

Full Text Available Despite the high penetration of the private sector in mobile devices, only few applications and services based on mobile technologies are used, and those are rather trivial. This article suggests an approach for the identification of alternatives for the support of processes of everyday life by establishing services based on mobile applications, mobile devices and infrastructures for mobile dispositions. Therefore, a framework for the identification, as well as criteria for the analysis of potential fields of application is discussed. Exemplary benchmarks for selected basic processes in private everyday life visualise the suggested framework, which can be adapted for individual methodical analyses.

Aura, Self, and Aesthetic Experience

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Marshall Battani

2011-01-01

Full Text Available Aesthetic experiences are generated in encounters with cultural objects and such experiences are marked by the free play of cognitive and numinous experience unstructured by concepts. Kant’s famous three types of pleasure, made infamous in social theory by Pierre Bourdieu, are examined in relation to the critical theoretical concept of aura, the social psychology of “flow,” and cognitive explanations of perception to explain experience in aesthetic fields. Theories of aesthetic experience developed at the crossroad of critical social thought and cognitive science hold promise for a social analysis able to avoid the usual sociological pitfalls of either ignoring aesthetics or reducing it to structurally determined differences of taste.

Aesthetic Diagnosis in Gestalt Therapy

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Jan Roubal

2017-10-01

Full Text Available The diagnostic process in psychotherapy using the aesthetic evaluation is described in this article. Unlike the classical diagnostic process, which presents a result of comparing clinicians´ observations with a diagnostic system (DSM, ICD, etc., the aesthetic evaluation is a pre-reflexive, embodied, and preverbal process. A Gestalt Therapy theoretical frame is used to introduce a concept of the aesthetic diagnostic process. During this process, the clinicians use their own here-and-now presence, which takes part in the co-creation of the shared relational field during the therapeutic session. A specific procedure of the aesthetic evaluation is introduced. The clinical work with depressed clients is presented to illustrate this perspective.

The nature of sport and its relation to the aesthetic dimension of sport

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Filip Kobiela

2016-12-01

Full Text Available In order to discuss the aesthetics of sport I shall start with some metaphysical considerations: instead of using the notion of essence (definition of sport, understood as a set of necessary and sufficient conditions, I shall try to base these considerations on the notion of the nature of sport. In my understanding, the nature of sport is a very basic phenomenon that lies at the origin and shapes the history of sport. It is a technology of training and mastering physical skills valued for themselves. Now, the aesthetic dimension of sport is based on the technically valuable qualities of sports, which are the consecutive properties of sport. Such qualities are present in all types of sport, not only in the so-called ‘aesthetic sports’ (Best or ‘performances’ (Suits. Finally, I advance a thesis that although sport is not a form of art, its aesthetic dimension is closer to the nature of sport than its ethical dimension.

Aura, Self, and Aesthetic Experience

OpenAIRE

Marshall Battani

2011-01-01

Aesthetic experiences are generated in encounters with cultural objects and such experiences are marked by the free play of cognitive and numinous experience unstructured by concepts. Kant’s famous three types of pleasure, made infamous in social theory by Pierre Bourdieu, are examined in relation to the critical theoretical concept of aura, the social psychology of “flow,” and cognitive explanations of perception to explain experience in aesthetic fields. Theories of aesthetic experience de...

Aesthetics of sustainable architecture

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Lee, S.; Hill, G.; Sauerbruch, M.; Hutton, L.; Knowles, R.; Bothwell, K.; Brennan, J.; Jauslin, D.; Holzheu, H.; AlSayyad, N.; Arboleda, G.; Bharne, V.; Røstvik, H.; Kuma, K.; Sunikka-Blank, M.; Glaser, M.; Pero, E.; Sjkonsberg, M.; Teuffel, P.; Mangone, G.; Finocchiaro, L.; Hestnes, A.; Briggs, D.; Frampton, K.; Lee, S.

2011-01-01

The purpose of this book is to reveal, explore and further the debate on the aesthetic potentials of sustainable architecture and its practice. This book opens a new area of scholarship and discourse in the design and production of sustainable architecture, one that is based in aesthetics. The

Everyday Innovation

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Lippke, Lena; Wegener, Charlotte

2014-01-01

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore how vocational teachers’ everyday practices can constitute innovative learning spaces that help students to experience engagement and commitment towards education and thus increase their possibilities for completing their studies despite notable...... difficulties. Design/methodology/approach – Based on two ethnographic field studies, we analyse vocational teaching situations in which teachers and students engage in daily remaking of the vocational educational training practice. It is argued that these everyday situations can be understood as innovative....... Practical implications – Based on the analysis, we argue that students’ engagement in education can be enhanced by transforming the educational settings on various parameters such as buildings, artefacts, emotions and experiences. Thus, innovation should be recognised as emerging everyday activities...

Naturalizing aesthetics: brain areas for aesthetic appraisal across sensory modalities.

Science.gov (United States)

Brown, Steven; Gao, Xiaoqing; Tisdelle, Loren; Eickhoff, Simon B; Liotti, Mario

2011-09-01

We present here the most comprehensive analysis to date of neuroaesthetic processing by reporting the results of voxel-based meta-analyses of 93 neuroimaging studies of positive-valence aesthetic appraisal across four sensory modalities. The results demonstrate that the most concordant area of activation across all four modalities is the right anterior insula, an area typically associated with visceral perception, especially of negative valence (disgust, pain, etc.). We argue that aesthetic processing is, at its core, the appraisal of the valence of perceived objects. This appraisal is in no way limited to artworks but is instead applicable to all types of perceived objects. Therefore, one way to naturalize aesthetics is to argue that such a system evolved first for the appraisal of objects of survival advantage, such as food sources, and was later co-opted in humans for the experience of artworks for the satisfaction of social needs. Copyright © 2011 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

The Aesthetics of Imagination in Design

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Folkmann, Mads Nygaard

In The Aesthetics of Imagination in Design, Mads Folkmann investigates design in both material and immaterial terms. Design objects, Folkmann argues, will always be dual phenomena--material, and immaterial, sensual and conceptual, actual and possible. Drawing on formal theories of aesthetics...... and the life of design objects; aesthetics describes the sensual, conceptual, and contextual codes through which design objects communicate; the concept of the possible--the enabling of new uses, conceptions, and perceptions--lies behind imagination and aesthetics. The possible, Folkmann argues, is contained...

Holding Aesthetics and Ideology in Tension

Science.gov (United States)

Duncum, Paul

2008-01-01

Studying imagery, irrespective of the kind, must focus equally upon its aesthetic attractiveness, its sensory lures, and its oftentimes dubious social ideology. The terms "aesthetic" and "ideology" are addressed as problematic and are defined in current, ordinary language terms: aesthetics as visual appearances and their effects and ideology as a…

Computational and Experimental Approaches to Visual Aesthetics

Science.gov (United States)

Brachmann, Anselm; Redies, Christoph

2017-01-01

Aesthetics has been the subject of long-standing debates by philosophers and psychologists alike. In psychology, it is generally agreed that aesthetic experience results from an interaction between perception, cognition, and emotion. By experimental means, this triad has been studied in the field of experimental aesthetics, which aims to gain a better understanding of how aesthetic experience relates to fundamental principles of human visual perception and brain processes. Recently, researchers in computer vision have also gained interest in the topic, giving rise to the field of computational aesthetics. With computing hardware and methodology developing at a high pace, the modeling of perceptually relevant aspect of aesthetic stimuli has a huge potential. In this review, we present an overview of recent developments in computational aesthetics and how they relate to experimental studies. In the first part, we cover topics such as the prediction of ratings, style and artist identification as well as computational methods in art history, such as the detection of influences among artists or forgeries. We also describe currently used computational algorithms, such as classifiers and deep neural networks. In the second part, we summarize results from the field of experimental aesthetics and cover several isolated image properties that are believed to have a effect on the aesthetic appeal of visual stimuli. Their relation to each other and to findings from computational aesthetics are discussed. Moreover, we compare the strategies in the two fields of research and suggest that both fields would greatly profit from a joined research effort. We hope to encourage researchers from both disciplines to work more closely together in order to understand visual aesthetics from an integrated point of view. PMID:29184491

Exploring the Aesthetics of Sustainable Fashion

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Riisberg, Vibeke; Folkmann, Mads Nygaard

2015-01-01

, sustainable fashion. In programming the didactical setting for the students’ projects, several aesthetics must be considered: the aesthetic codes of the textile and fashion design discipline, both in terms of materials and expression, deriving from within the design practice itself and the aesthetic codes...... of mediated expressions seen in e.g. fashion magazines which create a frame of aestheticization influencing how fashion expressions are valued. In this tension between internal aesthetics and external aestheticization, the students are set out to create a new design expression for sustainable design which...

Avoiding Psychological Pitfalls in Aesthetic Medical Procedures.

Science.gov (United States)

Wang, Qiuyu; Cao, Chuan; Guo, Rui; Li, Xiaoge; Lu, Lele; Wang, Wenping; Li, Shirong

2016-12-01

To assess the prevalence of body dysmorphic disorder (BDD) in an aesthetic surgery setting in the region of Southwest China, and to ascertain the differences in terms of body images between patients in the aesthetic setting and general Chinese population. This study tracked patient satisfaction with their body image changes while undergoing aesthetic medical procedures to identify whether the condition of patients who were presenting with BDD symptoms or their psychological symptoms could be improved by enhancing their appearance. Additionally, this study explored whether there was improvement in quality of life (QoL) and self-esteem after aesthetic medical procedures. A total of 106 female patients who were undergoing aesthetic medical procedures for the first time (plastic surgery, n = 26; minimally invasive aesthetic treatment, n = 42; and aesthetic dermatological treatment, n = 38) were classified as having body dysmorphic disorder symptoms or not having body dysmorphic disorder symptoms, based on the body dysmorphic disorder examination (BDDE), which was administered preoperatively. These patients were followed up for 1 month after the aesthetic procedures. The multidimensional body self-relations questionnaire-appearance scales (MBSRQ-AS) and rosenberg self-esteem scale (RSE-S) were used to assess patients' preoccupation with appearance and self-esteem pre-procedure and 1 month post-procedure. Additionally, 100 female healthy control participants were recruited as a comparative group into this study and they were also assessed using BDDE, MBSRQ-AS, and RSE-S. A total of 14.2 % of 106 aesthetic patients and 1 % of 100 healthy controls were diagnosed with BDD to varying extents. BDDE scores were 72.83 (SD ± 30.7) and 68.18 (SD ± 31.82), respectively, before and after the procedure for the aesthetic patient group and 43.44 (SD ± 15.65) for the healthy control group (F = 34.28; p aesthetic patients (pre-procedure) and female adult norms from

Technologies of Experience

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Engberg-Pedersen, Anders

2017-01-01

. This essay considers Harun Farocki's installation Serious Games as an index into the emergence of a newfangled military aesthetic regime. Charting the institutional collaborations between the military and the creative industries in the twenty-first century, the essay examines what happens to the notion...... of “experience” with the emergence of immersive virtual reality technologies. Revisiting central thinkers in philosophical aesthetics as well as a key moment in the history of war and technology, namely, the invention of the modern war game around 1800, the essay outlines the recent merger of war and aesthetics...

Proceedings of Designing Self-care for Everyday Life

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Managing chronic conditions can be challenging. People in such conditions, and the people around them, have to: deal with symptoms, adapt to the resulting disability, manage emotions, and change habits to keep the condition under control. Self-care technologies have the potential to support self-care...... and mediate the relationship between patients (and caregivers) and the condition. However, these technologies often disregard the complexity of the settings in which they are used and fail to become integrated in everyday life. In this workshop we will discuss how to design self-care technologies...

Design and the question of contemporary aesthetic experiences

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Folkmann, Mads Nygaard; Jensen, Hans-Christian

2017-01-01

The article raises the question of the historical relativism of aesthetic experiences and argues that aesthetic experiences have changed according to new conditions in the contemporary age of globalization, mediatization and consumer culture. In this context, design gains attention as a primary...... case for aesthetic evaluation as design objects are, more than ever, framed and staged to be experienced aesthetically. Basing on this starting point, the article argues that an understanding of contemporary aesthetic experiences requires a meeting of cultural theory and philosophical approaches....... On the one hand, cultural theory is required to understand the changed conditions of the production, circulation and consumption of aesthetic meaning in cultural forms of art and design. On the other, philosophical aesthetics gives access to understanding the mechanisms of aesthetic judgments and how...

The challenges of everyday technology in the workplace for persons with acquired brain injury.

Science.gov (United States)

Kassberg, Ann-Charlotte; Prellwitz, Maria; Larsson Lund, Maria

2013-07-01

To explore and describe how persons with an acquired brain injury (ABI) managed the everyday technology (ET) that they needed to use in their workplace and how this use influences their opportunities to work. Nine persons with an ABI were interviewed and observed when managing ET in their workplace. The data were analysed qualitatively with a constant comparative method. The main category, "The challenge of managing ET in the workplace", consisted of three categories, all of which reflected different kinds of discrepancies between the participants' ability to manage ET and the demands that ET imposes on them in work: "Struggling with ET to be able to continue to work; "Depending on strategies to cope with ET to continue in a particular profession", and "Managing ET at work but concerned about keeping up with the changes". The result revealed discrepancies between the abilities of the persons with ABI to manage ET in relation to the demands that technology imposed on them in their work setting. This indicated that professionals need to consider the role of ET when designing interventions supporting a person's return to work after an ABI.

Introduction to the special issue on visual aesthetics

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Marković Slobodan

2017-01-01

Full Text Available Visual aesthetics encompasses the studies of the relationship between vision and various aesthetic phenomena - from the beauty ratings of simple visual patterns to the appreciation of visual art, from the preference for natural objects and scenes to the preference for products of human creativity, from the aesthetic effects of culture to the aesthetic effects of biology, from the universal aesthetic sensitivity to the individual differences in taste, and so on. In this special issue ten papers reported the most recent studies on very different subjects related to visual aesthetics.

Aesthetics

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

2016-01-01

This anthology is the proceedings publication from the 2013 NAF Symposium Aesthetics, the Uneasy Dimension in Architecture. As a co-production between the Nordic Association of Architectural Research (NAF) and the Faculty of Architecture and Fine Arts at the Norwegian University of Science...

ICT in everyday life - the role of the user

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Frissen, V.A.J.; Lieshout, M.J. van

2006-01-01

The history of innovation processes related to information and communication technologies (ICT) is an interesting mix of both massive market failures and successful and even groundbreaking innovations with the potential to bring about radical shifts in everyday life. To forecast these successes or

Exploring the Aesthetics of Sustainable Fashion

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Riisberg, Vibeke; Folkmann, Mads Nygaard

, sustainable fashion. In programming the didactical setting for the students’ projects, several aesthetics must be considered: the aesthetic codes of the textile and fashion design discipline, both in terms of materials and expression, deriving from within the design practice itself and the aesthetic codes...... of mediated expressions seen in e.g. fashion magazines which create a frame of aestheticization influencing how fashion expressions are valued. In this tension between internal aesthetics and external aestheticization, the students are set out to create a new design expression for sustainable design which......This working paper is a discussion of different notions and conceptions of aesthetics that may be at play when developing new design. The empirical case of the paper derives from the context of design education in a module aimed at the development of a new design expression for contemporary...

How to improve aesthetics in patients with Adolescent Idiopathic Scoliosis (AIS: a SPoRT brace treatment according to SOSORT management criteria

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Fusco Claudia

2009-09-01

Full Text Available Abstract Background Aesthetics is a main goal of both conservative and surgical treatments in adolescent idiopathic scoliosis (AIS. Previously, we developed and validated a clinical scale - the Aesthetic Index (AI--in order to measure aesthetic impairment and changes during treatment. Aim To verify the efficacy of bracing on aesthetics in AIS. Study Design Prospective Cohort Study. Population Thirty-four consecutive patients, age 13.2 ± 3.7, initial Cobb Angle 32 ± 12°, ATR 10 ± 4° Bunnel, 11 males. Methods Patients with AI scores of at least 5/6 were included. Each of them had a brace prescription (18 to 23 hours per day, according to the SPoRT concept. AI was measured again after six months and at the end of treatment, and then the pre- and post-treatment scores compared. The Wilcoxon test was performed. Results Twenty-nine patients out of the 34 included completed the treatment and had six-month and final results; four patients were lost during the treatment, and one was fused. At baseline, median AI was 6 (95% IC 5-6 but the score decreased to 3 (95% IC 0-5; p Conclusion Aesthetics can be improved in a clinically significant way when the brace treatment is performed according to the SPoRT concept and by following the SOSORT management criteria. This is a relevant result for patients and a major goal of scoliosis treatment, be it conservative or surgical. The use of a more sensitive tool like TRACE could more easily detect the clinical changes; nevertheless, AI proved sensible enough that its use in everyday clinical practice can be suggested.

Assessment of psychosocial impact of dental aesthetics.

Science.gov (United States)

Khan, Munizeh; Fida, Mubassar

2008-09-01

To assess the psychosocial impact of dental aesthetics using the 'Psychosocial Impact of Dental Aesthetics Questionnaire' (PIDAQ) and self-rated Aesthetic Component (AC) of the Index of Orthodontic Treatment Need (IOTN). Cross-sectional study. Dental Section, the Aga Khan University Hospital, Karachi, from August to September 2006. Adults with no prior orthodontic treatment were asked to complete a modified version of the 'Psychosocial Impact of Dental Aesthetics Questionnaire' (PIDAQ). A total of four variables including 'Dental Self-confidence', 'Social impact', 'Psychological impact' and 'Perceived orthodontic treatment need' were assessed by a series of statements, whereas dental aesthetics were assessed by the respondents using the IOTN Aesthetic Component (self-rated IOTN-AC). Kruskal-Walli's test was applied to determine significance. The respondents were 120 adults (70 females and 50 males; mean age 25.8 years), all four of the above-mentioned variables measuring psychosocial impact showed positive and significant correlations with the perceived severity of malocclusion as depicted by the Aesthetic Component (AC) of Index of Orthodontic Treatment Need (IOTN), with p-value of less than 0.01 for all variables. The results indicate the strong psychosocial impact of altered dental aesthetics on the emotional state of an individual. The association between self-rated IOTN-AC grading with psychosocial well-being stands established, indicating that the perceived aesthetics of malocclusion may be as significant a factor in determining treatment need as the degree of malocclusion.

[A "dialogue" between the aesthetics of nursing and philosophy].

Science.gov (United States)

Chang, Chia-Hsiu; Chen, Chung-Hey

2012-02-01

Nursing aesthetics belong to the broader school of aesthetics, a branch of philosophy, as well as the nursing arts, an element of professional nursing. The philosophy of aesthetics recognizes the connection between an author and appreciators and identifies both substantive and abstract aesthetic experiences in interpersonal communication through the fine arts. Nursing aesthetics values the meaningful moments of patients, is sensitive to the influences of different circumstances and situations, and appreciates the unique qualities of humanness. Nursing aesthetics is emancipatory knowledge and involves empirical, ethical and personal knowing. The article is based on a search of OvidSP and Chinese Electronic Periodical Services (CEPS) database references using key words including aesthetic, aesthetics, art of nursing, or nursing aesthetics as well as a review of books related to aesthetics, knowledge construction, and nursing aesthetics. Authors determined definitions as defined by nursing experts and the applications thereof in clinical practice. This article aimed to illustrate that the ultimate concern of philosophy is "goodness" and that the foundation of caring behaviors is "love". In practice, nursing aesthetics is expressed through empathy, appreciation, inspiration and the therapeutic use of the self. Through aesthetic knowing and enhanced perceptual sensibility and reflection, nurses can transform intuitive knowing into art-acts and ultimately enhance nursing care quality.

Social Ecology and Aesthetic Criticism

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Owen, Connor

2016-12-01

Full Text Available While ecocriticism has become a respected field in literary theory and in the broader landscape of aesthetic philosophy, it could benefit from an enhanced ethical-political framework which social ecology – an underrated critical theory developed by Murray Bookchin – could provide. This essay attempts to tease out the potentials for such a framework, integrating the insights of social ecology, ecocriticism, Critical Realism, and John Dewey's aesthetic concepts into a layered idea-set used for the study of all kinds of aesthetic objects, from popular art to the gallery arts. Its key principles are the emergence of aesthetic objects (including formal artworks out of congealed human experience, the relation between organism and environment in assessing meaning, the breakdown of implicit or overt hierarchies within a work, and the idea of the artist and art-critic as a "gardener".

Contemporary Culture and Aesthetic Education

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Friberg, Carsten

2011-01-01

relation to a specific cultural context, and our acquisition of it comes from being acquainted with cultural products. Aesthetics is thus closely related to hermeneutics, to how we interpret specific situations we find ourselves in. Key words: education, sensorial, judgement, hermeneutics, Kant...... century, a focus we on aesthetic education and communication. Important were arts and letters which still are important but very much on the defensive in our contemporary culture also because aesthetics often is a debate about criticism rather than about the sensorial and bodily aspect of cultural...

Empowerment of Aesthetics

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

2016-01-01

Showcasing the Danish architecture biennial catalogue Empowerment of Aesthetics (Venice Biennale 2014), which, in 2015, was announced ‘bookwork of the year’ by Foreningen for Boghaandværk (the Danish association for book craft), the research based exhibition will focus on the catalogue's represen......Showcasing the Danish architecture biennial catalogue Empowerment of Aesthetics (Venice Biennale 2014), which, in 2015, was announced ‘bookwork of the year’ by Foreningen for Boghaandværk (the Danish association for book craft), the research based exhibition will focus on the catalogue...

Aesthetics of destruction in contemporary science fiction cinema

OpenAIRE

Warton, John Phillips

2015-01-01

Mass destruction imagery within the science fiction film genre is not a new cinematic development. However, a swell of destruction-centred films has emerged since the proliferation of digital technologies and computer-generated imagery that reflect concerns that extend beyond notions of spectacle. Through illusionistic realism techniques, the aesthetics of mass destruction imagery within science fiction cinema can be seen as appropriating the implied veracity of other film trad...

Towards a Wittgensteinian Aesthetics. Wollheim and the Analysis of Aesthetic Practices

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Giovanni Matteucci

2013-05-01

Full Text Available In order to investigate the possibility to develop Wittgenstein's suggestions about aesthetics, this paper will focus on the organic perspective elaborated by Richard Wollheim in «Art and Its Objects». In this regard we will try to emphasize how the concept of art as a "form of live" - explicit in Wollheim - involves the analysis of the practices embodied in the experience of art starting from those of representation. The inception modes of such practices of representation need to be described in the use of specific anthropological abilities related to perception patterns that go beyond the mere statement of facts, in a fusion among aesthetic, cognitive and emotional levels. Deepening the relationships both between lived experience and expression, and expression and understanding, we will try to point out how Wollheim (and Wittgenstein places any rhetoric of the ineffable out of the game, even regarding the analysis of the aesthetic experience.

Birkhoff’s aesthetic measure

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Veronika Douchová

2016-08-01

Full Text Available In this paper, we review and critically evaluate George D. Birkhoff’s work concerning formalisation of aesthetics, as it appeared in his book Aaesthetic Measure from 1933, and discuss its influence on further research in the field. In the book, Birkhoff defines an aesthetic measure M of an art object as the ratio between its order and complexity, or more generally a function f of this ratio: M = f (OC , where O stands for order and C for complexity. The specific definitions of O and C depend on the type of the analysed object. Birkhoff applied the formula to multiple classes of objects (e.g. vases, music, or English poetry and calculated the aesthetic measure for many art objects from these classes. We give an example of Birkhoff’s analysis using polygons, and we further discuss to what extent the ordering of the polygons (or other objects according to the resulting measures can be used, or interpreted, as an ordering according to a degree of aesthetic preference. We also include an extensive bibliography, supplemented by a critical discussion of the influence of Birkhoff’s work on further research.

40 CFR 240.207 - Aesthetics.

Science.gov (United States)

2010-07-01

... 40 Protection of Environment 24 2010-07-01 2010-07-01 false Aesthetics. 240.207 Section 240.207 Protection of Environment ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY (CONTINUED) SOLID WASTES GUIDELINES FOR THE THERMAL PROCESSING OF SOLID WASTES Requirements and Recommended Procedures § 240.207 Aesthetics. ...

Conducting everyday life

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Juhl, Pernille

, they are involved in preventive interventions. I conducted participatory observations with the children in their everyday life. Overall, the study stresses that even small children must be perceived as active participants who act upon and struggle with different conditions and meaning making processes across......In the paper I discuss how small children (0-4 year) develop through ‘conducting everyday life’ across contexts (Holzkamp 2013). I discuss how this process of conducting everyday life is essential when discussing the ‘good life for children’ from a child perspective. These issues are addressed...... contexts (home, day care, part-time foster family) and in relation to other co-participants....

Empirical Music Aesthetics

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Grund, Cynthia M.

The toolbox for empirically exploring the ways that artistic endeavors convey and activate meaning on the part of performers and audiences continues to expand. Current work employing methods at the intersection of performance studies, philosophy, motion capture and neuroscience to better understand...... musical performance and reception is inspired by traditional approaches within aesthetics, but it also challenges some of the presuppositions inherent in them. As an example of such work I present a research project in empirical music aesthetics begun last year and of which I am a team member....

Exploring the Relationship between Humor and Aesthetic Experience

Science.gov (United States)

Gordon, Mordechai

2012-01-01

The connection between humor and aesthetic experience has already been recognized by several thinkers and aesthetic educators. For instance, humor theorist John Morreall writes that "humor is best understood as itself a kind of aesthetic experience, equal in value at least to any other kind of aesthetic experience." For Morreall, both humor and…

Aesthetics and function in web design

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Thorlacius, Lisbeth

2004-01-01

Since the origin of the web site in the first part of the 90’s there has been discussions regarding the relative weighting of function and aesthetics. A renewed discussion is needed, however, to clarify what exactly is meant by aesthetics in web design. Moreover the balance between aesthetics...... and function ought to be considered more in respect to the target group and the genre of web site....

Aesthetics of religious authority. Introduction

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Sunier, J.T.; de Witte, M.; de Koning, M.J.M.

2015-01-01

This special issue brings together anthropologists in the field of religion with the aim of exploring the aesthetic dimensions of authority in religious leadership.Taking aesthetics to refer to the range of sensory forms and experiences that shape the relation between religious practitioners and

Aesthetic Diagnosis in Gestalt Therapy †

Science.gov (United States)

Roubal, Jan; Francesetti, Gianni; Gecele, Michela

2017-01-01

The diagnostic process in psychotherapy using the aesthetic evaluation is described in this article. Unlike the classical diagnostic process, which presents a result of comparing clinicians´ observations with a diagnostic system (DSM, ICD, etc.), the aesthetic evaluation is a pre-reflexive, embodied, and preverbal process. A Gestalt Therapy theoretical frame is used to introduce a concept of the aesthetic diagnostic process. During this process, the clinicians use their own here-and-now presence, which takes part in the co-creation of the shared relational field during the therapeutic session. A specific procedure of the aesthetic evaluation is introduced. The clinical work with depressed clients is presented to illustrate this perspective. PMID:29039752

Organization aesthetics in nursing homes.

Science.gov (United States)

Hujala, Anneli; Rissanen, Sari

2011-05-01

The aim of this study was to make visible the material dimensions of nursing management.   Management theories have mainly ignored the material dimensions, namely the physical spaces in which management actually takes place as well as the physical bodies of organization members. The perspective of organization aesthetics enhances our understanding of the role of materiality in nursing management. The data were collected in 2009 using observation and interviews in eight nursing homes. Qualitative content analysis with critical interpretations was used. Three main issues of organizational aesthetics related to nursing management were identified: (1) the functionality of working spaces and equipment; (2) the relevance of 'organizational' space; and (3) the emotional-aesthetic dimension of daily work. Materiality is closely related to management topics, such as decision-making, values and identity formation of organizational members. Aesthetic dimensions of care are constructed by management practices which, in their turn, influence the nature of management. Implications for nursing management  Nurse managers need to be aware of the unintended and unnoticed consequences of materiality and aesthetics. Space and body issues may have considerable effects, for example, on the identity of care workers and on the attractiveness of the care branch. © 2011 The Authors. Journal compilation © 2011 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

The "Magic" of Music: Archaic Dreams in Romantic Aesthetics and an Education in Aesthetics

Science.gov (United States)

Kertz-Welzel, Alexandra

2005-01-01

The main intent of this article is to describe some opportunities for an education in aesthetics by referring to similarities between intensive experiences of music in the individual life and in the history of aesthetics. Here, the author discusses Romanticism through the writings of Wilhelm Heinrich Wackenroder. Among other things, she discusses…

The Role of Glass in Interior Architecture: Aesthetics, Community, and Privacy

Science.gov (United States)

Ziff, Matthew

2004-01-01

Advances in glass technologies are being applied in contemporary interior architecture. Glass forms and surfaces are appearing in settings and applications that offer vivid aesthetic experiences for users, but create ambiguous messages concerning community and privacy. Where a modernist application of glass may have been directed toward creating a…

Art fighting its way back to aesthetics

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Sejten, Anne Elisabeth

2016-01-01

. In this essay, ‘Aesthetics is not what you think it is’ is thus an invitation to break through at the very point in which contemporary art seems to state the opposite—that art no longer should be a concern of aesthetics. The iconic example of Marcel Duchamp’s readymade, Fountain, which writes art history......When Claire Farago and Donald Preziosi claim that ‘art is not what you think it is,’ aesthetics itself is implicitly challenged, especially aesthetics’ seemingly inherent correlation with art. However, aesthetics, as complex and ambiguous as the concept of art, calls for a similar suspicion...... at the threshold of contemporary art, is summoned, on the contrary, to give evidence of an intact, though profoundly transformed, aesthetic engagement by the artist....

Leadership and Management in Aesthetic Medicine.

Science.gov (United States)

Brennan, Connie

2016-01-01

The aesthetic provider is obligated to leverage their leadership, management, and teamwork skills on a daily basis in order to deliver optimum aesthetic outcomes for their clients. This article discusses leadership and motivational theories, leadership and management traits, complexity theory, Gardner's tasks of leadership, and the role of emotional intelligence in leading, managing, and following, so the aesthetic provider can identify and align with a particular leadership and management style that suits their practice philosophy.

IncobotulinumtoxinA in aesthetics: Russian multidisciplinary expert consensus recommendations

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Yutskovskaya Y

2015-06-01

Full Text Available Yana Yutskovskaya,1 Elena Gubanova,2 Irina Khrustaleva,3 Vasiliy Atamanov,4 Anastasiya Saybel,5 Elena Parsagashvili,6 Irina Dmitrieva,7 Elena Sanchez,8 Natalia Lapatina,9 Tatiana Korolkova,10 Alena Saromytskaya,11 Elena Goltsova,12 Elmira Satardinova13 1Department of Dermatovenereology and Cosmetology, Pacific State Medical University, Vladivostock, 2Department of Skin and Venereal Diseases, Postgraduate Medical Institute, Moscow National University of Food Production, Moscow, 3Department of Plastic Surgery, IP Pavlov Medical State University, St Petersburg, 4Department of Reconstructive and Plastic Surgery, SN Fedorova, Federal State Institution, Novosibirsk, 5Clinic Ideal, Laser Technologies Center, Moscow, 6Aestima-clinic, 7Clinic “Academy”, St Petersburg, 8Eklan Medical Center of Cosmetological Correction, 9Clinic of Aesthetic Medicine and Plastic Surgery, Moscow, 10Department of Cosmetology, II Mechnikov North-Western State Medical University, St Petersburg, 11Plastic Surgery Clinic, Center of Aesthetic Medicine and Beauty Cosmetology, 12“Neo-Clinic,” Tyumen, 13Botulinum Toxin Therapy Department, Diagnostic Center of the Irkutsk State Medical Academy of Postgraduate Education, Irkutsk, Russia Background: Although there are various international consensus recommendations on the use of botulinum neurotoxin type A (BoNT/A in facial aesthetics, there are no global or Russian guidelines on the optimal dose of incobotulinumtoxinA, free from complexing proteins, within specific aesthetic indications. This article reports the outcomes of two expert consensus meetings, conducted to review and analyze efficacy and tolerability data for incobotulinumtoxinA in various facial aesthetic indications and to give expert consensus recommendations to ensure best clinical practice among Russian clinicians. Methods: Thirteen dermatology and/or plastic surgery experts attended meetings held in Paris, France (November 2013, and Moscow, Russia (March 2014

Meanings and experiences of assistive technologies in everyday lives of older citizens: a meta-interpretive review.

Science.gov (United States)

Dahler, Anne Marie; Rasmussen, Dorte Malig; Andersen, Pernille Tanggaard

2016-11-01

The purpose of this study was to synthesize the available qualitative studies on the meaning of assistive technologies (AT) in elderly people's everyday lives in order to identify central concepts, themes, and findings from existing research. A systematic search of the literature was conducted, using predetermined search strategies. Exclusion criteria were, in accordance with the meta-interpretive approach, developed iteratively during the reading of abstracts and articles. Interpretations from the studies were used as data for thematic analysis and synthesis of findings. Review of these studies show that older people not only have positive attitude towards AT, but also that acceptance of technologies is a potentially stressful process where trust towards technologies and other people are of importance. Older people have ambivalent experiences with technology, as it gives rise to possibilities as well as constraints, and safety as well as worries. AT enact sometimes conflicting values related to self and society. Although AT seem to support societal discourses on active aging, the empirical studies in this field show that the technologies enter older people's lives in complex ways, enacting social values and ambivalences and interact with caretakers, relatives and other actors, within specific institutional settings. Implications for rehabilitation In implementing AT, attention should be paid to ambivalences and conflicting values enacted by AT in older people's lives In implementing AT, attention should be paid not only to independency but also to the eventually dependencies, created by the use of AT.

Personality traits in aesthetic surgery patients

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

S. Visal Buturak

2016-09-01

Full Text Available Purpose: It has been known that psychological factors have an important effect on the decision to undergo aesthetic surgery. In this study, we aimed to test the hypothesis that the personality traits of people admitted for aesthetic surgery differ from those of people who have never planned to undergo aesthetic surgery in their lives. Material and Methods: Forty-seven patients who were referred to the outpatient clinic of the Faculty of Medicine, Department of Plastic, Reconstructive, and Aesthetic Surgery, Kirikkale University to undergo aesthetic surgery were enrolled in the study. Forty-three subjects who neither underwent nor planned to undergo aesthetic surgery at any time in their lives were included in the study as a control group. Psychometric evaluation of the patients and the control group was conducted using the Turkish version of the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI. Results: Taking 65 as a cut-off point, the ratio of patients who scored and #8805;65 on the hysteria subscale of the MMPI was found to be significantly higher in the sugery group than in the control group and the ratio on social introversion subscale was also higher in the patient group than in the control group, very closely approaching significance. Conclusion: It should be kept in mind that people who have personality traits that can be partially improved with psyachiatric treatment, such as social introverted, lonely, timid, shy, and hysterical and feel the need for validation by others, may be more often admitted for aesthetic surgery. [Cukurova Med J 2016; 41(3.000: 554-558

Assessing aesthetic impacts in siting a nuclear power plant: the case of Greene County, New York

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Petrich, C.H.

1982-01-01

In the aesthetic impact analysis of the Greene County Nuclear Power Plant, vivid symbols of modern technology - a domed reactor containment structure and a monolithic natural-draft cooling tower - played the dominant roles in the conflict with a remnant landscape of America's romantic past. The analysis revealed, and the NRC affirmed, that the proposed plant would entail an unacceptable aesthetic impact, beyond mitigation, on certain important local, regional, and national historic, scenic, and cultural resources

The Aesthetics of Imagination in Design

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Folkmann, Mads Nygaard

and the life of design objects; aesthetics describes the sensual, conceptual, and contextual codes through which design objects communicate; the concept of the possible--the enabling of new uses, conceptions, and perceptions--lies behind imagination and aesthetics. The possible, Folkmann argues, is contained...... methodology to cultural studies. Throughout, he offers concrete examples to illustrate theoretical points. Folkmann’s philosophically informed account shows design--in all its manifestations, from physical products to principles of organization--to be an essential medium for the articulation......In The Aesthetics of Imagination in Design, Mads Folkmann investigates design in both material and immaterial terms. Design objects, Folkmann argues, will always be dual phenomena--material, and immaterial, sensual and conceptual, actual and possible. Drawing on formal theories of aesthetics...

Aesthetic responses to music

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Istok, Eva; Brattico, Elvira; Jacobsen, Thomas

2009-01-01

We explored the content and structure of the cognitive, knowledge-based concept underlying aesthetic responses to music. To this aim, we asked 290 Finnish students to verbally associate the aesthetic value of music and to write down a list of appropriate adjectives within a given time limit....... No music was presented during the task. In addition, information about participants' musical background was collected. A variety of analysis techniques was used to determine the key results of our study. The adjective "beautiful" proved to be the core item of the concept under question. Interestingly......, the adjective "touching" was often listed together with "beautiful". In addition, we found music-specific vocabulary as well as adjectives related to emotions and mood states indicating that affective processes are an essential part of aesthetic responses to music. Differences between music experts and laymen...

Grace under fire: aesthetic leadership in clinical nursing.

Science.gov (United States)

Mannix, Judy; Wilkes, Lesley; Daly, John

2015-09-01

This paper reports the results of an online descriptive survey that sought to determine nurses' perceptions of aesthetic leadership among clinical leaders in nursing. Clinical leadership has been identified as an essential component to ensuring the delivery of safe, high-quality health care. Leadership has been increasingly linked in the literature to aesthetics. However, little consideration has been given to aesthetics in relation to clinical leadership in nursing. A mixed-method, online descriptive survey. Participants were recruited via e-learning platforms and social media. A total of 66 surveys were completed, including 31 written accounts of aesthetic leadership in practice. Aesthetic leadership characteristics in clinical leaders most valued are support, communication and the approach taken to colleagues. Taking risks and challenging processes were least likely to be evident among effective clinical leaders. Aesthetic leadership is multi-dimensional and a style of leadership to positively influence the clinical workplace. Support, effective communication and taking into consideration the feelings of colleagues are important dimensions of aesthetic leadership. Aesthetic leadership represents a way for clinical leaders to create and sustain a calm and positive clinical workplace. © 2015 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

The Role of Aesthetics for Design Phenomenology

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Folkmann, Mads Nygaard

The aim of the paper is to conceptualize the means and effects of different dimensions of aesthetic meaning in relation to the experience of design. In doing so, the paper combines two philosophical interests in design, design phenomenology and design aesthetics, in order to promote a framework...... for discussing the impact of aesthetic meaning construction on experience. First, the paper raises the phenomenological question of the relationship between design and experience, specifically, how design conditions experience. Second, in looking at aesthetics in terms of a) the sensual appeal of design, b...... our experience: We can look at sensual, conceptual, and contextual aesthetic dimensions of design and examine their contribution to the framing of experience, that is, how different dimensions of meaning articulation in design offer different framings of the experiences promoted by design objects...

Failure analysis of various monolithic posterior aesthetic dental crowns using finite element method

Science.gov (United States)

Porojan, Liliana; Topală, Florin

2017-08-01

The aim of the study was to assess the effect of material stiffness and load on the biomechanical performance of the monolithic full-coverage posterior aesthetic dental crowns using finite element analysis. Three restorative materials for monolithic dental crowns were selected for the study: zirconia; lithium disilicate glass-ceramic, and resin-based composite. Stresses were calculated in the crowns for all materials and in the teeth structures, under different load values. The experiments show that dental crowns made from all this new aesthetic materials processed by CAD/CAM technologies would be indicated as monolithic dental crowns for posterior areas.

Symbolic aesthetics in steel structural systems

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Usama Abdul-Mun'em Khuraibet

2015-02-01

Full Text Available The aesthetic expression and its orders are important for steel structures forming. Steel structures are a compilation of structural elements, where its shapes have standard dimensions and pre-fabricated. As the steel construction systems not only aim to achieve the functional requirements for users, but must also have the symbolic aesthetics which provides visually and cognitive expression for viewers. In this sense the research interested in expressional aesthetics in these systems and highlights the importance of attention as structural items. Therefore the visual items which related with steel structures contain some of the most powerful forms of modern architecture, steel structures with a glass cladding, agility and accuracy in manufacture of structural elements as visual items, structural interest in the forms of spaces which have long span systems or in high buildings are different forms of expression and influence. So the research focuses on the study of those expressive patterns related with the steel construction properties, including the advantages of these systems at the level of strength and firmness, flexibility and economy as well as aesthetic and expression. Accordingly, the research problem concentrated on educational shortage in the study of the structural steel system aspects concerning constructional characteristic, expressive and aesthetic features, and how to deal with them as a language bearing the symbols and meanings which have clear structural style, because it the best ways to make those systems as communication means with users, by premise that the use of expressional symbol in steel construction increases the aesthetic value. Therefore the research aims to reveal the most structural and expressive patterns by analysis the expressional means and steel structural aesthetics.

[Patients' decision for aesthetic surgery].

Science.gov (United States)

Fansa, H; Haller, S

2011-12-01

Aesthetic surgery is a service which entails a high degree of trust. Service evaluation prior to provision is difficult for the patient. This leads to the question of how to manage the service successfully while still focusing on the medical needs. The decision to undergo an operation is not influenced by the operation itself, but by preoperative events which induce the patient to have the operation done. According to "buying decisions" for products or in service management, the decision for an aesthetic operation is extensive; the patient is highly involved and actively searching for information using different directed sources of information. The real "buying decision" consists of 5 phases: problem recognition, gathering of information, alternative education, purchase decision, and post purchase behaviour. A retrospective survey of 40 female patients who have already undergone an aesthetic operation assessed for problem recognition, which types of information were collected prior to the appointment with the surgeon, and why the patients have had the operation at our hospital. They were also asked how many alternative surgeons they had been seen before. Most of the patients had been thinking about undergoing an operation for several years. They mainly used the web for their research and were informed by other (non-aesthetic) physicians/general practitioners. Requested information was about the aesthetic results and possible problems and complications. Patients came based on web information and because of recommendations from other physicians. 60% of all interviewees did not see another surgeon and decided to have the operation because of positive patient-doctor communication and the surgeon's good reputation. Competence was considered to be the most important quality of the surgeon. However, the attribute was judged on subjective parameters. Environment, office rooms and staff were assessed as important but not very important. Costs of surgery were ranked second

Application of aesthetic, recreational forms of physical culture in the organizational and pedagogical techniques of school physical education

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Roters T.T.

2010-06-01

Full Text Available The results of methodological analysis are presented in relation to introduction of organizational pedagogical technologies of leadthrough of the employments fixed, extracurricular and extracurricular. Directions of increase of interest and motivation of schoolboys are rotined to employments by physical exercises with the use of aesthetically beautiful forms of physical culture. It is indicated that modern organizational pedagogical technologies come forward the determinative of satisfaction of needs and interests of schoolboys. It is set that the aesthetic recreation forms of physical culture render assistance to the increase of interest and motivation to employments by physical exercises.

Differences in the use of everyday technology among persons with MCI, SCI and older adults without known cognitive impairment.

Science.gov (United States)

Malinowsky, Camilla; Kottorp, Anders; Wallin, Anders; Nordlund, Arto; Björklund, Eva; Melin, Ilse; Pernevik, Anette; Rosenberg, Lena; Nygård, Louise

2017-07-01

To use valid subjective reports sensible to cognitive decline is vital to identify very early signs of dementia development. Use of everyday technology (ET) has been shown to be sensitive to differentiate adults with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) from controls, but the group with subjective cognitive impairment (SCI) has not yet been examined. This study aims to investigate and compare self-perceived ability in ET use and number of ETs reported as actually used in a sample of older adults with SCI, MCI, and older adults with no known cognitive impairment, i.e. Older adults with MCI (n = 29), SCI ( n = 26), and controls (n = 30) were interviewed with the short version of the Everyday Technology Use Questionnaire (S-ETUQ) to capture self-perceived ability in ET use and number of ETs used. To generate individual measures of ability to use ET, Rasch analysis was used. The measures were then compared group-wise using ANCOVA. The numbers of ETs used were compared group-wise with ANOVA. Controls versus SCI and MCI differed significantly regarding ETs reported as used, but not SCI versus MCI. Similarly, in ability to use ET, controls versus SCI and MCI differed significantly but not SCI versus MCI. The significantly lower numbers of ETs reported as actually used and the lower ability in SCI and MCI groups compared to controls suggest that ET use is affected already in very minor cognitive decline. This indicates that self-reported ET use based on the S-ETUQ is sensitive to detect changes already in SCI.

Interventions in everyday lives

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Dreier, Ole

2015-01-01

The purpose of psychotherapy is to help clients address and overcome problems troubling them in their everyday lives. Therapy can therefore only work if clients include it in their ongoing lives to deal with their problems. Detailed, systematic research is needed on how clients do so...... clients change their everyday lives to overcome their troubles. They also highlight what it involves for clients to accomplish this. It is concluded that we need more research on how to understand intervention; on the interaction between interventions and clients’ conduct of their everyday life...

Shaping and reshaping the aesthetic brain: Emerging perspectives on the neurobiology of embodied aesthetics.

Science.gov (United States)

Kirsch, Louise P; Urgesi, Cosimo; Cross, Emily S

2016-03-01

Less than two decades after its inception, the burgeoning field of neuroaesthetics continues to grow in interest and momentum. Despite the biological and social importance of the human body and the attention people pay to its appearance in daily life, only recently has neuroaesthetic inquiry turned its attention to questions concerning the aesthetic appraisal of the human body. We review evidence illustrating that the complexity of aesthetic experience is reflected by dynamic interplay between brain systems involved in reward, perceptual and motor processing, with a focus on aesthetic perception involving the human body. We then evaluate work demonstrating how these systems are modulated by beholders' expertise or familiarity. Finally, we discuss seminal studies revealing the plasticity of behavioural and neural responses to beauty after perceptual and motor training. This research highlights the rich potential for neuroaesthetic inquiry to extend beyond its typical realm of the fine arts to address important questions regarding the relationship between embodiment, aesthetics and performing arts. We conclude by considering some of the criticisms and limitations of neuroaesthetics, and highlight several outstanding issues for future inquiry. Copyright © 2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.. All rights reserved.

Modelling Vessel Traffic Service to understand resilience in everyday operations

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Praetorius, Gesa; Hollnagel, Erik; Dahlman, Joakim

2015-01-01

Vessel Traffic Service (VTS) is a service to promote traffic fluency and safety in the entrance to ports. This article's purpose has been to explore everyday operations of the VTS system to gain insights in how it contributes to safe and efficient traffic movements. Interviews, focus groups and an observation have been conducted to collect data about everyday operations, as well as to grasp how the VTS system adapts to changing operational conditions. The results show that work within the VTS domain is highly complex and that the two systems modelled realise their services vastly differently, which in turn affects the systems' ability to monitor, respond and anticipate. This is of great importance to consider whenever changes are planned and implemented within the VTS domain. Only if everyday operations are properly analysed and understood, it can be estimated how alterations to technology and organisation will affect the overall system performance

Aesthetic Management

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Ricard, Lykke Margot

2003-01-01

Aesthetics, Art & Management - Towards a New Field of Flow. European Institute for Advanced Studies in Management (EIASM) Workshop , Gattières (France). 2003 Short description: This paper explores some of the rigid theoretical interpretations of the interplay between art and business through a case...... is often described in terms of what a business manager is not and vice versa. This paper explores some of the rigid theoretical interpretations of the interplay between art and business through a case study of two radical Danish artists, Kristian Hornsleth and Michael Brammer. Today, these two artists......, also create for myself, otherwise I don?t live up to people?s expectations.? (Brammer, Interview, August 6, 2002). This paper was presented at the European Institute for Advanced Studies in Management (EIASM) Workshop on "Aesthetics, Art & Management - Towards a New Field of Flow"....

The development and evaluation of an online intervention, ‘MePlusMe’, supporting mood, wellbeing, study skills, and everyday functioning in students in higher education

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Patapia Tzotzoli

2015-09-01

Conclusions Findings from the above studies contributed significantly to the development of a system format which appears to facilitate engagement and meet students’ aesthetics and needs. The next step will be a full-scale feasibility study, which is under way. This study will evaluate potential effects on students’ mood (symptoms of anxiety and depression, mental wellbeing, study skills, and everyday functioning, and their engagement and satisfaction with a full-functioning system. The outcomes of this crucial step will inform a randomised controlled trial (RCT, leading to

PHOG analysis of self-similarity in aesthetic images

Science.gov (United States)

Amirshahi, Seyed Ali; Koch, Michael; Denzler, Joachim; Redies, Christoph

2012-03-01

In recent years, there have been efforts in defining the statistical properties of aesthetic photographs and artworks using computer vision techniques. However, it is still an open question how to distinguish aesthetic from non-aesthetic images with a high recognition rate. This is possibly because aesthetic perception is influenced also by a large number of cultural variables. Nevertheless, the search for statistical properties of aesthetic images has not been futile. For example, we have shown that the radially averaged power spectrum of monochrome artworks of Western and Eastern provenance falls off according to a power law with increasing spatial frequency (1/f2 characteristics). This finding implies that this particular subset of artworks possesses a Fourier power spectrum that is self-similar across different scales of spatial resolution. Other types of aesthetic images, such as cartoons, comics and mangas also display this type of self-similarity, as do photographs of complex natural scenes. Since the human visual system is adapted to encode images of natural scenes in a particular efficient way, we have argued that artists imitate these statistics in their artworks. In support of this notion, we presented results that artists portrait human faces with the self-similar Fourier statistics of complex natural scenes although real-world photographs of faces are not self-similar. In view of these previous findings, we investigated other statistical measures of self-similarity to characterize aesthetic and non-aesthetic images. In the present work, we propose a novel measure of self-similarity that is based on the Pyramid Histogram of Oriented Gradients (PHOG). For every image, we first calculate PHOG up to pyramid level 3. The similarity between the histograms of each section at a particular level is then calculated to the parent section at the previous level (or to the histogram at the ground level). The proposed approach is tested on datasets of aesthetic and

North Korean Aesthetic Theory: Aesthetics, Beauty, and "Man"

Science.gov (United States)

David-West, Alzo

2013-01-01

Aesthetics is not a subject usually associated with North Korea in Western scholarship, the usual tropes being autocracy, counterfeiting, drugs, human-rights abuse, famine, nuclear weapons, party-military dictatorship, Stalinism, and totalitarianism. Where the arts are concerned, they are typically seen as crude political propaganda. One British…

Purists, Partisans, and the Aesthetic Dimension of Sport

OpenAIRE

Charles Robinson

2014-01-01

Purists, Partisans, and the Aesthetic Dimension of Sport Stephen Mumford, in his book Watching Sport, identifies two types of sports spectator – partisans and purists. Partisans are more concerned to see their team win, whether they do so in an aesthetically pleasing way or not, while purists have no such irrational commitment, and instead pursues the higher aesthetic experience of sport. The purist, Mumford argues, is superior because she watches sport for aesthetic and intellectual reas...

Art Appreciation and the Method of Aesthetic Transfer

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Zupančič Tomaž

2013-11-01

Full Text Available The method of aesthetic transfer is a modern teaching method in art education. It emphasizes the pedagogic value of the aesthetic experience. It is a comprehensive method, as it encompasses different parameters of art didactics. It affects lesson time allocation and determines content, methods, and teaching modes. It also affects motivation and final evaluation. The essence of the method of aesthetic transfer lies in transferring aesthetic messages from the artwork to students. The foundation and condition for a successful implementation of the method of aesthetic transfer is a high-quality art appreciation. There are several ways and methods for successfully developing art appreciation, the common objective of all being to allow students to see, perceive, and enjoy a work of art. Thus they enrich their artistic and aesthetic development, and establish a positive attitude towards art, while this method at the same time encourages their own artistic exploration.

Living with Risk in Everyday Life - A Comparative Analysis on Handling and Reflecting Risk in Everyday Actions

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Elverdam, Beth; Hoel Felde, Lina Klara

phones; chemicals in a nursery; elevated cholesterol was combined to analyse the concept of risk in everyday life. In-depth qualitative interviews with 46 people made it possible to analyse a general perception of risk in everyday life. Interviews were analysed using a phenomenological thematical content...... analysis. Results: Although risk is communicated in the media and by health personnel, and thus has a general presence in society, participants in everyday life place risk at the periphery of life. Risk is not part of their everyday reflections. When risk manifests itself in everyday life, it is reflected...

Preoperative symptoms of body dysmorphic disorder determine postoperative satisfaction and quality of life in aesthetic rhinoplasty.

Science.gov (United States)

Picavet, Valerie A; Gabriëls, Loes; Grietens, Jente; Jorissen, Mark; Prokopakis, Emmanuel P; Hellings, Peter W

2013-04-01

In patients seeking aesthetic rhinoplasty, a high prevalence of body dysmorphic disorder symptoms has recently been reported. However, the impact of these symptoms on the outcomes after rhinoplasty remains elusive. This large-scale study determines the influence of preoperative body dysmorphic disorder symptoms on patients' postoperative satisfaction and quality of life, using validated questionnaires. A 1-year prospective study of 166 adult patients undergoing cosmetic rhinoplasty in a tertiary referral center was performed. Severity of body dysmorphic disorder symptoms was assessed by the modified Yale-Brown Obsessive Compulsive Scale. Postoperative satisfaction was evaluated using a visual analog scale for patients' appraisal of nasal shape and the Rhinoplasty Outcome Evaluation. Generic quality of life was quantified by the Sheehan Disability Scale, whereas the appearance-related disruption of everyday life was measured by the Derriford Appearance Scale-59. Preoperative body dysmorphic disorder symptom scores inversely correlated with postoperative satisfaction at 3 months (visual analog scale nasal shape: rho = -0.43, p dysmorphic disorder symptom scores positively correlated with Sheehan Disability Scale scores and Derriford Appearance Scale-59 scores at 3 months (rho = 0.43, p dysmorphic disorder symptoms on subjective outcomes after rhinoplasty, hence unveiling a crucial factor in patient dissatisfaction after aesthetic rhinoplasty.

The Literary Aesthetics of Religious Narratives

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Feldt, Laura

2017-01-01

This volume is the first English language presentation of the innovative approaches developed in the aesthetics of religion. The chapters present diverse material and detailed analysis on descriptive, methodological and theoretical concepts that together explore the potential of an aesthetic appr...

21 CFR 878.3800 - External aesthetic restoration prosthesis.

Science.gov (United States)

2010-04-01

... 21 Food and Drugs 8 2010-04-01 2010-04-01 false External aesthetic restoration prosthesis. 878... External aesthetic restoration prosthesis. (a) Identification. An external aesthetic restoration prosthesis... (general controls). The device is exempt from the premarket notification procedures in subpart E of part...

Science education and everyday action

Science.gov (United States)

McCann, Wendy Renee Sherman

2001-07-01

This dissertation addresses three related tasks and issues in the larger field of science education. The first is to review of the several uses of "everydayness" at play in the science education literature, and in the education and social science literatures more generally. Four broad iterations of everydayness were found in science education, and these were traced and analyzed to develop their similarities, and contradictions. It was concluded that despite tendencies in science education research to suppose a fundamental demarcation either between professional science and everyday life, or between schools and everyday life, all social affairs, including professional science and activity in schools, are continuous with everyday life, and consist fundamentally in everyday, ordinary mundane actions which are ordered and organized by the participants to those social activities and occasions. The second task for this dissertation was to conduct a naturalistic, descriptive study of undergraduate-level physics laboratory activities from the analytic perspective of ethnomethodology. The study findings are presented as closely-detailed analysis of the students' methods of following their instructions and 'fitting' their observed results to a known scientific concept or principle during the enactment of their classroom laboratory activities. Based on the descriptions of students' practical work in following instructions and 'fitting'. The characterization of school science labs as an "experiment-demonstration hybrid" is developed. The third task of this dissertation was to synthesize the literature review and field study findings in order to clarify what science educators could productively mean by "everydayness", and to suggest what understandings of science education the study of everyday action recommends. It is argued that the significance of the 'experiment-demo hybrid' characterization must be seen in terms of an alternate program for science education research, which

Combining aesthetic with ecological values for landscape sustainability.

Science.gov (United States)

Yang, Dewei; Luo, Tao; Lin, Tao; Qiu, Quanyi; Luo, Yunjian

2014-01-01

Humans receive multiple benefits from various landscapes that foster ecological services and aesthetic attractiveness. In this study, a hybrid framework was proposed to evaluate ecological and aesthetic values of five landscape types in Houguanhu Region of central China. Data from the public aesthetic survey and professional ecological assessment were converted into a two-dimensional coordinate system and distribution maps of landscape values. Results showed that natural landscapes (i.e. water body and forest) contributed positively more to both aesthetic and ecological values than semi-natural and human-dominated landscapes (i.e. farmland and non-ecological land). The distribution maps of landscape values indicated that the aesthetic, ecological and integrated landscape values were significantly associated with landscape attributes and human activity intensity. To combine aesthetic preferences with ecological services, the methods (i.e. field survey, landscape value coefficients, normalized method, a two-dimensional coordinate system, and landscape value distribution maps) were employed in landscape assessment. Our results could facilitate to identify the underlying structure-function-value chain, and also improve the understanding of multiple functions in landscape planning. The situation context could also be emphasized to bring ecological and aesthetic goals into better alignment.

Aesthetic quality inference for online fashion shopping

Science.gov (United States)

Chen, Ming; Allebach, Jan

2014-03-01

On-line fashion communities in which participants post photos of personal fashion items for viewing and possible purchase by others are becoming increasingly popular. Generally, these photos are taken by individuals who have no training in photography with low-cost mobile phone cameras. It is desired that photos of the products have high aesthetic quality to improve the users' online shopping experience. In this work, we design features for aesthetic quality inference in the context of online fashion shopping. Psychophysical experiments are conducted to construct a database of the photos' aesthetic evaluation, specifically for photos from an online fashion shopping website. We then extract both generic low-level features and high-level image attributes to represent the aesthetic quality. Using a support vector machine framework, we train a predictor of the aesthetic quality rating based on the feature vector. Experimental results validate the efficacy of our approach. Metadata such as the product type are also used to further improve the result.

Aesthetic orthodontic archwires: Progress in their knowledge

OpenAIRE

Rongo, Roberto

2014-01-01

Introduction: In orthodontics, is quickly increasing the demand for treatments with a very low aesthetic impact in the social life. More and more adult patients want satisfy their necessity to have a beautiful smile, with “invisible” appliances. Numerous are the opportunities to perform an aesthetic orthodontic treatment such as lingual orthodontics, clear aligners or clear labial orthodontics. Aesthetic orthodontic archwires are a component of clear labial orthodontics together with aestheti...

Response actions to difficulties in using everyday technology after acquired brain injury.

Science.gov (United States)

Larsson Lund, Maria; Lövgren Engström, Ann-Louice; Lexell, Jan

2012-03-01

People with acquired brain injury (ABI) have difficulties using everyday technology (ET) in daily tasks at home and in society. To support them in managing the demands imposed by using ET, knowledge is needed concerning their response actions to the difficulties. The aim of this study was to explore and describe what characterizes response actions to difficulties using ET, their conditions, and how they influence the experiences of tasks in daily life among people with ABI. Interviews and observations were undertaken with 13 persons with an ABI. Data were analysed qualitatively using the constant comparative method. The participants' response actions were categorized as (i) deliberate and organized planning, (ii) random and inflexible repeating (iii), re-evaluating tasks, (iv) explaining difficulties related to others, and (iv) proving and protecting capability. Certain conditions were decisive for the different response actions to be applied and also for their effectiveness in enabling engagement in tasks in daily life. Each participant used several types of response actions and the same action could be applied in several situations. To support people with an ABI to manage the demands imposed by using ET, it is important to identify the uniqueness of each client and his or her response actions to difficulties using ET and thereafter adjust the interventions accordingly.

Trash and Aesthetics in the Hoard

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Charmaine Eddy

2015-06-01

Full Text Available Trash and Aesthetics in the Hoard by Charmaine Eddy, Issue 7: The Aesthetics of Trash. This article examines two reality television series, Hoarders and Hoarding: Buried Alive, in terms of a variation in the understanding of the object in relation to value based upon an aesthetic tied to consumer capitalism. Object collection is viewed as a spectacle of abjection in each episode, as items that were once worthy of purchase come to produce a garbage heap within the home. The concept of “trash” is an evaluative category applied to objects over time, but it also becomes part of the therapeutic process, as hoarders are required to dispose of their things. Object-oriented ontology, or “thing theory,” provides an alternate semiology for the object, ultimately illustrating how an evaluative aesthetics of the object in these series is linked to consumer capitalism and normative patterns of consumption.

Making Everyday Mobility

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Wind, Simon

2013; Urry 2007) and family theory (Holdsworth 2013; Morgan 2011), it is argued that family mobility is far from only an instrumental phenomenon, displacing family members back and forth between activities and doings, but also a type of family practice (Morgan, 2011) carrying social and emotional...... coping process in the family, it is argued that making and performing mobility practices is to be understood as creating elasticity. Following this, it is elasticity that enables family members to stretch to accommodate the family’s practical, social and emotional conditions as well as adapt......Based upon a qualitative PhD study of 11 families everyday mobility, this paper inquiries into the everyday mobility of families with children in the Greater Copenhagen Area and the role mobility plays in contributing to coping in the families’ everyday life. Drawing on Mobilities theory (Jensen...

The use of assistive technology in the everyday lives of young people living with dementia and their caregivers. Can a simple remote control make a difference?

Science.gov (United States)

Jentoft, Rita; Holthe, Torhild; Arntzen, Cathrine

2014-12-01

This study was a part of a larger study exploring the impact of assistive technology on the lives of young people living with dementia (YPD). This paper focuses on one of the most useful devices, the simple remote control (SRC). The objective was to explore the reason why the SRC is significant and beneficial in the everyday lives of YPD and their caregivers. This qualitative longitudinal study had a participatory design. Eight participants received an SRC. The range for using it was 0-15 months. In-depth interviews and observations were conducted at baseline and repeated every third month up to 18 months. A situated learning approach was used in the analysis to provide a deeper understanding of the significance and use of SRC. Young people having dementia spend a substantial amount of time alone. Watching television was reported to be important, but handling remote controls was challenging and created a variety of problems. YPD learned to use SRC, which made important differences in the everyday lives of all family members. Comprehensive support from caregivers and professionals was important for YPD in the learning process. The SRC was deemed a success because it solved challenges regarding the use of television in everyday lives of families. The design was recognizable and user-friendly, thus allowing YPD to learn its operation. Access to professional support and advice regarding assistive technology is vital for establishing a system for follow-up and continued collaboration to make future adaptations and adjustments.

Aesthetic Supererogation

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Archer, Alfred; Ware, Lauren

2017-01-01

A number of moral philosophers have accepted the need to make room for acts of supererogation, those that go beyond the call of duty. In this paper, we argue that there is also good reason to make room for acts of aesthetic supererogation.

Wavefront Aesthetics

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Højlund, Marie; Riis, Morten S.

2015-01-01

. Subscribing to this view also confronts music and sound art as consistent autonomous categories and focuses on how the pieces attune to the environment, emphasising meetings, transformations and translations through and with other objects. These meetings generate an ecological awareness of causal aesthetics...

Entrepreneurship as everyday practice

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Blenker, Per; Frederiksen, Signe Hedeboe; Korsgaard, Steffen

2012-01-01

Adopting the perspective of ‘entrepreneurship as an everyday practice’ in education, the authors conceptualize opportunities as arising from the everyday practice of individuals. Opportunities are thus seen as emanating from the individual entrepreneur’s ability to disclose anomalies and disharmo......Adopting the perspective of ‘entrepreneurship as an everyday practice’ in education, the authors conceptualize opportunities as arising from the everyday practice of individuals. Opportunities are thus seen as emanating from the individual entrepreneur’s ability to disclose anomalies...... and disharmonies in their personal life. The paper illustrates how opportunities unfold depending on regional differences, local heritage and gender, to show how entrepreneurship education must take into account differences in context, culture and circumstance. Rather than perceiving entrepreneurship education...... as universalistic and searching for a generally applicable teaching approach, the authors argue that there is a need to tailor entrepreneurship education to the particular. They therefore propose that the pedagogy of entrepreneurship education should be personalized and they build a conceptual framework...

Aesthetic Appeal

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Folkmann, Mads Nygaard

2014-01-01

of experience, e.g. in appeal to emotions or pleasure. 2) On a conceptual-hermeneutical level, the staging of meaning by design objects is in question. This regards, on the one hand, the appeal to understanding by the human subject and, on the other hand, the ability of the object to reflect its own character...... on three levels: 1) On a sensual-phenomenological level, the focus is on sensual appeal, i.e. how the design object by its sensual and tactile effects and its outer shape creates an appeal to human experience. This is not a matter of style but of the object relating to and framing the conditions......, the question of aesthetics in design may be answered by both addressing the internal meaning formulation of the aesthetic appeal and the external cultural and discursive framing of design that influences how design is perceived as ‘aesthetic’....

Brain correlates of aesthetic judgment of beauty.

Science.gov (United States)

Jacobsen, Thomas; Schubotz, Ricarda I; Höfel, Lea; Cramon, D Yves V

2006-01-01

Functional MRI was used to investigate the neural correlates of aesthetic judgments of beauty of geometrical shapes. Participants performed evaluative aesthetic judgments (beautiful or not?) and descriptive symmetry judgments (symmetric or not?) on the same stimulus material. Symmetry was employed because aesthetic judgments are known to be often guided by criteria of symmetry. Novel, abstract graphic patterns were presented to minimize influences of attitudes or memory-related processes and to test effects of stimulus symmetry and complexity. Behavioral results confirmed the influence of stimulus symmetry and complexity on aesthetic judgments. Direct contrasts showed specific activations for aesthetic judgments in the frontomedian cortex (BA 9/10), bilateral prefrontal BA 45/47, and posterior cingulate, left temporal pole, and the temporoparietal junction. In contrast, symmetry judgments elicited specific activations in parietal and premotor areas subserving spatial processing. Interestingly, beautiful judgments enhanced BOLD signals not only in the frontomedian cortex, but also in the left intraparietal sulcus of the symmetry network. Moreover, stimulus complexity caused differential effects for each of the two judgment types. Findings indicate aesthetic judgments of beauty to rely on a network partially overlapping with that underlying evaluative judgments on social and moral cues and substantiate the significance of symmetry and complexity for our judgment of beauty.

Sensorial Organization as an Ethics of Space: Digital Media in Everyday Life

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Stina Bengtsson

2018-05-01

Full Text Available This article outlines an analysis of the ethical organization of digital media and social and individual space in everyday life. This is made from a perspective of an ‘ethics of the ordinary’, highlighting the mundane negotiations and practices conducted to maintain a ‘good life’ with the media. The analysis shows a sensorial organization of space is conducted in relation to social space, as well as individually. The interviewees use facilities provided by media technologies in order to organize space, as well as organize their media devices spatially in order to construct space for specific purposes, and maintain a good life. These results call for a deepened analysis of the sensorial dimensions of everyday space, in order to understand the ethical struggles of a life with digital media. It is important to include the full spectrum of sensorial experiences in our approach to everyday life and to take the sensorial experiences of ordinary media users into account in our analysis of space as part of an everyday ethics.

Coleridge's Biographia Literaria and Aesthetic Education.

Science.gov (United States)

Swanger, David

1980-01-01

This paper makes two principal assertions: first, that Coleridge's "Biographia Literaria" is a valuable and hitherto neglected resource for aesthetic educators and, second, that the distinction Coleridge makes between fancy and imagination affords the aesthetic educator a unique insight into the differences between the popular and fine…

Everyday Ageing in Copenhagen

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Stald-Bolow, Nina Rose; Malmborg, Lone; Brandt, Eva

2015-01-01

Senior life in Copenhagen is lived in numerous ways. Through three seniors' stories from their everyday life, we give an insight into this diversity. We lookig into how they imagine a good senior life can unfold in Copenhagen today. The three senior lives portrayed here were part of the everyday ...

Everyday ageing in Copenhagen

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Stald-Bolow, Nina Rose; Malmborg, Lone; Brandt, Eva

2015-01-01

Senior life in Copenhagen is lived in numerous ways. Through three seniors' stories from their everyday life, we give an insight into this diversity. We lookig into how they imagine a good senior life can unfold in Copenhagen today. The three senior lives portrayed here were part of the everyday ...

The Potential of Design Aesthetics

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Bang, Anne Louise; Folkmann, Mads Nygaard; Jensen, Hans-Christian

design practice, the humanities and the social sciences. The initial research question is a meta-question contesting the relevance of the concept of design aesthetics in design research in terms of the interest in practice methodology within design practice, the interest in understanding the object......The paper is a contribution to building a research discourse and methodology across disciplines. Taking design aesthetics as our theme, we present and discuss a research framework with roots in the interest in aesthetics within the humanities but aimed at producing research perspectives across...... within the humanities and the interest within the social sciences in investigating patterns and aspects of consumption. The research frame is guided by two aims: (i) to enable specific research interests by looking at possible combinations of empirical material and phenomena (processes, objects, contexts...

Kindergarten children’s digitized conduct of everyday life

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Chimirri, Niklas Alexander

The relation between a child’s everyday life and digital media technologies is complex and complicated. To what extent children think them subjectively relevant for their lives and subsequently use meanings transmitted by domesticated technologies in the contexts they live in/with and move through...... be valuable for understanding this relationship in such a two-sided manner. However, studies building on an agential-realist perspective often neglect that children face concrete dilemmas when trying to integrate digital media technologies into institutionalized practices. These dilemmas persist over time......, depends on the specific socio-material conditions they were and are confronted with in practice. Meanwhile children have the possibility to act differently in relation to these conditions. Consequently children are neither merely objectively determined by the technologies, nor can they completely...

The Safety of Aesthetic Labiaplasty: A Plastic Surgery Experience.

Science.gov (United States)

Lista, Frank; Mistry, Bhavik D; Singh, Yashoda; Ahmad, Jamil

2015-08-01

The demand for female aesthetic labiaplasty surgery continues to rapidly increase. Several questions have been raised regarding the safety and effectiveness of female aesthetic genital surgery. The purpose of this study is to review our experience with aesthetic labiaplasty and describe the type and frequency of complications that have been experienced. A retrospective chart review was performed on all patients who had primary aesthetic labia minora reduction surgery from August 2007 to April 2014. A chart review of the electronic medical record was performed to examine demographic, procedural, and outcome data. In the study period, 113 patients underwent aesthetic labiaplasty. Of these, 29 patients (25.6%) had labiaplasty performed in combination with another procedure. A total of 15 patients (13.3%) reported transient symptoms, including swelling, bruising, and pain. There was one patient (0.8%) that experienced bleeding. Four patients (3.5%) required revision surgery. All revisions were performed to excise further tissue to address persistent redundancy or asymmetry. No major complications were reported. In our experience, aesthetic surgery of the labia minora using an edge excision technique has a very low complication rate and provides satisfactory aesthetic outcomes for our patients. More studies examining the impact of labiaplasty on a woman's self-image and quality of life would add to our understanding of the motivations and expectations of women undergoing this aesthetic surgery. This information will allow us to help our patients make well-informed decisions when considering this aesthetic genital surgery. 4 Risk. © 2015 The American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery, Inc. Reprints and permission: journals.permissions@oup.com.

Who Finds Bill Gates Sexy? Creative Mate Preferences as a Function of Cognitive Ability, Personality, and Creative Achievement

Science.gov (United States)

Kaufman, Scott Barry; Kozbelt, Aaron; Silvia, Paul; Kaufman, James C.; Ramesh, Sheela; Feist, Gregory J.

2016-01-01

Creativity is sexy, but are all creative behaviors equally sexy? We attempted to clarify the role of creativity in mate selection among an ethnically diverse sample of 815 undergraduates. First we assessed the sexual attractiveness of different forms of creativity: ornamental/aesthetic, applied/technological, and everyday/domestic creativity. Both…

Minimally invasive aesthetic procedures in young adults

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Wollina U

2011-03-01

Full Text Available Uwe Wollina1, Alberto Goldman21Department of Dermatology and Allergology, Academic Teaching Hospital Dresden-Friedrichstadt, Dresden, Germany; 2Clinica Goldman, Porto Alegre, Rio Grande du Sul, BrazilAbstract: Age is a significant factor in modifying specific needs when it comes to medical aesthetic procedures. In this review we will focus on young adults in their third decade of life and review minimally invasive aesthetic procedures other than cosmetics and cosmeceuticals. Correction of asymmetries, correction after body modifying procedures, and facial sculpturing are important issues for young adults. The implication of aesthetic medicine as part of preventive medicine is a major ethical challenge that differentiates aesthetic medicine from fashion.Keywords: acne scars, ice pick scars, boxcar scars, fillers 

The Evolutionary Value of an Aesthetic Sense

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Stephen Davies

2013-12-01

Full Text Available The aesthetic sense we inherited from our successful ancestors drew them toward conditions that made for survival and reproductive success and repelled them away from conditions that impacted negatively on longevity and fertility. But for them, as for us, those desirable outcomes were incidental and uncalculated. Their search was for the beautiful and sublime. Aesthetic behaviours are apparent in our forerunner species about 400,000 years ago. They sometimes made symmetrical hand axes that were then not used. We can take an aesthetic interest in more or less anything, but the aesthetic responses that are rooted in our biology include those to landscapes and environments, to non-human animals, and to the appearance and behaviour of our fellow humans.

The struggle is beautiful: on the aesthetics of leftist politics

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Hartle, J.

2013-01-01

Aesthetic discourse has always openly or secretly been linked to political projects. According to some main strands of aesthetic discourse modern aesthetics mirrors the structure of social and political emancipation and key elements of aesthetic discourse coincide with the political ontology of the

Cognitive mechanisms for explaining dynamics of aesthetic appreciation

Science.gov (United States)

Carbon, Claus-Christian

2011-01-01

For many domains aesthetic appreciation has proven to be highly reliable. Evaluations of facial attractiveness, for instance, show high internal consistencies and impressively high inter-rater reliabilities, even across cultures. This indicates general mechanisms underlying such evaluations. It is, however, also obvious that our taste for specific objects is not always stable—in some realms such stability is hardly conceivable at all since aesthetic domains such as fashion, design, or art are inherently very dynamic. Gaining insights into the cognitive mechanisms that trigger and enable corresponding changes of aesthetic appreciation is of particular interest for psychologists as this will probably reveal essential mechanisms of aesthetic evaluations per se. The present paper develops a two-step model, dynamically adapting itself, which accounts for typical dynamics of aesthetic appreciation found in different research areas such as art history, philosophy, and psychology. The first step assumes singular creative sources creating and establishing innovative material towards which, in a second step, people adapt by integrating it into their visual habits. This inherently leads to dynamic changes of the beholders— aesthetic appreciation. PMID:23145254

Truth comes into play: Adorno, Kant and Aesthetics

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Berta M. Pérez

2009-10-01

Full Text Available This paper departs from the verification of the centrality that, in Adorno’s recognition of the aesthetic field, the rehabilitation of its bond to knowledge and truth has. Adorno’s criticism to the Kantian aesthetic theory is, this way, reconstructed starting from his dismissal of the separation, established by Kant, between the aesthetic and the epistemological fields. This criticism, which accuses the Kantian aesthetics of subjectivism, is finally taken back to Adorno’s dissatisfaction regarding the transcendental approach, for not being dialectic. At this point, the need of determining the specificity of his own understanding of the aesthetic and dialectics becomes apparent. Surprisingly it is then discovered an unexpected proximity between his position and the one represented by the Kantian aesthetics itself, a proximity that let recognize in the latter some features which go beyond the limits of the Critical System towards the Adornian approach. But this proximity proves also the immanence and legitimacy of the (ambiguous Adornian criticism to Kant, and, as a result of this, the unsatisfactory quality of the Kantian determination of knowledge and truth.

Confidence, Visual Research, and the Aesthetic Function

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Stan Ruecker

2007-05-01

Full Text Available The goal of this article is to identify and describe one of the primary purposes of aesthetic quality in the design of computer interfaces and visualization tools. We suggest that humanists can derive advantages in visual research by acknowledging by their efforts to advance aesthetic quality that a significant function of aesthetics in this context is to inspire the user’s confidence. This confidence typically serves to create a sense of trust in the provider of the interface or tool. In turn, this increased trust may result in an increased willingness to engage with the object, on the basis that it demonstrates an attention to detail that promises to reward increased engagement. In addition to confidence, the aesthetic may also contribute to a heightened degree of satisfaction with having spent time using or investigating the object. In the realm of interface design and visualization research, we propose that these aesthetic functions have implications not only for the quality of interactions, but also for the results of the standard measures of performance and preference.

Therapeutic Dimensions of the Black Aesthetic

Science.gov (United States)

Toldson, Ivory L.; Pasteur, Alfred B.

1976-01-01

The authors of this article see the black aesthetic largely in terms of the affective component. Emotional oneness which is foreign to the white world view is the means by which the black man can achieve optimal mental health and development. The therapeutic implications of the black aesthetic are outlined. (NG)

Magic and the aesthetic illusion.

Science.gov (United States)

Balter, Leon

2002-01-01

The aesthetic illusion is the subjective experience that the content of a work of art is reality. It has an intrinsic relation to magic, an intrapsychic maneuver oriented toward modification and control of the extraspyschic world, principally through ego functioning. Magic is ontogenetically and culturally archaic, expresses the omnipotence inherent in primary narcissism, and operates according to the logic of the primary process. Magic is a constituent of all ego functioning, usually latent in later development. It may persist as an archaic feature or may be evoked regressively in global or circumscribed ways. It causes a general disinhibition of instincts and impulses attended by a sense of confidence, exhiliration, and exuberance. The aesthetic illusion is a combination of illusions: (1) that the daydream embodied by the work of art is the beholder's own, the artist being ignored, and (2) that the artistically described protagonist is a real person with a real "world." The first illusion arises through the beholder's emotional-instinctual gratification from his or her own fantasy-memory constellations; the second comes about because the beholder, by taking the protagonist as proxy, mobilizes the subjective experience of the imaginary protagonist's "reality." The first illusion is necessary for the second to take place; the second establishes the aesthetic illusion proper. Both illusions are instances of magic. Accordingly, the aesthetic illusion is accompanied by a heady experience of excitement and euphoria. The relation among the aesthetic illusion, magic, and enthusiasm is illustrated by an analytic case, J. D. Salinger's "The Laughing Man," Woody Allen's Play It Again, Sam, Don Quixote, and the medieval Cult of the Saints.

Digital technologies, participatory learning and the transformation of students’ conduct of everyday life

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Schraube, Ernst

expanding human activities, they are also powerful socio-political “forms of life” (Langdon Winner) transforming fundamentally the practice of teaching and learning as well as the students’ conduct of everyday life. The paper explores the meaning of digital learning spaces at universities (especially...

Visual website aesthetics : the relationship between dimensions of visual website aesthetics, website trust and consumers' intention to visit the website

OpenAIRE

Dalen, Mie Birgitte

2015-01-01

A review of previous research about visual aesthetics revealed inconsistencies and contradicting views. Due to the important role of visual aesthetics in the online environment, a more thorough understanding of the construct was beneficial. Therefore, the first aim of this thesis was to develop a new structural framework of the dimensions of visual website aesthetics based on a review of previous research findings and theories. This conceptualisation process revealed that visua...

Young People's Everyday Literacies: The Language Features of Instant Messaging

Science.gov (United States)

Haas, Christina; Takayoshi, Pamela

2011-01-01

In this article, we examine writing in the context of new communication technologies as a kind of everyday literacy. Using an inductive approach developed from grounded theory, we analyzed a 32,000-word corpus of college students' Instant Messaging (IM) exchanges. Through our analysis of this corpus, we identify a fifteen-item taxonomy of IM…

Dieting and body image in aesthetic sports: A comparison of Dutch female gymnasts and non-aesthetic sport participants

NARCIS (Netherlands)

de Bruin, A.P.; Oudejans, R.R.D.; Bakker, F.C.

2007-01-01

Objectives: To examine the relationship between dieting behavior and body image in female aesthetic athletes. Methods: Seventeen elite gymnasts, 51 non-elite gymnasts and a control group of 85 schoolgirls, participating in non-elite, merely recreational non-aesthetic sports, completed self-report

Behavior as a Reflection of Man’s Moral and Aesthetic Nature

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Botakoz A. Zhekibaeva

2013-01-01

Full Text Available The article studies crucial problem of moral and aesthetic nature of an individual, which is considered as a problem of dialectical, contradictory relation of consciousness, its spiritual content and actual behavioral manifestations by psychological and educational literature. Man’s moral and aesthetic nature is revealed on the basis of study of scientific works by Russian and foreign scientists. It is a social and natural integrity, an organic and indissoluble unity of moral, aesthetic, corporal, aesthetic and external artistic and expressive nature. The article justifies the idea that behavior, reflecting the moral and aesthetic nature of personality is indicator of his/her moral and aesthetic development, maturity of moral qualities, educated aesthetic perception, subtle emotional reactions on moral and aesthetic manifestations and their keen perception

Riding Pontic--Aesthetic Journey Aesthetic Goal.

Science.gov (United States)

Rohilla, Byajit Kumar; Choudhary, Shweta; Manisha, Kukreja; Walia, Pawanjit Singh; Nafria, Anil

2015-01-01

The increasing concern for esthetics during the orthodontic treatment can be measured by the increasing popularity ofaesthetic brackets, lingual technique, smaller sized metal brackets, and clear alignment therapy. Many clients, especially adolescents, are self-conscious about their appearance in social and professional situations, and they refuse to tolerate the inevitable "black holes" of edentulous spaces during orthodontic treatment. This article describes the use, fabrication, modifications, and shortcomings of riding pontics; and illustrates how their use provides aesthetic, psychological and functional benefits.

Introducing Aesthetic Features in Gymnastic Skills

Science.gov (United States)

Pollatou, Elisana; Savrami, Katia; Karadimou, Konstanding

2004-01-01

This paper focuses on an aesthetic approach that takes the simplest functional skill, such as walking, and develops it into an artistic skill. The aim then is to identify aesthetic characteristics and examine ways to apply them in gymnastic classes. Because walking is the child's first experience with bipedal locomotion, the initial walking action…

Research on the Aesthetic Experiences of Tourists Visiting Turkey

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Saime Oral

2013-12-01

Full Text Available The purpose of this study was to determine the aesthetic value of tourism products provided by tour operators who are the wholesalers with in the tourism industry as well as revealing the impact of aesthetic valueson customer satisfaction. The research was applied to Far-East tourists who have been visiting Turkey in ever increasing numbersyear by year. Convenience sampling, a non-probability sampling method was used. Zhang (2008’s Aesthetic Value Scale was performed on Far-East tourist groups. Exploratory factor analysis and correlation analysis were applied to the data collected from the Far East tourists visiting Turkey. As aresult of the exploratory factor analysison the aesthetic experiences of the tourists within: asouvenir shop, museum, restaurant, hotel and tour bus aesthetic valueswere apparent throughout. At the end of the research apositive correlation was found between aesthetic value and customer satisfaction

Fractal Analysis of Stealthy Pathfinding Aesthetics

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Ron Coleman

2009-01-01

Full Text Available This paper uses a fractal model to analyze aesthetic values of a new class of obstacle-prone or “stealthy” pathfinding which seeks to avoid detection, exposure, openness, and so forth in videogames. This study is important since in general the artificial intelligence literature has given relatively little attention to aesthetic outcomes in pathfinding. The data we report, according to the fractal model, suggests that stealthy paths are statistically significantly unique in relative aesthetic value when compared to control paths. We show furthermore that paths generated with different stealth regimes are also statistically significantly unique. These conclusions are supported by statistical analysis of model results on experimental trials involving pathfinding in randomly generated, multiroom virtual worlds.

Partying as Everyday Life

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Demant, Jakob; Østergaard, Jeanette

2007-01-01

situates the event in everyday life. By drawing on Maffesoli's (1996) concept of ‘sociality' and Lincoln's (2005) concept of zoning the spatial and social logic of the house, partying is analysed using both qualitative and quantitative material. The analysis suggests that the consumption of alcohol (i...... to reaffirm friendship and is therefore an integrated part of adolescents' everyday life.  ...

School Everyday Life in Images

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Carlos Eduardo Ferraço

2017-04-01

Full Text Available This article aims at questioning school everyday life in images, based on intercessors and concepts from Deleuze and Guattari’s Philosophy of Difference. It is based on data-image-graffiti produced during investigations developed by us with public schools’ everyday life in the city of Vitória, ES, Brazil. The text claims that, in order to speak about school everyday life in images to favor the sudden, the production of meaning and the multiplicity of knowledge, it is necessary to invest in another research attitude - one that considers chaos, chance and permanent openness and complexity of school everyday life as forces to constitute an immanence plane and create concepts. The article affirms the idea of impossibility of choosing images that would be considered the most representative to speak about events in the schools.

Stop "cruising for a bruising": mitigating bruising in aesthetic medicine.

Science.gov (United States)

Brennan, Connie

2014-01-01

The quest to restore a more youthful appearance by filling and volumizing facial deformities and deficiencies continues to be an ongoing pursuit in the noninvasive aesthetics market. Bruising can result from the delivery of neuromodulators and dermal fillers--common tools in the aesthetic provider's armamentarium to combat the ravages of aging. There are steps both the aesthetic provider and the client can take to minimize the potential for bruising. This article focuses on the etiology of bruising, the pharmacological and herbal agents to avoid prior to an aesthetic procedure, techniques to utilize during aesthetic procedures that lessen the potential of bruise formation, and pharmacological and herbal agents to administer after an aesthetic procedure to ultimately mitigate bruise formation.

Aesthetic self-esteem.

Science.gov (United States)

Kaplan, Julie Bass

2015-01-01

The concept of aesthetic self-esteem was explored for utilization in the medical spa environment. The aims and purposes of the analysis were outlined. The literature review identified various uses of the self-esteem concept as well as published definitions of the word. Defining attributes were also explored and examined, including positive and negative connotations of self-esteem. Two tools were utilized to help aesthetic nurse specialists assess patients for self-esteem and assess for a possible mental illness that may present as low self-esteem. A culturally sensitive theoretical definition of self-esteem was constructed to fit the needs and environment of medical spas. A model case of this definition, as well as a borderline and contrary case, was presented. Antecedents and consequences, as well as empirical referents of the concept, were explored.

Teaching 5th grade science for aesthetic understanding

Science.gov (United States)

Girod, Mark A.

Many scientists speak with great zeal about the role of aesthetics and beauty in their science and inquiry. Few systematic efforts have been made to teach science in ways that appeal directly to aesthetics and this research is designed to do just that. Drawing from the aesthetic theory of Dewey, I describe an analytic lens called learning for aesthetic understanding that finds power in the degree to which our perceptions of the world are transformed, our interests and enthusiasm piqued, and our actions changed as we seek further experiences in the world. This learning theory is contrasted against two other current and popular theories of science learning, that of learning for conceptual understanding via conceptual change theory and learning for a language-oriented or discourse-based understanding. After a lengthy articulation of the pedagogical strategies used to teach for aesthetic understanding the research is described in which comparisons are drawn between students in two 5th grade classrooms---one taught for the goal of conceptual understanding and the other taught for the goal of aesthetic understanding. Results of this comparison show that more students in the treatment classroom had aesthetic experiences with science ideas and came to an aesthetic understanding when studying weather, erosion, and structure of matter than students in the control group. Also statistically significant effects are shown on measures of interest, affect, and efficacy for students in the treatment class. On measures of conceptual understanding it appears that treatment class students learned more and forgot less over time than control class students. The effect of the treatment does not generally depend on gender, ethnicity, or prior achievement except in students' identity beliefs about themselves as science learners. In this case, a significant interaction for treatment class females on science identity beliefs did occur. A discussion of these results as well as elaboration and

Sense Training as Basis for Aesthetic Experience

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Thomsen, Bente Dahl

2016-01-01

. It is a special problem for design engineers, who must guarantee the aesthetic, ethical and utilitarian qualities of products in a product development process. It does not matter whether they or other designers have conceived the product idea. It has been found that sense training can open up to aesthetic...... and train their specification of the basis for aesthetic experiences. The context for the study is a course and a project in interaction design about designing rehabilitation products, where undergraduate students must develop a project program with focus on theoretical scientific research and experiment...

Modeling Human Aesthetic Perception of Visual Textures

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Thumfart, Stefan; Jacobs, Richard H. A. H.; Lughofer, Edwin; Eitzinger, Christian; Cornelissen, Frans W.; Groissboeck, Werner; Richter, Roland

Texture is extensively used in areas such as product design and architecture to convey specific aesthetic information. Using the results of a psychological experiment, we model the relationship between computational texture features and aesthetic properties of visual textures. Contrary to previous

A discerning approach to simple aesthetic orthodontics.

Science.gov (United States)

Noar, J H; Sharma, S; Roberts-Harry, D; Qureshi, T

2015-02-16

There is currently considerable interest from general dental practitioners (GDPs) in the use of simple orthodontics to treat adult malocclusions. There is controversy in this, particularly in relation to 'quick fixes', simple orthodontics and 'straight teeth in six months' as opposed to more conventional treatment where the whole malocclusion is treated. This article will present a case for the use of simple aesthetic adult orthodontics in a measured and planned way. It will discuss the processes, planning and the importance of consent. It will also highlight how digital technology is used to preview, consent and execute an aesthetic result. Many of the recent systems emerging, have been as a result of the demand and supply of cosmetic dentistry. This, to a degree, has not helped since the implication of a 'quick-fix' is associated with this field. There has also been discussion on what the limits of GDP orthodontics should be. There is variability in how GDPs approach orthodontics, their experience, skill and ability to treat to an acceptable standard. Short courses may be one way of delivering orthodontic training but some of these courses are not regulated and the amount of internal mentoring is variable. This article highlights some of the systems in use, and potential upsides and downsides of this approach.

Psychotherapy in the aesthetic attitude.

Science.gov (United States)

Beebe, John

2010-04-01

Drawing upon the writings of Jungian analyst Joseph Henderson on unconscious attitudes toward culture that patients and analysts may bring to therapy, the author defines the aesthetic attitude as one of the basic ways that cultural experience is instinctively accessed and processed so that it can become part of an individual's self experience. In analytic treatment, the aesthetic attitude emerges as part of what Jung called the transcendent function to create new symbolic possibilities for the growth of consciousness. It can provide creative opportunities for new adaptation where individuation has become stuck in unconscious complexes, both personal and cultural. In contrast to formulations that have compared depth psychotherapy to religious ritual, philosophic discourse, and renewal of socialization, this paper focuses upon the considerations of beauty that make psychotherapy also an art. In psychotherapeutic work, the aesthetic attitude confronts both analyst and patient with the problem of taste, affects how the treatment is shaped and 'framed', and can grant a dimension of grace to the analyst's mirroring of the struggles that attend the patient's effort to be a more smoothly functioning human being. The patient may learn to extend the same grace to the analyst's fumbling attempts to be helpful. The author suggests that the aesthetic attitude is thus a help in the resolution of both countertransference and transference en route to psychological healing.

Brain connectivity reflects human aesthetic responses to music.

Science.gov (United States)

Sachs, Matthew E; Ellis, Robert J; Schlaug, Gottfried; Loui, Psyche

2016-06-01

Humans uniquely appreciate aesthetics, experiencing pleasurable responses to complex stimuli that confer no clear intrinsic value for survival. However, substantial variability exists in the frequency and specificity of aesthetic responses. While pleasure from aesthetics is attributed to the neural circuitry for reward, what accounts for individual differences in aesthetic reward sensitivity remains unclear. Using a combination of survey data, behavioral and psychophysiological measures and diffusion tensor imaging, we found that white matter connectivity between sensory processing areas in the superior temporal gyrus and emotional and social processing areas in the insula and medial prefrontal cortex explains individual differences in reward sensitivity to music. Our findings provide the first evidence for a neural basis of individual differences in sensory access to the reward system, and suggest that social-emotional communication through the auditory channel may offer an evolutionary basis for music making as an aesthetically rewarding function in humans. © The Author (2016). Published by Oxford University Press. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com.

EVERYDAY QUR’AN DI ERA POST-KONSUMERISME MUSLIM

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

M. Endy Saputro

2016-09-01

Full Text Available This paper aims to give a preliminary draft to formulate an innovative concept in the Qur’anic studies world in the age of post-consumerism Muslim. Recent studies on tug of war between globalization and religion have been identifying salient social transformation in some parts of Muslim world, such as the rise of new (media religious authority, religious commodification trends, varieties of Islamic consumption, the emergence of public Islam and so forth. Apart from these recent scholarships, which successfully grasp the globalization’s influence toward religion (Islam, this paper offers the concept of everyday Qur’an as an alternative basic approach of understanding the cultures of Qur’an in this changing (Muslim world and at the same time, seeking to briefly explain its emerging issues. Some exemplary issues then have analytically discussed to reflect how the proposed theory applied. Thus, everyday Qur’an can contribute the discourse of cultures based technology in the context of Qur’anic Studies. 

Combining Aesthetic with Ecological Values for Landscape Sustainability

OpenAIRE

Yang, Dewei; Luo, Tao; Lin, Tao; Qiu, Quanyi; Luo, Yunjian

2014-01-01

Humans receive multiple benefits from various landscapes that foster ecological services and aesthetic attractiveness. In this study, a hybrid framework was proposed to evaluate ecological and aesthetic values of five landscape types in Houguanhu Region of central China. Data from the public aesthetic survey and professional ecological assessment were converted into a two-dimensional coordinate system and distribution maps of landscape values. Results showed that natural landscapes (i.e. wate...

Stability and Variability in Aesthetic Experience: A Review

OpenAIRE

Jacobsen, Thomas; Beudt, Susan

2017-01-01

Based on psychophysics’ pragmatic dualism, we trace the cognitive neuroscience of stability and variability in aesthetic experience. With regard to different domains of aesthetic processing, we touch upon the relevance of cognitive schemata for aesthetic preference. Attitudes and preferences are explored in detail. Evolutionary constraints on attitude formation or schema generation are elucidated, just as the often seemingly arbitrary influences of social, societal, and cultural nature are. A...

Aesthetic Cartography

Science.gov (United States)

Toland, Alexandra

2017-04-01

Art theorists, Carole Gray and Heather Delday (2010) pose the question, "What might be known through creative practice that could not be known by any other means?" As a visual artist with a doctorate degree in environmental planning from the TU-Berlin's Department of Soil Protection, I have long considered this question in my work and over the years contributed an active voice to discussions on research, education, and public engagement with soil and art and soil and culture in Germany and around the world. After presenting many other examples of artists' work at international scientific symposia, I would like to present examples of some of my own artistic practice with soil mapping and soil protection issues at the 2017 EGU. In combining methods of visual art, landscape analysis, and soil mapping, I have developed a practice called Aesthetic Cartography that employs sculptural techniques, object-making, installation and performance, printing and graphic design, as well as site analysis, data mining, and map reading and interpretation. Given my background in participatory planning practices, I also integrate small-group dialogic processes in the creation and implementation of my works. The projects making up the body of works in Aesthetic Cartography are mainly focused on urban issues, including: soil sealing, inner-city watershed management, creative brownfield use, rubble substrates and leachates, foraging and urban agriculture, and envisioning sustainable cities of the future. In the session SSS1.4 - Soil, Art, and Culture I will summarize project goals, materials and methods, venues and public contexts, elements of collaboration and participation, as well as target audiences involved in several projects of the Aesthetic Cartography series. The aim of the presentation is not to give a comprehensive answer to Gray and Delday's question above, but rather to share personal insights from a professional practice that merges artistic and scientific approaches to soil

ON BEAUTY AND THE BEAUTIFUL IN AESTHETIC EDUCATION

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Borce Kostov

2013-06-01

Full Text Available We titled our work “On Beauty and the Beautiful in Aesthetic Education” and we analyzed the category beautiful in function of better understanding the issues of aesthetic education.The basic point was the fact that the determination of the term beautiful is being different in both, time aspect and space aspect. Also, the authors involved in this matter have got different understanding on beautiful issue, on its essence, on its role in human development and on the development of the aesthetics and the aesthetic education.Therefore, within our work, there is an attempt to differ the approaches towards the category beautiful, to comment it, to compare it and finally to give our approach.

Design Criteria Based on Aesthetic Considerations

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Thomsen, Bente Dahl

2009-01-01

Aesthetic criteria for designs are often debated in a very subjective manner which makes it difficult to reach consensus. In order to have a more rational and transparent process, in particular in industrial design, we propose a procedure based on Baumgarten's aesthetic considerations and Thommesen......'s dividing of a form into form elements. The procedure has been tested in student projects....

Viewpoint A Viewpoint of Personal Aesthetic Preferences and ...

African Journals Online (AJOL)

Viewpoint A Viewpoint of Personal Aesthetic Preferences and Aesthetic Education, Landscape Theory and Survival in the Kalahari Region of South Africa: Implications for an Authentic Contemporary Curriculum.

Benefits and burdens: family caregivers' experiences of assistive technology (AT) in everyday life with persons with young-onset dementia (YOD).

Science.gov (United States)

Holthe, Torhild; Jentoft, Rita; Arntzen, Cathrine; Thorsen, Kirsten

2017-09-11

People with dementia and their family caregivers may benefit from assistive technology (AT), but knowledge is scarce about family carers' (FC) experiences and involvement in the use of AT in everyday life. To examine the FC roles and experiences with AT as means of supporting people with young onset-dementia (YOD). Qualitative interview study with follow-up design. Repeated semi-structured interviews were conducted with 13 FC of people with YOD, participating in an ongoing intervention study investigating the families' use and experiences of AT in everyday life. Six main themes emerged: (1) timely information about AT; (2) waiting times; (3) AT incorporated into everyday living; (4) AT experienced as a relief and burden; (5) appraisal of AT qualities and (6) the committed caregiver. The study found benefits for the FC, especially with simply designed AT, but also several barriers for successful use. A committed caregiver is vital throughout the process. Users will need professional advice and support, and occupational therapists may have a significant role in the process. Interventions implementing AT must be based on analysis of the needs of the person with YOD and the carers: their capabilities, preferences, embodied habits, and coping strategies. Implications for Rehabilitation Committed family carers (FC) play an important, often decisive, role in providing support for the person with young-onset dementia (YOD, onset <65 years) to use and benefit from the AT. The simpler the AT, the better. The AT should be introduced at "the right time", before the cognitive and adaptive reduction is too great. The "window" for implementation may be short. AT has potential to ease caregiving and give relief for FC. However, many barriers, difficulties and problems must be attended to. A system for individualized support over time is necessary for implementing AT for this group.

Aesthetics of interdisciplinarity art and mathematics

CERN Document Server

Lähdesmäki, Tuuli

2017-01-01

This anthology fosters an interdisciplinary dialogue between the mathematical and artistic approaches in the field where mathematical and artistic thinking and practice merge. The articles included highlight the most significant current ideas and phenomena, providing a multifaceted and extensive snapshot of the field and indicating how interdisciplinary approaches are applied in the research of various cultural and artistic phenomena. The discussions are related, for example, to the fields of aesthetics, anthropology, art history, art theory, artistic practice, cultural studies, ethno-mathematics, geometry, mathematics, new physics, philosophy, physics, study of visual illusions, and symmetry studies. Further, the book introduces a new concept: the interdisciplinary aesthetics of mathematical art, which the editors use to explain the manifold nature of the aesthetic principles intertwined in these discussions.

Concepts of “Aesthetics of Arts” in Slovak Aesthetics of the 19th Century and Kant’s Conception of “Harmonization”

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Jana Soškova

2015-11-01

Full Text Available The paper analyses three concepts of aesthetics of arts in Slovak aesthetics in the first third of the 19th century based on the ideas of three Slovak authors (Michal Greguš, Andrej Vandrák and Karol Kuzmány who all shared creative reading of Kant and transformation of the process of “harmonization” as a foundation of defining possible aesthetic potentiality of art.

Using virtual reality to estimate aesthetic values of coral reefs

Science.gov (United States)

Clifford, Sam; Caley, M. Julian; Pearse, Alan R.; Brown, Ross; James, Allan; Christensen, Bryce; Bednarz, Tomasz; Anthony, Ken; González-Rivero, Manuel; Mengersen, Kerrie; Peterson, Erin E.

2018-01-01

Aesthetic value, or beauty, is important to the relationship between humans and natural environments and is, therefore, a fundamental socio-economic attribute of conservation alongside other ecosystem services. However, beauty is difficult to quantify and is not estimated well using traditional approaches to monitoring coral-reef aesthetics. To improve the estimation of ecosystem aesthetic values, we developed and implemented a novel framework used to quantify features of coral-reef aesthetics based on people's perceptions of beauty. Three observer groups with different experience to reef environments (Marine Scientist, Experienced Diver and Citizen) were virtually immersed in Australian's Great Barrier Reef (GBR) using 360° images. Perceptions of beauty and observations were used to assess the importance of eight potential attributes of reef-aesthetic value. Among these, heterogeneity, defined by structural complexity and colour diversity, was positively associated with coral-reef-aesthetic values. There were no group-level differences in the way the observer groups perceived reef aesthetics suggesting that past experiences with coral reefs do not necessarily influence the perception of beauty by the observer. The framework developed here provides a generic tool to help identify indicators of aesthetic value applicable to a wide variety of natural systems. The ability to estimate aesthetic values robustly adds an important dimension to the holistic conservation of the GBR, coral reefs worldwide and other natural ecosystems. PMID:29765676

Looking Neat on the Street. Aesthetic Labor in Public Parking Patrol

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Dorte Boesby Dahl

2013-05-01

Full Text Available Research on aesthetic labor has been confined to service encounters in private sector industries. Aesthetic labor theory is critical of the commercialism that drives management of service labor and points to the discrimination of employees on the grounds of their “looks” that this entails. Considering the common conception today of the public sector as a service provider, application of the theory of aesthetic labor is relevant to public sector service work. But the public sector has many other purposes and mechanisms than those pertaining to increased revenues that may influence the use of aesthetic labor. This paper analyzes the aesthetic labor of Danish parking attendants in an organizational ethnography. A change management process in this organization has applied the principles of aesthetic labor actively for the purposes of diversity and health and safety. The paper shows how managers apply aesthetic labor principles to promote health and safety and workforce diversity, but also that the use of aesthetics has ambivalent purposes. Aesthetic labor is not as unequivocally applied for commercial purposes as hitherto assumed.

[Some considerations about aesthetic medicine].

Science.gov (United States)

Ferreira, Francisco Romão

2010-01-01

In this article, we will discuss some aspects of the construction of the meanings concerning the body from the scientific speech which was modeled based on modern thinking and became the hegemonic thinking of some sectors of the medical field. Meanings attributed to the body bring questions that come from other areas of the social life and those questions will build the aesthetic parameters which will be part of the identity construction, in the relation with the body itself, subjectivity and healthcare. We will describe some moments of the construction of the modern scientific thought and how this thought became hegemonic, influences the common sense, naturalizes identity construction and how dealing with the body, interferes in the healthcare, show a division among some sectors of the biomedicine, reinforce an specific type of medical rationality and makes an epistemic base and principle (theoretical and discursive) to some sectors connected to aesthetic medicine and aesthetic surgeries.

Aesthetic practitioner as a physician and businessperson – Is it achievable?

OpenAIRE

Elena Thomaidou

2018-01-01

Aesthetic medicine subspecialty is no longer limited to the fields of plastic surgery and dermatology, as many specialties are offering aesthetic medical procedures to better accommodate their patients’ aesthetic needs. During the last decade there is an enormous increase of cosmetic treatments worldwide and the absence of regulations in aesthetic practice has become more noticeable. This article illustrates the challenges that every aesthetic physician must overcome daily to maintain high et...

Disparities in Aesthetic Procedures Performed by Plastic Surgery Residents.

Science.gov (United States)

Silvestre, Jason; Serletti, Joseph M; Chang, Benjamin

2017-05-01

Operative experience in aesthetic surgery is an important issue affecting plastic surgery residents. This study addresses the variability of aesthetic surgery experience during plastic surgery residency. National operative case logs of chief residents in independent/combined and integrated plastic surgery residency programs were analyzed (2011-2015). Fold differences between the bottom and top 10th percentiles of residents were calculated for each aesthetic procedure category and training model. The number of residents not achieving case minimums was also calculated. Case logs of 818 plastic surgery residents were analyzed. There was marked variability in craniofacial (range, 6.0-15.0), breast (range, 2.4-5.9), trunk/extremity (range, 3.0-16.0), and miscellaneous (range, 2.7-22.0) procedure categories. In 2015, the bottom 10th percentile of integrated and independent/combined residents did not achieve case minimums for botulinum toxin and dermal fillers. Case minimums were achieved for the other aesthetic procedure categories for all graduating years. Significant variability persists for many aesthetic procedure categories during plastic surgery residency training. Greater efforts may be needed to improve the aesthetic surgery experience of plastic surgery residents. © 2016 The American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery, Inc. Reprints and permission: journals.permissions@oup.com

"Light and the aesthetics of the perception"

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Volf, Carlo

2010-01-01

through the meeting with form. Therefore, since form has been the major theme for the aesthetics up until now, giving form to light is a complex and challenging task and reducing it to Lux and measurable numbers only an escape from facing what is actually percieved. In this way light seems to suffer from...... this article tries to establish a dialogue between the daylight and the artificial lighting. The article describes how light - this intangible building block – can become a more workable size in the aesthetic and architectural practice of today. KEYWORDS Light, daylight, artificial light, aesthetics...

"Aesthetic Emotion": An Ambiguous Concept in John Dewey's Aesthetics

Science.gov (United States)

Hohr, H.

2010-01-01

This article analyses the concept of "aesthetic emotion" in John Dewey's "Art as experience". The analysis shows that Dewey's line of investigation offers valuable insights as to the role of emotion in experience: it shows emotion as an integral part and structuring force, as a cultural and historical category. However, the notion of aesthetic…

Maintaining "Synk" in Detroit: Two Case Studies in the Remix Aesthetic

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Carleton S. Gholz

2011-03-01

Full Text Available Advances in audio-visual remixing technologies have produced a significant, largely unintended, consequence: audiences at EDM performances are dancing less—if at all. Instead, utilizing digital mobile devices, audiences have increasingly become interactive media producers within an environment encouraged by savvy, former DJs. Drawing from the fields of EDM studies, sound studies and film studies, I outline the historical arc of the remix aesthetic by comparing and contrasting recent work by two long-time EDM artists from the Detroit-Windsor region, Jeff Mills and Richie Hawtin. These two artists were central to the global proliferation of EDM culture during its mass-communication phase. However, in an era of heightened media convergence what scholars have traditionally understood as EDM has irreparably changed. Mills and Hawtin have much to contribute to this apparent impasse.Keywords: EDM, film studies, film sound, remix aesthetic, soundscape, media convergence, Jeff Mills, Richie Hawtin, Plastikman

The genre of everyday life

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Tzvetan Todorov

2012-01-01

Full Text Available The present essay shows the new genres of the seventeenth century Dutch painting (portrait, landscape and genre painting, viewed as painting of everyday life, as an alternative proposition to the historical painting then dominant in the academic categorization. What used to be marginal, peripheral and of secondary importance became the main motif in the majority of Dutch painting. Minor genres came to prominence and acquired autonomous status. The interest in the elements of everyday life could be traced in European art earlier but it was the seventeenth century Dutch artists that ultimately led “low” and realistic subject themes to come into their own commercially and artistically. Occasionally, even religious themes were presented as genre scenes, thus introducing to the presented images an air of ambivalence. In the works of Dutch painters, the uniqueness of high subject themes was opposed by pictures of everyday life and the repetitiveness of everyday domestic activities, not shunning, however, the allegorical potential contained in some of the depictions.

Aesthetics and the Effects of Advertising

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Jantzen, Christian

Based on an evolutionary understanding of aesthetics a cognitive approach to analyzing advertising is proposed. This approach is compared with different semiotic traditions, and the advantages of a semio-cognitive approach are foregrounded.......Based on an evolutionary understanding of aesthetics a cognitive approach to analyzing advertising is proposed. This approach is compared with different semiotic traditions, and the advantages of a semio-cognitive approach are foregrounded....

Musical training of coaches in aesthetic-oriented sports

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Irina Belenkaya

2016-06-01

Full Text Available Purpose: to justify theoretically the need for musical training of coaches in aesthetic-oriented sports. Material & Methods: theoretical analysis and generalization of scientific and methodological literature, pedagogical supervision. Results: the main directions of musical training of coaches in aesthetic-orientated sports were reviewed. It was discovered that in these types of sports coaches must have specific musical and rhythmic motor skills involving the use of musical accompaniment as a methodological technique for training sessions. The means of music and rhythmic education, which facilitate effective musical training of coaches in aesthetic-oriented sports, were determined. Conclusions: the necessity of improving the teaching methods of the subject "music and rhythmic education" as part of the musical training of coaches in aesthetic-orientated sports, was theoretically justified.

Psychology and the conduct of everyday life

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Psychology and the Conduct of Everyday Life moves psychological theory and research practice out of the laboratory and into the everyday world. Drawing on recent developments across the social and human sciences, it examines how people live as active subjects within the contexts of their everyday...

The phenomenology in the environmental aesthetic education

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Noguera de Echeverri, Ana Patricia

2000-01-01

In this paper we present an abstract about our Philosophical Doctor Thesis make on Campinas University (Sao Paulo, Brazil) titled educacion estetico ambiental y fenomenologia: problemas de la educacion estetico ambiental en la modernidad. In this thesis we do a critical thinking about the epistemological model of relation subject -object on modern education, and on the other side, we work in the construction about a aesthetic - environmental education model. We propose here an aesthetization of the education, for conjoint body and world-of-life (lebenswelt) into scenarios and actors of the pedagogical process. Body and world-of-life, are two concepts of Husserl's phenomenology that open the door about the environment' s studies aesthetization and aesthetic' s studies environment, separated on modernity, between the metaphysical subject and physicality objects. Body and world-of-life -symbolic-biotic- are marginal alterities on modernity. This marginality has been a structural lead on the contemporary environmental problems

The religion under the rule of aesthetics

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Alberto da Silva Moreira

2015-04-01

Full Text Available This article examines the modern process of aestheticization of culture and religion as consequent unfolding of the expansion of market rationality to the subjective life and the libidinal sphere of subjects. Its main objective is to inquire about the future of religion under the impact of sensation seeking culture and the inflation of aesthetics. Firstly, with the help of Türcke, Welsch, Foucault and Schultze´s investigate the aestheticization process of of social life, its causes and characteristics; Secondly, following Dufour, Türcke Leiss, Kline, Jhally e Welsch, it asks how the dynamics of aesthetical impacts the daily life and the bio-psychic economy of people; thirdly, it applies the results obtained to the analysis of what is happening with religion under the regime of aesthetics and sensational culture. Finally, it asks about the possible emancipatory potential of aestheticized own religious experience and tries to draw some further consequences for religion in the aesthetic field.

Signs of life and the aesthetics of decay

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Olsen, Jan Brødslev

as signs of life from the young generation, but the decayed buildings also demonstrate an aesthetic dimension, unique in its own way. Together they constitute a challenge for the upcoming new environment with respect to architecture and infrastructure as well as technological, cultural and social...... processes are an important source of learning with regard to what is going on in social life. Transformations from “old” to “new” contain three elements: Ending, a new beginning, and the search for identity in between. The graffiti-drawings can be seen as rebellious identity-markers in the transformation...

[History of aesthetic rhinoplasty].

Science.gov (United States)

Nguyen, P S; Mazzola, R F

2014-12-01

One of the first surgical procedures described in the history of medicine is reconstructive surgery of the nose. Over the centuries, surgeons have developed techniques aimed at reconstructing noses amputated or traumatized by disease. The concept of aesthetic rhinoplasty was only introduced at the end of the 19th century. Since then, techniques have evolved toward constant ameliorations. Nowadays, this surgery is one of the most performed aesthetic procedures. Current technical sophistication is the result of over a century of history marked by many surgeons. All of these techniques derive from a detailed understanding of the anatomical nose from the surgical and artistic point of view. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved.

Analysis of optical transmission by 400-500 nm visible light into aesthetic dental biomaterials.

Science.gov (United States)

Watts, D C; Cash, A J

1994-04-01

The penetration of visible light into dental biomaterials is an essential factor in photoinitiation of setting reactions and in the optical aspects of dental aesthetics. Light of visible blue wavelengths, 400-500 nm, has been applied at normal angles to 0.2-5.0 mm sections of human dentine and representative ceramic, polymerceramic composites and hybrid glass-polyalkenoate materials. The integrated optical transmission has been determined for each material section. The data have been converted to absorbance values and analysed to check for mathematical conformity to the Beer-Lambert Law. It is found that conformity (typically, P ratio. This factor ranges from 30% to 90% in the materials investigated. It follows that there is a high degree of inefficiency in the transmission of visible light into and through aesthetic biomaterials for the purposes of photoactivation using existing technology. Means by which this limitation and inefficiency may be reduced are discussed. While the reflectivity of aesthetic biomaterials has been perceived by dental practitioners, the magnitude of this effect and its implications in connection with light-cured materials have not been analysed and emphasized hitherto.

Domestic Violence as Everyday Terrorism

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Cooper-Cunningham, Dean

2016-01-01

Seeing bride kidnapping and domestic violence as everyday terrorism unpacks the political nature of so-called “private” phenomena and how they reify patriarchal society.......Seeing bride kidnapping and domestic violence as everyday terrorism unpacks the political nature of so-called “private” phenomena and how they reify patriarchal society....

Unified Photo Enhancement by Discovering Aesthetic Communities From Flickr.

Science.gov (United States)

Hong, Richang; Zhang, Luming; Tao, Dacheng

2016-03-01

Photo enhancement refers to the process of increasing the aesthetic appeal of a photo, such as changing the photo aspect ratio and spatial recomposition. It is a widely used technique in the printing industry, graphic design, and cinematography. In this paper, we propose a unified and socially aware photo enhancement framework which can leverage the experience of photographers with various aesthetic topics (e.g., portrait and landscape). We focus on photos from the image hosting site Flickr, which has 87 million users and to which more than 3.5 million photos are uploaded daily. First, a tagwise regularized topic model is proposed to describe the aesthetic topic of each Flickr user, and coherent and interpretable topics are discovered by leveraging both the visual features and tags of photos. Next, a graph is constructed to describe the similarities in aesthetic topics between the users. Noticeably, densely connected users have similar aesthetic topics, which are categorized into different communities by a dense subgraph mining algorithm. Finally, a probabilistic model is exploited to enhance the aesthetic attractiveness of a test photo by leveraging the photographic experiences of Flickr users from the corresponding communities of that photo. Paired-comparison-based user studies show that our method performs competitively on photo retargeting and recomposition. Moreover, our approach accurately detects aesthetic communities in a photo set crawled from nearly 100000 Flickr users.

Aesthetics of movement with sight disabled children - pilot study

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Mirosław Górny

2010-01-01

Full Text Available The aim of the study was to establish the aesthetics of movement in people with vision defects. This knowledge will provide tools to improve the methodology of study in the area of assessment of movement aesthetics in people with disabilities. In order to establish its level a test was used which measured its selected elements such as precision, rhythm, harmony, fluidity and speed. The aesthetics of movement was assessed using exercise tests which were to represent the components of aesthetics of movement. Individual tests were carried out on blind and partially sighted children aged 6 to 15 years and on a group of healthy children of the same age. Using the test tasks a general indicator of movement aesthetics in blind children was obtained. The participants of the study were 145 children from four School and Education Centres for Blind Children in Poland and the control group consisted of 310 children from a primary school in Poznań. The studies confirmed a lower level of movement aesthetics in children with vision defects, but the differences in groups between the partially sighted children and children with correct vision were definitely smaller. A higher level of aesthetics of movement characterised children from older groups irrespective of their sex. The best developed property in blind and partially sighted children was precision.

"Living Drawing": Aesthetic Teaching for Moral Artists

Science.gov (United States)

Kim, Jiwon

2016-01-01

With its inherent attributes such as qualitative immediacy, imaginativeness, and embodiment, John Dewey's concept of aesthetic experience makes a difference in moral education, in the ways of empathetic moral perception, moral reasoning, and moral action. If it matters then how can we help students gain aesthetic experience? By analyzing teacher…

Aesthetic Band, Reception Theory and Sociology of Reading

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Marcin Rychlewski

2010-01-01

Full Text Available The aesthetic band – in contrast to the bandwidth, i.e. the distribution channel – is a socially and historically conditioned cluster of aesthetic expectations presented by readers-buyers, represented by their majority, which in the egalitarian, post-modern, and free market society, determines the shape of the publishing market and the circuits it consists of. The author believes that the aesthetic band should be analyzed in the context of both individual and collective expectations of the reading audience in relation to the book content and its subject-matter, as well as in relation to the literary and non-literary production. In the last part of the paper, the author puts forward a proposition that the aesthetic band might be considered as a tool of ideology.

Integration of Smart Grid Technologies in Households

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Friis, Freja; Gram-Hanssen, Kirsten

2013-01-01

This article considers the interplay between new smart grid technologies and households everyday practices. The research focuses on how Electric Vehicles (EVs) and Dynamic Pricing influence on Danish households’ everyday life and how these technologies constitutes and change routines and practice...... to a more complex and multiple consideration of the interplay between households’ social practices and new smart grid technologies - and thereby helps to fill out the lack of research on the integration of peak-shaving technologies in the end-user design.......This article considers the interplay between new smart grid technologies and households everyday practices. The research focuses on how Electric Vehicles (EVs) and Dynamic Pricing influence on Danish households’ everyday life and how these technologies constitutes and change routines and practices......, is analysed from the analytical concept offered by the Social Practice Theory. Overall, the case-study demonstrates that the smart grid technologies influence the ‘way of driving’ and changed the temporal patterns of consumption in the families during the test-period. The inquiry attempts to contribute...

Joint action aesthetics.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Staci Vicary

Full Text Available Synchronized movement is a ubiquitous feature of dance and music performance. Much research into the evolutionary origins of these cultural practices has focused on why humans perform rather than watch or listen to dance and music. In this study, we show that movement synchrony among a group of performers predicts the aesthetic appreciation of live dance performances. We developed a choreography that continuously manipulated group synchronization using a defined movement vocabulary based on arm swinging, walking and running. The choreography was performed live to four audiences, as we continuously tracked the performers' movements, and the spectators' affective responses. We computed dynamic synchrony among performers using cross recurrence analysis of data from wrist accelerometers, and implicit measures of arousal from spectators' heart rates. Additionally, a subset of spectators provided continuous ratings of enjoyment and perceived synchrony using tablet computers. Granger causality analyses demonstrate predictive relationships between synchrony, enjoyment ratings and spectator arousal, if audiences form a collectively consistent positive or negative aesthetic evaluation. Controlling for the influence of overall movement acceleration and visual change, we show that dance communicates group coordination via coupled movement dynamics among a group of performers. Our findings are in line with an evolutionary function of dance-and perhaps all performing arts-in transmitting social signals between groups of people. Human movement is the common denominator of dance, music and theatre. Acknowledging the time-sensitive and immediate nature of the performer-spectator relationship, our study makes a significant step towards an aesthetics of joint actions in the performing arts.

Joint action aesthetics

Science.gov (United States)

Vicary, Staci; Sperling, Matthias; von Zimmermann, Jorina; Richardson, Daniel C.

2017-01-01

Synchronized movement is a ubiquitous feature of dance and music performance. Much research into the evolutionary origins of these cultural practices has focused on why humans perform rather than watch or listen to dance and music. In this study, we show that movement synchrony among a group of performers predicts the aesthetic appreciation of live dance performances. We developed a choreography that continuously manipulated group synchronization using a defined movement vocabulary based on arm swinging, walking and running. The choreography was performed live to four audiences, as we continuously tracked the performers’ movements, and the spectators’ affective responses. We computed dynamic synchrony among performers using cross recurrence analysis of data from wrist accelerometers, and implicit measures of arousal from spectators’ heart rates. Additionally, a subset of spectators provided continuous ratings of enjoyment and perceived synchrony using tablet computers. Granger causality analyses demonstrate predictive relationships between synchrony, enjoyment ratings and spectator arousal, if audiences form a collectively consistent positive or negative aesthetic evaluation. Controlling for the influence of overall movement acceleration and visual change, we show that dance communicates group coordination via coupled movement dynamics among a group of performers. Our findings are in line with an evolutionary function of dance–and perhaps all performing arts–in transmitting social signals between groups of people. Human movement is the common denominator of dance, music and theatre. Acknowledging the time-sensitive and immediate nature of the performer-spectator relationship, our study makes a significant step towards an aesthetics of joint actions in the performing arts. PMID:28742849

Joint action aesthetics.

Science.gov (United States)

Vicary, Staci; Sperling, Matthias; von Zimmermann, Jorina; Richardson, Daniel C; Orgs, Guido

2017-01-01

Synchronized movement is a ubiquitous feature of dance and music performance. Much research into the evolutionary origins of these cultural practices has focused on why humans perform rather than watch or listen to dance and music. In this study, we show that movement synchrony among a group of performers predicts the aesthetic appreciation of live dance performances. We developed a choreography that continuously manipulated group synchronization using a defined movement vocabulary based on arm swinging, walking and running. The choreography was performed live to four audiences, as we continuously tracked the performers' movements, and the spectators' affective responses. We computed dynamic synchrony among performers using cross recurrence analysis of data from wrist accelerometers, and implicit measures of arousal from spectators' heart rates. Additionally, a subset of spectators provided continuous ratings of enjoyment and perceived synchrony using tablet computers. Granger causality analyses demonstrate predictive relationships between synchrony, enjoyment ratings and spectator arousal, if audiences form a collectively consistent positive or negative aesthetic evaluation. Controlling for the influence of overall movement acceleration and visual change, we show that dance communicates group coordination via coupled movement dynamics among a group of performers. Our findings are in line with an evolutionary function of dance-and perhaps all performing arts-in transmitting social signals between groups of people. Human movement is the common denominator of dance, music and theatre. Acknowledging the time-sensitive and immediate nature of the performer-spectator relationship, our study makes a significant step towards an aesthetics of joint actions in the performing arts.

A model of visual, aesthetic communication focusing on web sites

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Thorlacius, Lisbeth

2002-01-01

Theory books and method books within the field of web design mainly focus on the technical and functional aspects of the construction of web design. There is a lack of a model which weighs the analysis of the visual and aesthetic aspects against the the functional and technical aspects of web...... design. With a point of departure in Roman Jakobson's linguistic communication model, the reader is introduced to a model which covers the communication aspects, the visual aspects, the aesthetic aspects and the net specific aspects of the analysis of media products. The aesthetic aspects rank low...... in the eyes of the media producers even though the most outstanding media products often obtained their success due to aesthetic phenomena. The formal aesthetic function and the inexpressible aesthetic function have therefore been prioritised in the model in regard to the construction and analysis of media...

Towards a sensorimotor aesthetics of performing art.

Science.gov (United States)

Calvo-Merino, B; Jola, C; Glaser, D E; Haggard, P

2008-09-01

The field of neuroaesthetics attempts to identify the brain processes underlying aesthetic experience, including but not limited to beauty. Previous neuroaesthetic studies have focussed largely on paintings and music, while performing arts such as dance have been less studied. Nevertheless, increasing knowledge of the neural mechanisms that represent the bodies and actions of others, and which contribute to empathy, make a neuroaesthetics of dance timely. Here, we present the first neuroscientific study of aesthetic perception in the context of the performing arts. We investigated brain areas whose activity during passive viewing of dance stimuli was related to later, independent aesthetic evaluation of the same stimuli. Brain activity of six naïve male subjects was measured using fMRI, while they watched 24 dance movements, and performed an irrelevant task. In a later session, participants rated each movement along a set of established aesthetic dimensions. The ratings were used to identify brain regions that were more active when viewing moves that received high average ratings than moves that received low average ratings. This contrast revealed bilateral activity in the occipital cortices and in right premotor cortex. Our results suggest a possible role of visual and sensorimotor brain areas in an automatic aesthetic response to dance. This sensorimotor response may explain why dance is widely appreciated in so many human cultures.

Environmental Aesthetics, Social Engagement and Aesthetic Experiences in Central Asia

Science.gov (United States)

Breed, Amanda

2015-01-01

In this essay, I explore the Youth Theatre for Peace (YTP) project in relation to environmental aesthetics and engaged participatory practices towards tolerance building in Central Asia. My main argument is that cultural histories of storytelling, "manas" (an oral and now literary Kyrgyz epic) and trickster tales incorporate ideas and…

Mathematics in everyday life

CERN Document Server

Haigh, John

2016-01-01

How does mathematics impact everyday events? The purpose of this book is to show a range of examples where mathematics can be seen at work in everyday life. From money (APR, mortgage repayments, personal finance), simple first and second order ODEs, sport and games (tennis, rugby, athletics, darts, tournament design, soccer, snooker), business (stock control, linear programming, check digits, promotion policies, investment), the social sciences (voting methods, Simpson’s Paradox, drug testing, measurements of inequality) to TV game shows and even gambling (lotteries, roulette, poker, horse racing), the mathematics behind commonplace events is explored. Fully worked examples illustrate the ideas discussed and each chapter ends with a collection of exercises. Everyday Mathematics supports other first year modules by giving students extra practice in working with calculus, linear algebra, geometry, trigonometry and probability. Secondary/high school level mathematics is all that is required for students to und...

Aesthetic Appreciation, Ethics, and 9/11

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Emmanouil Aretoulakis

2008-01-01

Full Text Available There have been numerous critical articles on what really happened on the otherwise beautiful morning of 11 September 2001. Beyond doubt, the bulk of the critical responses to the terrorist attacks focused on the ethical and humanitarian, or rather the unethical and inhumane implications of the atrocious act, leaving no room for any philosophical reflection on the potential assessment or reception of the event from the perspective of art and aesthetics. The few years that have gone by since 2001 have provided us with some a sense of emotional detachment from the horror of that day, a detachment that may have awakened our aesthetic and artistic instincts with regard to the attacks themselves as well as their visual representation. Chronological distance renders an unprejudiced and independent stance more possible now than ever. It also allows us to reconsider our initial politically correct and ethically justified repulsion of the efforts made by a few artists to aestheticize 9/11. Such repulsion, however, was associated with the delusion that by denouncing aesthetics we were really securing the prevalence of politics, morality and ethical responsibility in a terror-afflicted society. My point in this paper is that there is a need for aesthetic appreciation when contemplating a violent event such as the 9/11 terrorist attacks. What is more, appreciation of the beautiful, even in case of a 9/11, seems necessary because it is a key to establishing an ethical stance towards terror, life, and art. It should be stressed that independent aesthetic experience is not important in itself but is a means of cultivating an authentic moral and ethical judgment.

Aesthetic dimension about tropical forest in ecology teaching

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Tatiana Seniciato

2009-08-01

Full Text Available The research analyzes the aesthetic dimension on teaching about natural environment on Ecology disciplines. The semiotics of Charles Sanders Peirce guided data analysis, regarding to suggested values on the answers of interviewees. The analysis has revealed that, in terms of methodological approaches, Ecology instructors tend to valorize scientific and objective criteria, demonstrating a certain embarrassment on including aesthetic dimension in their teaching, although they recognize the relevance of aesthetic dimension for ethic implications on teaching and for the conservation of natural environment.

Aesthetic Qualities of Cross Laminated Timber

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Bejder, Anne Kirkegaard

to its sustainable profile. In parallel to this, new production methods and further refined timber products have been developed. Among these are the engineered timber-based product Cross Laminated Timber (CLT) that show enhanced structural properties compared to unrefined timber. However, the question...... an undefined aesthetic potential that may innovate how we construct and perceive timber architecture, the overall aim of the thesis is to inquire into the architectural and aesthetic qualities of CLT. Through three chapters this thesis examines and discusses 1) the architectural qualities of CLT, 2......) the materiality of CLT, and 3) how one can deal with these qualitative aspects in the design process. This leads to: firstly, the development of an explicit model to help structuring the analysis and evaluation of the materiality of CLT, and secondly, a clarification and articulation of the aesthetic qualities...

POI Summarization by Aesthetics Evaluation From Crowd Source Social Media.

Science.gov (United States)

Qian, Xueming; Li, Cheng; Lan, Ke; Hou, Xingsong; Li, Zhetao; Han, Junwei

2018-03-01

Place-of-Interest (POI) summarization by aesthetics evaluation can recommend a set of POI images to the user and it is significant in image retrieval. In this paper, we propose a system that summarizes a collection of POI images regarding both aesthetics and diversity of the distribution of cameras. First, we generate visual albums by a coarse-to-fine POI clustering approach and then generate 3D models for each album by the collected images from social media. Second, based on the 3D to 2D projection relationship, we select candidate photos in terms of the proposed crowd source saliency model. Third, in order to improve the performance of aesthetic measurement model, we propose a crowd-sourced saliency detection approach by exploring the distribution of salient regions in the 3D model. Then, we measure the composition aesthetics of each image and we explore crowd source salient feature to yield saliency map, based on which, we propose an adaptive image adoption approach. Finally, we combine the diversity and the aesthetics to recommend aesthetic pictures. Experimental results show that the proposed POI summarization approach can return images with diverse camera distributions and aesthetics.

The Aesthetics of the Ambient Video Experience

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Jim Bizzocchi

2008-01-01

Full Text Available Ambient Video is an emergent cultural phenomenon, with roots that go deeply into the history of experimental film and video art. Ambient Video, like Brian Eno's ambient music, is video that "must be as easy to ignore as notice" [9]. This minimalist description conceals the formidable aesthetic challenge that faces this new form. Ambient video art works will hang on the walls of our living rooms, corporate offices, and public spaces. They will play in the background of our lives, living video paintings framed by the new generation of elegant, high-resolution flat-panel display units. However, they cannot command attention like a film or television show. They will patiently play in the background of our lives, yet they must always be ready to justify our attention in any given moment. In this capacity, ambient video works need to be equally proficient at rewarding a fleeting glance, a more direct look, or a longer contemplative gaze. This paper connects a series of threads that collectively illuminate the aesthetics of this emergent form: its history as a popular culture phenomenon, its more substantive artistic roots in avant-garde cinema and video art, its relationship to new technologies, the analysis of the viewer's conditions of reception, and the work of current artists who practice within this form.

Routines and Concerns in Conduct of Everyday Life

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Hybholt, Lisbeth

2015-01-01

In this paper, I explore the concept conduct of everyday life, namely routines and real life, as they are confronted with empirical observations. The observations are from a study of changes in the conduct of everyday life for individuals who attended a patient education course. The course...... was a part of their treatment after a hospitalisation with depression in a psychiatric ward. I use analysis of the main individual, Steven’s, conduct of everyday life and illustrate my points with models of conduct of everyday life made using beads. The conceptualisation of conduct of everyday life...

Sublimity and beauty: A view from nursing aesthetics.

Science.gov (United States)

Siles-González, José; Solano-Ruiz, Carmen

2016-03-01

Several authors have focused on the aesthetics of nursing care from diverse perspectives; however, there are few studies about the sublime and the beautiful in nursing. To identify beautiful and sublime moments in the context of the aesthetics of nursing care. A theoretical reflection has been contemplated about sublime and beautiful values in the context of the aesthetics of nursing care from the cultural history perspective. For that purpose, a revision of this issue has been completed. The terms 'beautiful' and 'sublime' have been analysed to identify the characteristics of both in the context of nursing care. We have followed all ethical requirements regarding the sources, conducting research and authorship. There is no conflict of interest in this paper. With aesthetic knowledge, the nurse expresses the artistic nature of nursing care by appreciating the act of caring for individuals. The sublime is a complex phenomenon, since apparently contrary feelings are interwoven. Nursing care is an art with an anthropological object-subject on which the 'artist' applies their prior knowledge and skills. Feelings and emotions that develop during the clinical nursing practice - especially at times sublime and beautiful, aesthetic - constitute experiences which are professionally significant. © The Author(s) 2015.

Jacques Joseph: Father of modern aesthetic surgery

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Bhattacharya Surajit

2008-10-01

Full Text Available When we review the history of modern aesthetic surgery, a name that stands out as bright as a beacon and precious as gold is undoubtedly that of Jacques Joseph. A surgeon, par excellence, far ahead of his time, who chose to think out of the box, Joseph, despite all odds set out to give respectability to Aesthetic Surgery without depriving it of any scientific core values. By his words and deeds proved beyond doubt that only the very best in the field of reconstructive surgery, can visualize the hidden perfection in imperfection and formulate a treatment plan and a surgical strategy to achieve that elusive perfection. The rich surgical literature that he has left behind, the wealth of surgical instruments that he had designed and above all a way of thinking that he propagated, that aesthetic surgery is not frivolous but very serious endeavor, and treating the psychology of the patient is as important as treating his disease, undoubtedly makes him the revered ′Father of Modern Aesthetic Surgery′.

Aesthetic Discourses in Early Childhood Settings: Dewey, Steiner, and Vygotsky

Science.gov (United States)

Lim, Booyeun

2004-01-01

Early childhood, when young children are already capable of undergoing aesthetic experience, must be the starting point for aesthetic education. Despite increasing attention to the significant values of the arts in early childhood classrooms, no theoretical framework to support aesthetic education has been established. This article introduces the…

Social Factors in Aesthetics: Social Conformity Pressure and a Sense of Being Watched Affect Aesthetic Judgments.

Science.gov (United States)

Hesslinger, Vera M; Carbon, Claus-Christian; Hecht, Heiko

2017-01-01

The present study is a first attempt to experimentally test the impact of two specific social factors, namely social conformity pressure and a sense of being watched, on participants' judgments of the artistic quality of aesthetic objects. We manipulated conformity pressure with a test form in which a photograph of each stimulus was presented together with unanimously low (downward pressure) or high quality ratings (upward pressure) of three would-be previous raters. Participants' sense of being watched was manipulated by testing each of them in two settings, one of which contained an eyespots stimulus. Both social factors significantly affected the participants' judgments-unexpectedly, however, with conformity pressure only working in the downward direction and eyespots leading to an overall downward shift in participants' judgments. Our findings indicate the relevance of including explicit and implicit social factors in aesthetics research, thus also reminding us of the limitations of overly reductionist approaches to investigating aesthetic perception and experience.

Science in Action: Aesthetic Considerations for Stream Restoration

Science.gov (United States)

Aesthetics are an integral component of the social and economic benefits of stream restoration and should be considered in restoration projects for sustainable management. According to Bernhardt et al. (2005), aesthetics is one of the frequently listed goals for stream restoratio...

Aesthetic Surgery of the Female Genitalia

OpenAIRE

Dobbeleir, Julie M.L.C.L.; Landuyt, Koenraad Van; Monstrey, Stan J.

2011-01-01

Aesthetic genital surgery seems to have become a fashionable issue nowadays. Many procedures and techniques have been described these last years, but very few long-term results or follow up studies are available. The novelty of this aspect of plastic surgery and the lack of evidence-based interventions, have led to a comparison with female genital mutilation. In this article, the authors provide an overview of the possible surgical procedures as well as the general principles of aesthetic sur...

Aesthetic surgery of the male genitalia.

Science.gov (United States)

Alter, Gary J; Salgado, Christopher J; Chim, Harvey

2011-08-01

Appearance of the male genitalia is linked with self-esteem and sexual identity. Aesthetic surgery of the male genitalia serves to correct perceived deficiencies as well as physical deformities, which may cause psychological distress. Attention to patient motivation for surgery and to surgical technique is key to achieving optimal results. In this review, the authors describe aesthetic surgical techniques for treatment of penile and scrotal deficiencies. They also discuss techniques for revision in patients with previous surgery.

Hospitalization and aesthetic health in older adults.

Science.gov (United States)

Moss, Hilary; Donnellan, Claire; O'Neill, Desmond

2015-02-01

To assess the impact of hospitalization on arts engagement among older people; and to assess perceptions of whether hospitals are aesthetically deprived environments. A Survey of Aesthetic and Cultural Health was developed to explore the role of aesthetics before, during and after hospital. Study participants were n = 150 hospital in-patients aged >65. Descriptive and inferential statistics were used to analyze the data. Attendance at arts events was an important part of life for this sample and a large drop off was noted in continuation of these activities in the year post-hospital stay. Physical health issues were the main causes but also loss of confidence and transport issues. Film, dance, and music were the most popular arts for this sample prior to hospital stay. Noise pollution caused by other patients, lack of control over TV/radio, and access to receptive arts in hospital (reading and listening to music) were important issues for patients in hospital. This study identifies a trend for decreasing exposure to arts beginning with a hospital stay and concludes that older people may need encouragement to resume engagement in arts following a hospital stay. There is relatively limited evidence regarding the nature of, and potential benefit from, aesthetics in healthcare and limited studies with rigorous methodology, and further research is needed to understand the aesthetic preferences of older people in hospital. Copyright © 2015 AMDA – The Society for Post-Acute and Long-Term Care Medicine. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Eye-Tracking as a Tool to Evaluate Functional Ability in Everyday Tasks in Glaucoma

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Enkelejda Kasneci

2017-01-01

Full Text Available To date, few studies have investigated the eye movement patterns of individuals with glaucoma while they undertake everyday tasks in real-world settings. While some of these studies have reported possible compensatory gaze patterns in those with glaucoma who demonstrated good task performance despite their visual field loss, little is known about the complex interaction between field loss and visual scanning strategies and the impact on task performance and, consequently, on quality of life. We review existing approaches that have quantified the effect of glaucomatous visual field defects on the ability to undertake everyday activities through the use of eye movement analysis. Furthermore, we discuss current developments in eye-tracking technology and the potential for combining eye-tracking with virtual reality and advanced analytical approaches. Recent technological developments suggest that systems based on eye-tracking have the potential to assist individuals with glaucomatous loss to maintain or even improve their performance on everyday tasks and hence enhance their long-term quality of life. We discuss novel approaches for studying the visual search behavior of individuals with glaucoma that have the potential to assist individuals with glaucoma, through the use of personalized programs that take into consideration the individual characteristics of their remaining visual field and visual search behavior.

Everyday Tectonics?

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Beim, Anne; Hvejsel, Marie Frier

2016-01-01

Frascari and Kenneth Frampton (Harris & Berke 1997, Read 2000, Frascari 1984, Frampton 1995kilder). Whereas the focus upon everyday architecture seems to have lost its momentum too quickly, tectonic theory in architecture has been steadily growing as a field of research in architecture, especially related...

A Scandinavian View on the Aesthetics as a Learning Media

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Austring, Bennyé D.; Sørensen, Merete

2012-01-01

As the aesthetic learning process is always relational and developed in interaction with the surrounding culture, the participants in the aesthetic activities can develop cultural identity and social skills. Add to this that the individual can share its inner world with others through aesthetic...... activities in the potential space and in this way create a balance in its inner and outer world, realize itself and develop individual and collective identity. last but not least aesthetic activities strengthen the joy of life, and they are an arena for development of imagination and creativity - society...

The Aesthetic Actualisation of Learning Potential with Media and ICT

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Buhl, Mie

2006-01-01

The article discusses the possibilities for using aesthetics as a concept for potentialities that are actualised with respect to education and learning with media and IT. In order to realise this, a new understanding of the concept of aesthetics as a reflexive framing of performative choice...... by an evolutionary model based on Niklas Luhmann's systems theory: when the concept of art changes, the concept of aesthetics also changes. This complex forms the basis for a discussion of how learning potential with media and IT can be actualised aesthetically....

Aesthetic concepts, perceptual learning, and linguistic enculturation: considerations from Wittgenstein, language, and music.

Science.gov (United States)

Croom, Adam M

2012-03-01

Aesthetic non-cognitivists deny that aesthetic statements express genuinely aesthetic beliefs and instead hold that they work primarily to express something non-cognitive, such as attitudes of approval or disapproval, or desire. Non-cognitivists deny that aesthetic statements express aesthetic beliefs because they deny that there are aesthetic features in the world for aesthetic beliefs to represent. Their assumption, shared by scientists and theorists of mind alike, was that language-users possess cognitive mechanisms with which to objectively grasp abstract rules fixed independently of human responses, and that cognizers are thereby capable of grasping rules for the correct application of aesthetic concepts without relying on evaluation or enculturation. However, in this article I use Wittgenstein's rule-following considerations to argue that psychological theories grounded upon this so-called objective model of rule-following fail to adequately account for concept acquisition and mastery. I argue that this is because linguistic enculturation, and the perceptual learning that's often involved, influences and enables the mastery of aesthetic concepts. I argue that part of what's involved in speaking aesthetically is to belong to a cultural practice of making sense of things aesthetically, and that it's within a socio-linguistic community, and that community's practices, that such aesthetic sense can be made intelligible.

A Scandinavian View on the Aesthetics as a Learning Media

Science.gov (United States)

Austring, Bennye D.; Sorensen, Merete

2012-01-01

As the aesthetic learning process is always relational and developed in interaction with the surrounding culture, the participants in the aesthetic activities can develop cultural identity and social skills. Add to this that the individual can share its inner world with others through aesthetic activities in the potential space and in this way…

Spatial modelling of landscape aesthetic potential in urban-rural fringes.

Science.gov (United States)

Sahraoui, Yohan; Clauzel, Céline; Foltête, Jean-Christophe

2016-10-01

The aesthetic potential of landscape has to be modelled to provide tools for land-use planning. This involves identifying landscape attributes and revealing individuals' landscape preferences. Landscape aesthetic judgments of individuals (n = 1420) were studied by means of a photo-based survey. A set of landscape visibility metrics was created to measure landscape composition and configuration in each photograph using spatial data. These metrics were used as explanatory variables in multiple linear regressions to explain aesthetic judgments. We demonstrate that landscape aesthetic judgments may be synthesized in three consensus groups. The statistical results obtained show that landscape visibility metrics have good explanatory power. Ultimately, we propose a spatial modelling of landscape aesthetic potential based on these results combined with systematic computation of visibility metrics. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Parotidectomy for benign parotid tumors: An aesthetic approach

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Amin, A.; Mostafa, A.; Rifaat, M.; Shallan, M.; Rabie, A.; Elzohairy, M.; Nabawi, A.

2011-01-01

The sternocleidomastoid (SCM) partial thickness muscle flap is among the various methods described to correct parotidectomy defects, but its indications and limitations are not clearly demonstrated in several reports. This study was done to test the aesthetic outcome of this method, its indications and limitations. The technique was combined with a face lift incision to further improve the outcome. Patients and methods: At the National Cancer Institute, Cairo University, Egypt, 23 patients presenting with benign tumors underwent parotidectomy, 19 had superficial parotidectomy and four had total parotidectomy done. The superiorly based (SCM) muscle flap was used to correct the contour deformity. The aesthetic result was evaluated by assessing arid scoring the overall appearance of the scar, the degree of symmetry of the reconstructed parotid region and the site of the donor muscle to their contralateral normal sides. The overall aesthetic appearance was then calculated by the summation of the scores of the latter three parameters. Patients' satisfaction was assessed by patients' questionnaire. Result: The overall aesthetic appearance was good in 17 patients, and moderate in six patients. 16/23 patients had an overall deep satisfaction with the result. The residual hollowness of the parotid following reconstruction of the total parotidectomy defect and the poor quality of scars were the main reasons affecting the aesthetic outcome. Conclusion: Superficial parotidectomy through facelift incision with immediate reconstruction with superiorly based partial thickness SCM flap allows adequate resection of most benign parotid tumors with a satisfactory aesthetic outcome and minimal donor site morbidity

Preaching as art (imaging the unseen and art as homiletics (verbalising the unseen: Towards the aesthetics of iconic thinking and poetic communication in homiletics

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Daniel Louw

2016-12-01

Full Text Available The article investigates the hypothesis that preaching implies more than merely verbalising, proclaiming and rhetoric reasoning. Preaching is fundamentally the art of poetic seeing; an aesthetic event on an ontic and spiritual level; that is, it provides vocabulary and images in order to help people to discover meaning in life (preaching as the art of foolishness. In this regard, preaching should provide God-images that open up the dimension of aesthetics and provide vistas of the ‘unseen’. The iconic dimension of preaching is about symbols and metaphors that help people to ‘see’ in everyday life (a poetic gaze the presence of God in such a way that tragic events, the awareness of death and the anguish about the fear for loss and rejection become events for signifying life and for healing (the quest for wholeness. It is argued that practical theology should be about a liturgy of life. In this regard, the ‘ugliness of God’ becomes an aesthetic category in a Christian spiritual approach to iconography. In order to do this a critical approach to praxis thinking should probe into the realm of paradigms, especially paradigms that describe the ‘power of God’. Due to the assumption that the depiction of God’s power was predominantly influenced by the Serapis, Zeus and Roman cult (Emperor mystique, a paradigm shift from omni-categories (pantokrator to bowel categories (passio Dei in the homiletic depiction of God is proposed.

Should advertising by aesthetic surgeons be permitted?

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Neeraj Nagpal

2017-01-01

Full Text Available Cosmetic, aesthetic and cutaneous surgical procedures require qualified specialists trained in the various procedures and competent to handle complications. However, it also requires huge investments in terms of infrastructure, trained staff and equipment. To be viable advertising is essential to any establishment which provides cosmetic and aesthetic procedures. Business men with deep pockets establish beauty chains which also provide these services and advertise heavily to sway public opinion in their favour. However, these saloons and spas lack basic medical facilities in terms of staff or equipment to handle any complication or medical emergency. To have a level playing field ethical advertising should be permitted to qualified aesthetic surgeons as is permitted in the US and UK by their respective organisations.

The Everyday Condition of Metaphysics

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Ştefan Afloroaei

2010-12-01

Full Text Available The question I intend to answer is whether one can speak of a tacit metaphysics, not expressed conceptually, but nevertheless common. If the answer is positive and providing that it is specific to day-to-day life, such metaphysics may be called everyday metaphysics. To this end, I review the meaning of everyday life and its ambivalent character. Next, I present several milestones in the debate on the subject, from authors who have focused on a kind of usual, common or ‘natural’ metaphysics. Lastly, I formulate the idea under consideration, namely that everyday life implies or underlies a certain metaphysics. I note that it is an implicit metaphysics – not expressed formally – and rather free. Embraced in experience with a certain degree of freedom, it is recognisable by means of certain representations active in our mind, by the manner of speaking or of understanding and by the common forms of expression. Its vibrancy, concrete and relaxed character makes it highly evocative of the mental life of an era. It ensures a truly essential difference in our everyday mode of being.

Complications of aesthetic medicine procedures: five case studies.

Science.gov (United States)

Smędra, A; Szustowski, S; Klemm, J; Jurczyk, A; Zalewska-Janowska, A; Berent, J

2015-01-01

The paper presents the cases of five patients who developed complications after aesthetic medicine procedures. Four of the cases involved women who reported to the Department of Forensic Medicine, Medical University of Lodz, for a description and legal qualification of bodily injuries suffered as a result of aesthetic medicine procedures, whereas one was related to the assessment of accuracy of medical management at the request of the prosecutor handling the case. The reported cases concerned acid exfoliation treatments, photoepilation and cryotherapy. The authors attempt to discuss the most common complications that may occur after aesthetic medicine procedures, and measures to avoid them.

Everyday sexism

CERN Document Server

Bates, Laura

2014-01-01

'If Caitlin Moran's How To Be A Womanis the fun-filled manual for female survival in the 21st century, everyday sexism is its more politicised sister' (Independent on Sunday). After experiencing a series of escalating sexist incidents, Laura Bates started theeveryday sexism projectand has gone on to write 'a pioneering analysis of modern day misogyny' (Telegraph). After an astounding response from the wide range of stories that came pouring in from all over the world, the project quickly became one of the biggest social media success stories of the internet. From being harassed and wolf-whistled at on the street, to discrimination in the workplace and serious sexual assault, it is clear that sexism had become normalised. But Bates inspires women to lead a real change and writes this 'extremely powerful book that could, and should, win hearts and minds right across the spectrum' (Financial Times). Often shocking, sometimes amusing and always poignant, everyday sexism is a protest against inequality and a manif...

Aesthetic practitioner as a physician and businessperson – Is it achievable?

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Elena Thomaidou

2018-04-01

Full Text Available Aesthetic medicine subspecialty is no longer limited to the fields of plastic surgery and dermatology, as many specialties are offering aesthetic medical procedures to better accommodate their patients’ aesthetic needs. During the last decade there is an enormous increase of cosmetic treatments worldwide and the absence of regulations in aesthetic practice has become more noticeable. This article illustrates the challenges that every aesthetic physician must overcome daily to maintain high ethos and make decisions according to patient’s best interest and safety. Aesthetic practitioner should be more than a businessperson with a medical degree. If they place their integrity and moral standards to the test, then they will continue to be judged by their colleagues and society. Is it possible to maintain the same moral obligations during cosmetic procedures as with any other medical treatments?

The Importance of Aesthetics as a Dimension in Music Therapy Activity

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Bergstrøm-Nielsen, Carl

2006-01-01

In Unmoderated Discussions [of Voices], I began discussing the aesthetic dimension in music therapy, taking Colin Lee's book The Architecture of Aesthetic Music Therapy as a starting-point. Several students and colleagues took part and contributed with further viewpoints, dealing with the positive...... qualities of the aesthetic dimension for both client and therapist, with the necessary limitation or demarcation of how far the aesthetic view can be taken in music therapy, and with the spiritual (impersonal) aspect of music. Some further thoughts in this article concern the importance of the therapists......' musical craft, of musical structure and the theoretical question of what is the nature of the aesthetic dimension. Mention is made of Stige's articles stressing the necessity of applying new concepts that relate the aesthetic dimension to daily life. It is concluded that we need further discussion...

Children’s everyday transitions

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Kousholt, Dorte

2017-01-01

meanings and experiences of action possibilities (Chaiklin, Hedegaard, & Jensen, 1999). Employing the concept of conduct of everyday life (Dreier, 2008, 2011; Holzkamp, 2013; Højholt & Kousholt, 2017), this chapter analyses the active, creative and coordinating processes involved in leading a compound...... caregivers. The chapter emphasizes the significance of children’s communities in relation to children’s everyday transitions, parental care and parents’ collaboration with day-care professionals. The chapter is based on empirical material consisting of participant observations conducted across children......’s various life contexts and of interviews with children and parents....

Aesthetic consciousness of site-specifi c art | Kurg | South African ...

African Journals Online (AJOL)

The aim of this article is to examine Edmund Husserl's theory of aesthetic consciousness and the possibility to apply it to site-specific art. The central focus will be on the idea of the limited synthetic unity of the aesthetic object that is introduced by Husserl in order to differentiate positional and aesthetic attitude towards the ...

Towards ICT in Everyday Life in Finnish Schools: Seeking Conditions for Good Practices

Science.gov (United States)

Niemi, Hannele; Kynaslahti, Heikki; Vahtivuori-Hanninen, Sanna

2013-01-01

The article discusses how to strengthen educational use of information and communication technology (ICT) in Finnish schools. The conceptions and experiences of the successful integration of ICT in everyday school settings are reported. Participant observations in 20 schools in different parts of Finland were carried out, including discussions…

Complications associated with cutaneous aesthetic procedures.

Science.gov (United States)

Hartmann, Daniela; Ruzicka, Thomas; Gauglitz, Gerd G

2015-08-01

In recent years, a plethora of novel therapeutic approaches to fight signs of aging and to influence external body appearance have become available in aesthetic dermatology. Extensive research in this field has led to advanced understanding of the anatomy and physiology of the aging face. To successfully address the complex age-related alterations anti-aging treatment nowadays calls for a multi-faceted approach. Most frequently utilized aesthetic procedures include the use of botulinum toxin, a variety of filling substances, microneedling (collagen induction therapy), chemical peeling, lasers, radiofrequency, thread facelift and injectional lipolysis with phosphatidylcholine/deoxycholate among others. Unfortunately, many clinicians still lack in-depth understanding of potential complications, risk factors and side effects associated with minimal-invasive procedures. The following review aims to give a broad overview of nowadays most frequently used approaches in the dermato-aesthetic field and their related complications. © 2015 Deutsche Dermatologische Gesellschaft (DDG). Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Social aesthetics and the management of addiction.

Science.gov (United States)

Musalek, Michael

2010-11-01

One of the main causes of nonadherence is that the goals and forms of addiction treatment are not sufficiently attractive. To study the attractiveness of treatment in clinical practice inevitably means to enter the field of social aesthetics. The call for the implementation of social aesthetics in practice results in a shift of paradigms in the treatment of patients suffering from dependence syndromes. The main themes in the literature covered by the article focus on the role of social aesthetics in medicine in general, as well as on the attractiveness of addiction treatment, in particular. When treatment objectives and programmes become more attractive the result will be reduced drop-out rates, and in turn an increase of treatment effectiveness. Transferring theory of social aesthetics to clinical practice, the Anton Proksch Institute's Orpheus Programme is concerned with opening up spaces and creating atmospheres in which it becomes possible for the individual addicts to realise their possibilities. The challenge in the therapeutic process is not only to recognise the significance of the disorders' pathology but also to find ways out of the imagined impossibilities by opening up new possibilities and uncovering resources of the suffering human.

The problem of application: aesthetics in creativity and health.

Science.gov (United States)

Sánchez-Camus, Roberto

2009-12-01

The Problem of Application investigates the multiple viewpoints in defining a critical aesthetic in applied arts practice. Amongst organisations, participants, and facilitators there are varying wants and needs in any creative project with an educational agenda. The product of arts based health initiatives often seek to inform and educate, whereby an aesthetic standard may seem contrary to this participatory approach. This research maintains that an aesthetic approach is a lively portion of the collaborative dialogue, which requires interrogation and consideration for a successful outcome. Through the analysis of a participatory arts project completed in West Africa addressing youth issues and HIV/AIDS, The Problem of Application seeks to uncover the multiple facets surrounding the defining of aesthetics in applied practice. The project entitled Youth Visions: Transforming our Futures Together worked with students aged 17-21 to develop an outdoor mural and a live performance inspired by the traditions of local festivals. With an anthropological approach to aesthetic criticism, Youth Visions revealed the multiple layers that define our focus of appreciation.

Ontological-epistemological views of the beautiful Byzantine aesthetics

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Vilić Nataša

2015-01-01

Full Text Available The paper approaches the ontological-epistemology aspects of the beauty of Byzantine art. Byzantine aesthetics and Byzantine art are unjustly neglected in the history of aesthetic thought. Christian aestheticians have an ambivalent attitude towards art. Because, Byzantine painting represents reality show based on the Christians view, where absolutizs a new dimension of spirituality and aesthetics deriving from the ontological-epistemological positions. The phenomenon of beauty in Byzantine art is primarily deposited in epistemological components, where everything is directed to the knowledge of the truth. In Byzantine art beauty has, above all, spiritual character; it does not have a classical aesthetic dimension, but primarily because the ontological character is recognized as one of the innumerable divine energies and of phenomena. The Byzantine painter makes an effort to realize the creative transformation of matter into a unique experience community and relationship with God, who volatility of the world beyond the ontological light that is converted from non-being into being.

A review of the evidence supporting the aesthetic orthodontic treatment need indices.

Science.gov (United States)

Borzabadi-Farahani, Ali

2012-11-01

Aesthetic improvement and psychological enhancement have been cited as justifications for orthodontic treatment. This paper reviews the evidence that relates malocclusion to psychological health and quality of life and explores whether this evidence supports the most commonly used aesthetic Orthodontic Treatment Need Indices (OTNI). The relevant cited material from the MEDLINE, Web of Science, Scopus, Cochrane databases, and scientific textbooks were used. The citation rate was confirmed by using the Google Scholar. The subjective nature of aesthetic indices and the variable perception of attractiveness between clinicians and patients, and among various cultures or countries are a few limitations of aesthetic OTNI. The available evidence of mainly cross-sectional studies on the link between malocclusion and either psychosocial well-being or quality of life is not conclusive, and sometimes contradictory, to suggest these characteristics are affected by malocclusions. Further, the long-term longitudinal studies did not suggest that people with malocclusion are disadvantaged psychologically, or their quality of life would be worse off, which challenges using aesthetic OTNI to assess the social and psychological implications of malocclusion. The subjective nature of aesthetic OTNI and the minor contributory role of malocclusion in psychosocial health or quality of life undermine using aesthetic indices to assess the likely social and psychological implications of malocclusion. Consequently, using aesthetic OTNI, as a method to quantify malocclusion remains open to debate. Various soft and hard-tissue analyses are used before formulating a treatment plan (i.e., assessment of sagittal and vertical skeletal relationships). The addition of a shortened version of these analyses to the aesthetic OTNI can be a good substitute for the aesthetic components of OTNI, if an assessment of the aesthetic aspects of malocclusion is intended. This reduces subjectivity and improves the

Everyday Family Life

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Westerling, Allan

2010-01-01

and methods and it illustrates this by presenting a research design which comprises a multi-methodological approach combining quantitative and qualitative methods in the study of the relationship between the individual and the social (the individual/social), thus enabling analysis of both meaning...... project takes a social psychological approach, combining quantitative and qualitative methods in a longitudinal study of family life. The knowledge interest of the project is the constitution of communality and individuality in everyday family life. This article presents the theoretical framework......What are the implications of ongoing processes of modernization and individualization for social relations in everyday life? This overall research question is the pivotal point in empirical studies at the Centre of Childhood-, Youth- and Family Life Research at Roskilde University. One research...

From Soft Sculpture to Soft Robotics: Retracing a Physical Aesthetics of Bio-Morphic Softness

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Jørgensen, Jonas

2017-01-01

Soft robotics has in the past decade emerged as a growing subfield of technical robotics research, distinguishable by its bio-inspired design strategies, interest in morphological computation, and interdisciplinary combination of insights from engineering, computer science, biology and material...... science. Recently, soft robotics technology has also started to make its way into art, design, and architecture. This paper attempts to think an aesthetics of softness and the life-like through an artistic tradition deeply imbricated with an interrogation of softness and its physical substrates, namely...... the soft sculpture that started proliferating in the late 1960s. Critical descriptions of these works, interestingly, frequently emphasize their similarities with living organisms and bodies as a central tenet of their aesthetics. The paper seeks to articulate aspects of a contiguity between softness...

Affinity for Poetry and Aesthetic Appreciation of Joyful and Sad Poems.

Science.gov (United States)

Kraxenberger, Maria; Menninghaus, Winfried

2016-01-01

Artworks with sad and affectively negative content have repeatedly been reported to elicit positive aesthetic appreciation. This topic has received much attention both in the history of poetics and aesthetics as well as in recent studies on sad films and sad music. However, poetry and aesthetic evaluations of joyful and sad poetry have received only little attention in empirical studies to date. We collected beauty and liking ratings for 24 sad and 24 joyful poems from 128 participants. Following previous studies, we computed an integrated measure for overall aesthetic appreciation based on the beauty and liking ratings to test for differences in appreciation between joyful and sad poems. Further, we tested whether readers' judgments are related to their affinity for poetry. Results show that sad poems are rated significantly higher for aesthetic appreciation than joyful poems, and that aesthetic appreciation is influenced by the participants' affinity for poetry.

Hybrid bodies and the materiality of everyday life: how people living with pacemakers and defibrillators reinvent everyday routines and intimate relations.

Science.gov (United States)

Oudshoorn, Nelly

2018-01-01

Technologies inside bodies pose new challenges in a technological culture. For people with pacemakers and defibrillators, activities such as passing security controls at airports, using electromagnetic machines, electrical domestic appliances and electronic devices, and even intimate contacts with their loved ones can turn into events where the proper functioning of their device may be at risk. Anticipation of potentially harmful events and situations thus becomes an important part of the choreography of everyday life. Technologies inside bodies not only pose a challenge for patients living with these devices but also to theorising body-technology relations. Whereas researchers usually address the merging of bodies and technologies, implants ask us to do the opposite as well. How are we to understand human-technology relations in which technologies should not entangle with bodies because they serve other purposes? Based on a study of the daily life practices of people with pacemakers and defibrillators in the Netherlands and the US, I argue that disentanglement work, i.e. work involved to prevent entanglements with objects and people that may inflict harm upon implanted devices, is key to understanding how hybrid bodies can survive in today's densely populated technological landscape. © 2017 Foundation for the Sociology of Health & Illness.

Films, Affective Computing and Aesthetic Experience: Identifying Emotional and Aesthetic Highlights from Multimodal Signals in a Social Setting

OpenAIRE

Kostoulas, Theodoros; Chanel, Guillaume; Muszynski, Michal; Lombardo, Patrizia; Pun, Thierry

2017-01-01

Over the last years, affective computing has been strengthening its ties with the humanities, exploring and building understanding of people’s responses to specific artistic multimedia stimuli. “Aesthetic experience” is acknowledged to be the subjective part of some artistic exposure, namely, the inner affective state of a person exposed to some artistic object. In this work, we describe ongoing research activities for studying the aesthetic experience of people when exposed to movie artistic...

Systematic Review: Aesthetic Assessment of Breast Reconstruction Outcomes by Healthcare Professionals.

Science.gov (United States)

Maass, Saskia W M C; Bagher, Shaghayegh; Hofer, Stefan O P; Baxter, Nancy N; Zhong, Toni

2015-12-01

Achieving an aesthetic outcome following postmastectomy breast reconstruction is both an important goal for the patient and plastic surgeon. However, there is currently an absence of a widely accepted, standardized, and validated professional aesthetic assessment scale following postmastectomy breast reconstruction. A systematic review was performed to identify all articles that provided professional assessment of the aesthetic outcome following postmastectomy, implant- or autologous tissue-based breast reconstruction. A modified version of the Scientific Advisory Committee's Medical Outcomes Trust (MOT) criteria was used to evaluate all professional aesthetic assessment scales identified by our systematic review. The criteria included conceptual framework formation, reliability, validity, responsiveness, interpretability, burden, and correlation with patient-reported outcomes. A total of 120 articles were identified: 52 described autologous breast reconstruction, 37 implant-based reconstruction, and 29 both. Of the 12 different professional aesthetic assessment scales that exist in the literature, the most commonly used scale was the four-point professional aesthetic assessment scale. The highest score on the modified MOT criteria was assigned to the ten-point professional aesthetic assessment scale. However, this scale has limited clinical usefulness due to its poor responsiveness to change, lack of interpretability, and wide range of intra- and inter-rater agreements (Veiga et al. in Ann Plast Surg 48(5):515-520, 2002). A "gold standard" professional aesthetic assessment scale needs to be developed to enhance the comparability of breast reconstruction results across techniques, surgeons, and studies to aid with the selection of procedures that produce the best aesthetic results from both the perspectives of the surgeon and patients.

Integration of ICT in everyday life - exploration of transition processes in an environmental perspective

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Røpke, Inge

2009-01-01

Presently, one of the fastest growing fields of consumption is the use of information and communication technologies (ICT). The integration of ICT in social practices is part of wide-ranging transition processes constructing new ‘normal standards’ in everyday life, and these changes have large...

Everyday Memory in Children with Developmental Coordination Disorder

Science.gov (United States)

Chen, I-Chen; Tsai, Pei-Luen; Hsu, Yung-Wen; Ma, Hui-Ing; Lai, Hsuan-An

2013-01-01

Children with developmental coordination disorder (DCD) have deficits in working memory, but little is known about the everyday memory of these children in real-life situations. We investigated the everyday memory function in children with DCD, and explored the specific profile of everyday memory across different domains. Nineteen children with…

Aesthetic design of e-commerce web pages—Complexity, order, and preferences

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Poole, M.S.

2012-01-01

This study was conducted to understand the perceptual structure of e-commerce webpage visual aesthetics and to provide insight into how physical design features of web pages influence users' aesthetic perception of and preference for web pages. Drawing on the environmental aesthetics, human-computer

Adapting models of visual aesthetics for personalized content creation

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Liapis, Antonios; Yannakakis, Georgios N.; Togelius, Julian

2012-01-01

This paper introduces a search-based approach to personalized content generation with respect to visual aesthetics. The approach is based on a two-step adaptation procedure where (1) the evaluation function that characterizes the content is adjusted to match the visual aesthetics of users and (2......) the content itself is optimized based on the personalized evaluation function. To test the efficacy of the approach we design fitness functions based on universal properties of visual perception, inspired by psychological and neurobiological research. Using these visual properties we generate aesthetically...... spaceships according to their visual taste: the impact of the various visual properties is adjusted based on player preferences and new content is generated online based on the updated computational model of visual aesthetics of the player. Results are presented which show the potential of the approach...

Personal ways of handling everyday life

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Jensen, Lasse Meinert

at variations in everyday life pursuits:  How does a person's pursuit of goals and concerns lead him/her to experience and handle breaks, interruptions, and variation in everyday activities?  The research project so far holds quantitative data.  A convenient sample of 217 persons were administered...

Genre, the organization of knowledge and everyday life

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Andersen, Jack

2017-01-01

as a communicative activity in everyday life. Method. This is a text-based argument which pulls together different sources for developing and discussing the contention. Analysis. I will start out with some brief reflections on digital media and communicative interaction. From there I will look into some steps...... already made toward understanding knowledge organization as an everyday activity, before providing some examples of how the organization of knowledge in digital media can be understood as genre-based communication in everyday life. Results. Due to the saturation of digital media in everyday life, genre...

Can medicine be aesthetic? Disentangling beauty and health in elective surgeries.

Science.gov (United States)

Edmonds, Alexander

2013-06-01

This article analyzes tensions between aesthetics and health in medicine. The blurring of distinctions between reconstructive and cosmetic procedures, and the linking of plastic surgery with other medical treatments, have added to the legitimacy of an emerging "aesthetic medicine." As cosmetic surgeries become linked to other medical procedures with perceived greater medical necessity, health and aesthetics become entangled. One consequence is that medical needs are magnified while perceptions of the risks of surgery are minimized. Drawing on ethnographic work on plastic surgery, as well as other studies of obstetrics and cosmetic surgery, I illustrate this entanglement of health and aesthetics within the field of women's reproductive health care in Brazil. I argue that while it would be difficult to wholly disentangle aesthetics and health, analysis of how risk-benefit calculations are made in clinical practice offers a useful critical strategy for illuminating ethical problems posed by aesthetic medicine. © 2013 by the American Anthropological Association.

Should Advertising by Aesthetic Surgeons be Permitted?

OpenAIRE

Nagpal, Neeraj

2017-01-01

Cosmetic, aesthetic and cutaneous surgical procedures require qualified specialists trained in the various procedures and competent to handle complications. However, it also requires huge investments in terms of infrastructure, trained staff and equipment. To be viable advertising is essential to any establishment which provides cosmetic and aesthetic procedures. Business men with deep pockets establish beauty chains which also provide these services and advertise heavily to sway public opini...

Critical Realism and Abay’s Aesthetic World

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Zhandos Smagulov

2013-01-01

Full Text Available The article is concerned with the oeuvre of the founder of the Kazakh realistic poetry Abay Kunanbayev and his critic and aesthetic views of the method of critical realism in the Kazakh literature, analyses the method of critical realism on the example of the Russian literature, examines aesthetic views of democrat poets and writers of realistic works of the early XX century, represented by Abay Kunanbayev

Qualitative Inquiry in Everyday Life

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Brinkmann, Svend

This book is a 'survival guide' for students and researchers who would like to conduct a qualitative study with limited resources. Brinkmann shows how everyday life materials such as books, television, the internet, the media and everyday conversations and interactions can help us to understand...... larger social issues. As living human beings in cultural worlds, we are constantly surrounded by 'data' that call for analysis, and as we cope with the different situations and episodes of our lives, we are engaged in understanding and interpreting the world as a form of qualitative inquiry. The book...... helps its reader develop a disciplined and analytic awareness informed by theory, and shows how less can be more in qualitative research. Each chapter introduces theoretical tools to think with, and demonstrates how they can be put to use in working concretely with everyday life materials....

Film Aesthetics and the Embodied Brain

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Grodal, Torben Kragh

2009-01-01

The article discusses - based on neuroscience and cognitive science - how the aesthetic experience of films depends on the brain's architecture and the mental flow called the PECMA flow. It describes how the flow from (visual and acoustic) perception of the film, via emotional and cognitive...... processes in the brain to simulated motor actions provides a series of options for aesthetic effects by the film's control of focus; focus on different steps in the flow will evoke different effects. The article further describe how shift of focus control experience of reality status, that is, whether...

Measuring aesthetic emotions: A review of the literature and a new assessment tool

Science.gov (United States)

Hosoya, Georg; Menninghaus, Winfried; Beermann, Ursula; Wagner, Valentin; Eid, Michael; Scherer, Klaus R.

2017-01-01

Aesthetic perception and judgement are not merely cognitive processes, but also involve feelings. Therefore, the empirical study of these experiences requires conceptualization and measurement of aesthetic emotions. Despite the long-standing interest in such emotions, we still lack an assessment tool to capture the broad range of emotions that occur in response to the perceived aesthetic appeal of stimuli. Elicitors of aesthetic emotions are not limited to the arts in the strict sense, but extend to design, built environments, and nature. In this article, we describe the development of a questionnaire that is applicable across many of these domains: the Aesthetic Emotions Scale (Aesthemos). Drawing on theoretical accounts of aesthetic emotions and an extensive review of extant measures of aesthetic emotions within specific domains such as music, literature, film, painting, advertisements, design, and architecture, we propose a framework for studying aesthetic emotions. The Aesthemos, which is based on this framework, contains 21 subscales with two items each, that are designed to assess the emotional signature of responses to stimuli’s perceived aesthetic appeal in a highly differentiated manner. These scales cover prototypical aesthetic emotions (e.g., the feeling of beauty, being moved, fascination, and awe), epistemic emotions (e.g., interest and insight), and emotions indicative of amusement (humor and joy). In addition, the Aesthemos subscales capture both the activating (energy and vitality) and the calming (relaxation) effects of aesthetic experiences, as well as negative emotions that may contribute to aesthetic displeasure (e.g., the feeling of ugliness, boredom, and confusion). PMID:28582467

Measuring aesthetic emotions: A review of the literature and a new assessment tool.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Ines Schindler

Full Text Available Aesthetic perception and judgement are not merely cognitive processes, but also involve feelings. Therefore, the empirical study of these experiences requires conceptualization and measurement of aesthetic emotions. Despite the long-standing interest in such emotions, we still lack an assessment tool to capture the broad range of emotions that occur in response to the perceived aesthetic appeal of stimuli. Elicitors of aesthetic emotions are not limited to the arts in the strict sense, but extend to design, built environments, and nature. In this article, we describe the development of a questionnaire that is applicable across many of these domains: the Aesthetic Emotions Scale (Aesthemos. Drawing on theoretical accounts of aesthetic emotions and an extensive review of extant measures of aesthetic emotions within specific domains such as music, literature, film, painting, advertisements, design, and architecture, we propose a framework for studying aesthetic emotions. The Aesthemos, which is based on this framework, contains 21 subscales with two items each, that are designed to assess the emotional signature of responses to stimuli's perceived aesthetic appeal in a highly differentiated manner. These scales cover prototypical aesthetic emotions (e.g., the feeling of beauty, being moved, fascination, and awe, epistemic emotions (e.g., interest and insight, and emotions indicative of amusement (humor and joy. In addition, the Aesthemos subscales capture both the activating (energy and vitality and the calming (relaxation effects of aesthetic experiences, as well as negative emotions that may contribute to aesthetic displeasure (e.g., the feeling of ugliness, boredom, and confusion.

Measuring aesthetic emotions: A review of the literature and a new assessment tool.

Science.gov (United States)

Schindler, Ines; Hosoya, Georg; Menninghaus, Winfried; Beermann, Ursula; Wagner, Valentin; Eid, Michael; Scherer, Klaus R

2017-01-01

Aesthetic perception and judgement are not merely cognitive processes, but also involve feelings. Therefore, the empirical study of these experiences requires conceptualization and measurement of aesthetic emotions. Despite the long-standing interest in such emotions, we still lack an assessment tool to capture the broad range of emotions that occur in response to the perceived aesthetic appeal of stimuli. Elicitors of aesthetic emotions are not limited to the arts in the strict sense, but extend to design, built environments, and nature. In this article, we describe the development of a questionnaire that is applicable across many of these domains: the Aesthetic Emotions Scale (Aesthemos). Drawing on theoretical accounts of aesthetic emotions and an extensive review of extant measures of aesthetic emotions within specific domains such as music, literature, film, painting, advertisements, design, and architecture, we propose a framework for studying aesthetic emotions. The Aesthemos, which is based on this framework, contains 21 subscales with two items each, that are designed to assess the emotional signature of responses to stimuli's perceived aesthetic appeal in a highly differentiated manner. These scales cover prototypical aesthetic emotions (e.g., the feeling of beauty, being moved, fascination, and awe), epistemic emotions (e.g., interest and insight), and emotions indicative of amusement (humor and joy). In addition, the Aesthemos subscales capture both the activating (energy and vitality) and the calming (relaxation) effects of aesthetic experiences, as well as negative emotions that may contribute to aesthetic displeasure (e.g., the feeling of ugliness, boredom, and confusion).

THE PROBLEM OF CONTINUITY OF TRAINING OF FUTURE EDUCATORS AND TEACHERS OF ELEMENTARY SCHOOL ON ORGANIZATION OF ARTISTIC AND AESTHETIC ACTIVITY OF CHILDREN

OpenAIRE

Наталія Колесник

2014-01-01

The article reveals peculiarities in realization of the continuity principle in training future educators and teachers of elementary school on organization of children‘s artistic and aesthetic activity. The indexes of child’s readiness for school in different spheres of its activity, and in particular, in artistic and aesthetic one have been determined in this research. Description of depicting activity of children of preschool age has been made, and the types of unconventional technologies o...

Electrophysiological correlates of aesthetic processing of webpages: a comparison of experts and laypersons

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Jens Bölte

2017-06-01

Full Text Available We investigated whether design experts or laypersons evaluate webpages differently. Twenty participants, 10 experts and 10 laypersons, judged the aesthetic value of a webpage in an EEG-experiment. Screenshots of 150 webpages, judged as aesthetic or as unaesthetic by another 136 participants, served as stimulus material. Behaviorally, experts and laypersons evaluated unaesthetic webpages similarly, but they differed in their evaluation of aesthetic ones: experts evaluated aesthetic webpages as unaesthetic more often than laypersons did. The ERP-data show main effects of level of expertise and of aesthetic value only. There was no interaction of expertise and aesthetics. In a time-window of 110–130 ms after stimulus onset, aesthetic webpages elicited a more negative EEG-amplitude than unaesthetic webpages. In the same time window, experts had more negative EEG-amplitudes than laypersons. This patterning of results continued until a time window of 600–800 ms in which group and aesthetic differences diminished. An interaction of perceiver characteristics and object properties that several interactionist theories postulate was absent in the EEG-data. Experts seem to process the stimuli in a more thorough manner than laypersons. The early activation differences between aesthetic and unaesthetic webpages is in contrast with some theories of aesthetic processing and has not been reported before.

Mingling, observing, and lingering: everyday public spaces and their implications for well-being and social relations.

Science.gov (United States)

Cattell, Vicky; Dines, Nick; Gesler, Wil; Curtis, Sarah

2008-09-01

The rejuvenation of public spaces is a key policy concern in the UK. Drawing on a wide literature and on qualitative research located in a multi-ethnic area of East London, this paper explores their relationship to well-being and social relations. It demonstrates that ordinary spaces are a significant resource for both individuals and communities. The beneficial properties of public spaces are not reducible to natural or aesthetic criteria, however. Social interaction in spaces can provide relief from daily routines, sustenance for people's sense of community, opportunities for sustaining bonding ties or making bridges, and can influence tolerance and raise people's spirits. They also possess subjective meanings that accumulate over time and can contribute to meeting diverse needs. Different users of public spaces attain a sense of well- being for different reasons: the paper calls for policy approaches in which the social and therapeutic properties of a range of everyday spaces are more widely recognised and nurtured.

The spatial frequencies influence the aesthetic judgment of buildings transculturally.

Science.gov (United States)

Vannucci, Manila; Gori, Simone; Kojima, Haruyuki

2014-01-01

Recent evidence has shown that buildings designed to be high-ranking, according to the Western architectural decorum, have more impact on the minds of their beholders than low-ranking buildings. Here we investigated whether and how the aesthetic judgment for high- and low-ranking buildings was affected by differences in cultural expertise and by power spectrum differences. A group of Italian and Japanese participants performed aesthetic judgment tasks, with line drawings of high- and low-ranking buildings and with their random-phase versions (an image with the exact power spectrum of the original one but non-recognizable anymore). Irrespective of cultural expertise, high-ranking buildings and their relative random-phase versions received higher aesthetic judgments than low-ranking buildings and their random-phase versions. These findings indicate that high- and low-ranking buildings are differentiated for their aesthetic value and they show that low-level visual processes influence the aesthetic judgment based on differences in the stimuli power spectrum, irrespective of the influence of cultural expertise.

Aesthetic rhinoplasty plus brow, eyelid and conchal surgery: pitfalls - complications - prevention.

Science.gov (United States)

Gubisch, Wolfgang; Dacho, Andreas

2013-12-13

Within the last years aesthetic surgery enjoys greater popularity and acceptance. One of the most frequently asked operations has been the aesthetic rhinoplasty. Hardly any other field of surgery is exposed to such a critical analysis than aesthetic rhinoplasty because the results are so obvious. According to the "International Society of Aesthetic Surgery" (ISAPS) over 980,000 cosmetic rhinoplasties have been performed in 2010. This corresponds to 10.4% of all registered aesthetic procedures worldwide. Complications can not be eliminated in such a large number of nasal operations. Five to 15% of all patients re-consult a doctor for a revision because they are much dissatisfied with their final rhinoplasty result. Findings of the tip followed by functional problems and irregularities of the nasal dorsum are named most frequently. The responsible rhinosurgeon has to take into account all anatomical and physiological details and to consider ethical and psychological aspects in the pre-selection and postoperative care of the patient. Aesthetic surgeons should be acquainted with terms and definitions like body image, dysmorphophobia or Thersites complex. Acronyms, like "SIMON" or "SYLVIA", support the physician additionally to analyze and assess the patient. The following article describes the most frequent faults, complications and pitfalls after aesthetic rhinoplasty listed by the anatomical structure. Results will be analyzed and strategies and techniques will be suggested to correct the faults and to prevent them in the future. Furthermore psychologic, social and psychiatric aspects will be discussed and handling with aesthetic patients explained.

Platelet rich plasma in dermatology and aesthetic medicine

OpenAIRE

Neerja Puri

2015-01-01

Platelet rich plasma is a promising therapy in dermatology and aesthetic medicine. In this article we will discuss the pros and cons of platelet rich plasma (PRP) and the usage of PRP in aesthetics. PRP is especially used for conditions like facial and neck rejuvenation, fine lines and wrinkles, abdominal striae and facial scarring.

Minimally invasive aesthetic procedures in young adults

OpenAIRE

Wollina, Uwe; Goldman, Alberto

2011-01-01

Uwe Wollina1, Alberto Goldman21Department of Dermatology and Allergology, Academic Teaching Hospital Dresden-Friedrichstadt, Dresden, Germany; 2Clinica Goldman, Porto Alegre, Rio Grande du Sul, BrazilAbstract: Age is a significant factor in modifying specific needs when it comes to medical aesthetic procedures. In this review we will focus on young adults in their third decade of life and review minimally invasive aesthetic procedures other than cosmetics and cosmeceuticals. Correction of asy...

Aesthetics and Humean Aesthetic Norms in the Novels of Jane Austen

Science.gov (United States)

Dadlez, Eva M.

2008-01-01

During the eighteenth century, amateurs as well as philosophers ventured critical commentary on the arts. Talk concerning taste or beauty or the sublime was so much a part of general discourse that even novelists of that era incorporated such subjects in their work. So it would not be surprising to find that perspectives on aesthetics are…

Stability and Variability in Aesthetic Experience: A Review.

Science.gov (United States)

Jacobsen, Thomas; Beudt, Susan

2017-01-01

Based on psychophysics' pragmatic dualism, we trace the cognitive neuroscience of stability and variability in aesthetic experience. With regard to different domains of aesthetic processing, we touch upon the relevance of cognitive schemata for aesthetic preference. Attitudes and preferences are explored in detail. Evolutionary constraints on attitude formation or schema generation are elucidated, just as the often seemingly arbitrary influences of social, societal, and cultural nature are. A particular focus is put on the concept of critical periods during an individual's ontogenesis. The latter contrasting with changes of high frequency, such as fashion influences. Taken together, these analyses document the state of the art in the field and, potentially, highlight avenues for future research.

Stability and Variability in Aesthetic Experience: A Review

Science.gov (United States)

Jacobsen, Thomas; Beudt, Susan

2017-01-01

Based on psychophysics’ pragmatic dualism, we trace the cognitive neuroscience of stability and variability in aesthetic experience. With regard to different domains of aesthetic processing, we touch upon the relevance of cognitive schemata for aesthetic preference. Attitudes and preferences are explored in detail. Evolutionary constraints on attitude formation or schema generation are elucidated, just as the often seemingly arbitrary influences of social, societal, and cultural nature are. A particular focus is put on the concept of critical periods during an individual’s ontogenesis. The latter contrasting with changes of high frequency, such as fashion influences. Taken together, these analyses document the state of the art in the field and, potentially, highlight avenues for future research. PMID:28223955

Aesthetic guidelines for second-generation indirect inlay and onlay composite restorations.

Science.gov (United States)

Miara, P

1998-05-01

Recent innovations in indirect composite technology and adhesive bonding procedures have resulted in the development of advanced materials particularly suited for inlay and onlay restorations. Microhybrid composite resins are characterized by a filler/matrix ratio that is significantly greater than that of earlier materials. This article reviews the physical properties and clinical application of these "second-generation" composite resins, with emphasis on a system that utilizes a heat-curing process in conjunction with nitrogen pressure to fabricate a material with improved mechanical and aesthetic properties.

That is Cool: the Nature Of Aesthetics in Fluid Physics

Science.gov (United States)

Hertzberg, Jean

2013-11-01

Aesthetics has historically been defined as the study of beauty and thus as a metric of art. More recently, psychologists are using the term to describe a spectrum of responses from ``I hate it'' to ``I love it.'' In the context of fluid physics, what is beautiful? What elicits a ``Wow! Awesome! Cool!'' response versus a snore? Can we use aesthetics to deepen or change students' or the public's perceptions of physics and/or the world around them? For example, students seem to appreciate the aesthetics of destruction: environmental fluid dynamics such as storms, tornadoes, floods and wildfires are often responsible for massive destruction, yet humans draw pleasure from watching such physics and the attendant destruction from a safe distance. Can this voyeurism be turned to our advantage in communicating science? Observations of student and Facebook Flow Visualization group choices for fluid physics that draw a positive aesthetic response are sorted into empirical categories; the aesthetics of beauty, power, destruction, and oddness. Each aesthetic will be illustrated with examples drawn from flow visualizations from both the Flow Visualization course (MCEN 4151) taught at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and sources on the web. This work is supported by NSF: EEC 1240294.

Platelet rich plasma in dermatology and aesthetic medicine

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Neerja Puri

2015-04-01

Full Text Available Platelet rich plasma is a promising therapy in dermatology and aesthetic medicine. In this article we will discuss the pros and cons of platelet rich plasma (PRP and the usage of PRP in aesthetics. PRP is especially used for conditions like facial and neck rejuvenation, fine lines and wrinkles, abdominal striae and facial scarring.

Aesthetic evaluation of profile incisor inclination.

Science.gov (United States)

Ghaleb, Nathalie; Bouserhal, Joseph; Bassil-Nassif, Nayla

2011-06-01

The objectives of this study were to evaluate (1) the impact of maxillary incisor inclination on the aesthetics of the profile view of a smile, (2) to determine the most aesthetic inclination in the profile view of a smile and correlate it with facial features, and (3) to determine if dentists, orthodontists, and laypeople appreciate differently incisor inclination in smile aesthetics. A smiling profile photograph of a female subject (22 years of age) who fulfilled the criteria of soft tissue normative values and a balanced smile was obtained. The photograph was manipulated to simulate six lingual and labial inclinations at 5 degree increments to a maximum of 15 degrees. The seven photographs were randomly distributed in a binder to three groups of raters (30 dentists, 30 orthodontists, and 30 laypeople) who scored the attractiveness of the photographic variations using a visual analogue scale. Comparison of the mean scores was carried out by repeated analysis of variance, univariate tests, and multiple Bonferroni comparisons. The results showed a statistically significant interaction between the rater's profession and the aesthetic preference of incisor inclination (P = 0.013). The profile smile corresponding to an increase of 5 degrees in a labial direction had the highest score among all professions and among male and female raters. Orthodontists preferred labial crown torque; dentists and laypeople did not appreciate excessive incisor inclination in either the lingual or the labial directions. The most preferred smile matched with a maxillary incisor inclined 93 degrees to the horizontal line and +7 degrees to the lower facial third.

Aesthetic Training for Plastic Surgeons: Are Residents Getting Enough?

Science.gov (United States)

Papas, Athanasios; Montemurro, Paolo; Hedén, Per

2018-02-01

Plastic Surgery is one of the most competitive specialties in the field of medicine. However, this specialty has a unique particularity: the difficulties in Aesthetic Surgery training within the residency program. Despite the fact that the full title of the specialty is Plastic, Reconstructive, and Aesthetic Surgery and that Aesthetic Surgery is a part of the examination syllabus, the actual training in the specific area is limited. One of the solutions to this problem is Fellowships. The first author describes his personal experience with Aesthetic training and how it enhanced his knowledge in the area as well as the status of Fellowships in various training programs. This journal requires that authors assign a level of evidence to each article. For a full description of these Evidence-Based Medicine ratings, please refer to the Table of Contents or the online Instructions to Authors www.springer.com/00266.

Stable aesthetic standards delusion: changing 'artistic quality' by elaboration.

Science.gov (United States)

Carbon, Claus-Christian; Hesslinger, Vera M

2014-01-01

The present study challenges the notion that judgments of artistic quality are based on stable aesthetic standards. We propose that such standards are a delusion and that judgments of artistic quality are the combined result of exposure, elaboration, and discourse. We ran two experiments using elaboration tasks based on the repeated evaluation technique in which different versions of the Mona Lisa had to be elaborated deeply. During the initial task either the version known from the Louvre or an alternative version owned by the Prado was elaborated; during the second task both versions were elaborated in a comparative fashion. After both tasks multiple blends of the two versions had to be evaluated concerning several aesthetic key variables. Judgments of artistic quality of the blends were significantly different depending on the initially elaborated version of the Mona Lisa, indicating experience-based aesthetic processing, which contradicts the notion of stable aesthetic standards.

Clinical Effectiveness of Using Aesthetic Fixed Prosthetic Appliances with Combined Occlusal Surface

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Andrii Biben

2017-06-01

Conclusions. Aesthetic fixed prosthetic appliances with combined occlusal surface demonstrated high functional and aesthetic characteristics. The use of the USHPS system showed a decisive advantage of milled frameworks and combined occlusal surface over traditional cast ceramic frameworks.The combination of high mechanical, strength and tribological properties of zirconium dioxide and high biological as well as aesthetic properties of ceramic materials helped reveal high clinical characteristics of aesthetic appliances with combined occlusal surface.

The Cosmological Potential of Byzantine Ascetic Aesthetics

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Аndrey Tsarenok

2017-09-01

Full Text Available The study explores the peculiarities of the cosmological senses, which exist in Byzantine ascetic aesthetical doctrine. Underlining the obvious strong connection between theological aesthetics, ontology and cosmology, the author of the article points out the interpretation of world’s beauty, order and harmony by representatives of ascetic culture of Byzantium (sts. Grigoriy the Theologian, Grigoriy, bishop of Niss, Ioann Chrysostom, Ioann Damaskin, Simeon the New Theologian and others. The aesthetics of the asceticism is characterized as theocentrical ontology of beauty. Its development has been influenced by theism, trinitary monotheism and theocentrism of Christian world-view tradition. The theologians speak about the existence of the Highest Absolute Beauty, Who is the cause of the beautiful things in created reality. The impressive qualities of cosmos are considered as evidence of being of their Almighty Creator. Therefore, the sensual cognition can help believer in his or her search of God. At the same time, ascetic aesthetics prevents from unreasonable enjoying of the sensual (material, somatic beauty for such enjoying is able to make the true person’s spiritual perfection impossible. Moreover, according to Christian theology, absolutization of the cosmical beauty regularly distorts the person’s belief: Byzantine ascetics point out the “aesthetical” cause of paganism appearance. Appealing to Bible, theologians differentiate two periods in history of cosmos, which can be interpreted as the pre-sin and the post-sin ones. The beginning of visible world existence was marked with being of original beauty, order and harmony, but the transgression, committed by the first people, distorted the cosmos to a great degree. Acknowledging of this sorrowful fact does not ruin quite an optimistic character of ascetic aesthetical, ontological and cosmological conceptions of Byzantium. According to them, the beauty of Universe will be completely

Aesthetic evolution by mate choice: Darwin's really dangerous idea.

Science.gov (United States)

Prum, Richard O

2012-08-19

Darwin proposed an explicitly aesthetic theory of sexual selection in which he described mate preferences as a 'taste for the beautiful', an 'aesthetic capacity', etc. These statements were not merely colourful Victorian mannerisms, but explicit expressions of Darwin's hypothesis that mate preferences can evolve for arbitrarily attractive traits that do not provide any additional benefits to mate choice. In his critique of Darwin, A. R. Wallace proposed an entirely modern mechanism of mate preference evolution through the correlation of display traits with male vigour or viability, but he called this mechanism natural selection. Wallace's honest advertisement proposal was stridently anti-Darwinian and anti-aesthetic. Most modern sexual selection research relies on essentially the same Neo-Wallacean theory renamed as sexual selection. I define the process of aesthetic evolution as the evolution of a communication signal through sensory/cognitive evaluation, which is most elaborated through coevolution of the signal and its evaluation. Sensory evaluation includes the possibility that display traits do not encode information that is being assessed, but are merely preferred. A genuinely Darwinian, aesthetic theory of sexual selection requires the incorporation of the Lande-Kirkpatrick null model into sexual selection research, but also encompasses the possibility of sensory bias, good genes and direct benefits mechanisms.

Comparative Analysis of Methodologies for Landscape Ecological Aesthetics in Urban Planning

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Maija Jankevica

2012-05-01

Full Text Available Areas with high level of urbanisation provoke frequent conflicts between nature and people. There is a lack of cooperation between planners and nature scientists in urban studies and planning process. Landscapes usually are studied using the ecological and aesthetical approaches separately. However, the future of urban planning depends on integration of these two approaches. This research study looks into different methods of landscape ecological aesthetics and presents a combined method for urban areas. The methods of landscape visual aesthetical assessment, biotope structure analysis, landscape ecology evaluation and multi-disciplinary expert level are compared in the article. A comparison of obtained values is summarized by making a comparative matrix. As a result, a multi-stage model for landscape ecological aesthetics evaluation in urban territories is presented. This ecological aesthetics model can be successfully used for development of urban territories.

The Reflection of Quantum Aesthetics in Algis Mickūnas Cosmic Philosophy

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Auridas Gajauskas

2011-04-01

Full Text Available Quantum Aesthetics phenomenon was formed in Spain, at the end of the twentieth centure. The paper analyzes this movement in the context of Algis Mickūnas phenomenological cosmic philosophy. Movement initiator is a Spanish novelist Gregorio Morales. The study is divided into two parts: the first part presents aesthetic principles of the quantum, relationship between new aesthetics and theories of quantum mechanics, physics and other sciences. The paper also examines the similarities of quantum aesthetics and New Age movements. The second part presents cosmic - phenomenological reflection of quantum theory of beauty. Mickūnas philosophical position combines theory of "eternal recurrence", "the bodily nature of consciousness", "the cosmic dance", theory of "dynamic fields" and quantum approach to aesthetics and the Universe. Summa Summarum he writes that "the conception of quantum aesthetics is involved in the composition of the rhythmic, cyclical and mood dimensioned and tensed world". 

Variability and situatedness of human emotions. Comment on "The quartet theory of human emotions: An integrative and neurofunctional model" by S. Koelsch et al.

Science.gov (United States)

Nadal, Marcos; Rosselló, Jaume

2015-06-01

We commend Koelsch and colleagues [14] for developing a broad and integrative explanation of the neurobiological foundations of emotions. We especially welcome this framework's emphasis on the interaction between language and emotion, and its focus on the characteristically human moral emotions. Emotions elicited by art and aesthetics also seem to be distinctively human, but comparatively little research has been devoted to understanding these. This is probably because they are usually viewed as atypical in several respects. William James [12], for instance, regarded emotional responses to artworks and aesthetic qualities as subtler emotions, because they lacked the strong bodily changes and adaptive value characteristic of coarser emotions, such as joy, anger, or fear. This view is still predominant today, and aesthetic emotions are often distinguished from everyday emotions [13]. However, the notion of a class of aesthetic emotions, separate from everyday emotions, rests on the questionable assumption that artistic and aesthetic experiences and activities are different in essence from everyday experiences and activities. The discontinuity between "aesthetic experience [and] normal processes of living" [9, p. 10], however, is the product of social and cultural developments in Europe during the 18th century [7,15,20]. Distinctions that oppose art to craft, or aesthetic to practical, in reference to objects, behaviors, experiences, and emotions, make little sense in a broader historic and geographic context [1,7,20], and hinder empirical research [7].

Modeling aesthetics to support an ecosystem services approach for natural resource management decision making.

Science.gov (United States)

Booth, Pieter N; Law, Sheryl A; Ma, Jane; Buonagurio, John; Boyd, James; Turnley, Jessica

2017-09-01

This paper reviews literature on aesthetics and describes the development of vista and landscape aesthetics models. Spatially explicit variables were chosen to represent physical characteristics of natural landscapes that are important to aesthetic preferences. A vista aesthetics model evaluates the aesthetics of natural landscapes viewed from distances of more than 1000 m, and a landscape aesthetics model evaluates the aesthetic value of wetlands and forests within 1000 m from the viewer. Each of the model variables is quantified using spatially explicit metrics on a pixel-specific basis within EcoAIM™, a geographic information system (GIS)-based ecosystem services (ES) decision analysis support tool. Pixel values are "binned" into ranked categories, and weights are assigned to select variables to represent stakeholder preferences. The final aesthetic score is the weighted sum of all variables and is assigned ranked values from 1 to 10. Ranked aesthetic values are displayed on maps by patch type and integrated within EcoAIM. The response of the aesthetic scoring in the models was tested by comparing current conditions in a discrete area of the facility with a Development scenario in the same area. The Development scenario consisted of two 6-story buildings and a trail replacing natural areas. The results of the vista aesthetic model indicate that the viewshed area variable had the greatest effect on the aesthetics overall score. Results from the landscape aesthetics model indicate a 10% increase in overall aesthetics value, attributed to the increase in landscape diversity. The models are sensitive to the weights assigned to certain variables by the user, and these weights should be set to reflect regional landscape characteristics as well as stakeholder preferences. This demonstration project shows that natural landscape aesthetics can be evaluated as part of a nonmonetary assessment of ES, and a scenario-building exercise provides end users with a tradeoff

The effects of valence-based and discrete emotional states on aesthetic response.

Science.gov (United States)

Cheng, Yin-Hui

2013-01-01

There is increasing recognition that consumer aesthetics--the responses of consumers to the aesthetic or appearance aspects of products--has become an important area of marketing in recent years. Consumer aesthetic responses to a product are a source of pleasure for the consumer. Previous research into the aesthetic responses to products has often emphasized exterior factors and visual design, but studies have seldom considered the psychological aesthetic experience of consumers, and in particular their emotional state. This study attempts to bridge this gap by examining the link between consumers' emotions and their aesthetic response to a product. Thus, the major goal of this study was to determine how valence-based and discrete emotional states influence choice. In Studies 1 and 2, positive and negative emotions were manipulated to implement two different induction techniques and explore the effect of emotions on participants' choices in two separate experiments. The results of both experiments confirmed the predictions, indicating that aesthetic responses and purchase intention are functions of emotional valence, such that both are stronger for people in a positive emotional state than for those in a negative emotional state. Study 2 also used a neutral affective state to establish the robustness of this observed effect of incidental affect. The results of Study 3 demonstrate that aesthetic response and purchase intention are not only a function of affect valence, but also are affected by the certainty appraisal associated with specific affective states. This research, therefore, contributes to the literature by offering empirical evidence that incidental affect is a determinant of aesthetic response.

The Aesthetic Surgery Literature: Do Plastic Surgeons Remain at the Cutting Edge?

Science.gov (United States)

Dolan, Roisin T; Zins, James E; Morrison, Colin M

2016-07-01

The aesthetic surgery arena has become a competitive marketplace. Recognition as an authority in aesthetic surgery remains a powerful marketing tool for plastic surgeons, but have significant inroads been made by other specialties? The aims of this study were to analyze publication trends relating to the top five most commonly performed aesthetic surgical procedures, and to assess the origins (i.e., source specialty, authorship, institutions, and countries) of published aesthetic surgical research. Based on the seventeenth annual multispecialty data set provided by the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery, the top five most commonly performed aesthetic surgical procedures were selected. A temporal analysis of publication and citation rates, source institution and country, publishing journal, funding agency trends, and level of evidence was undertaken from 1970 to 2013. Using the search criteria, 7762 articles were identified. There was an 8.8-fold increase in publication volume when the first decade (n = 375) was compared with the last decade (n = 3326). Over the past four decades, 52.2 percent of publications (n = 4053 of 7762) originated from plastic surgery research institutions, with varying contributions from other specialties. Competition was greatest in relation to authorship of blepharoplasty- and rhinoplasty-related publications. Although plastic surgeons continue to maintain a center-stage presence in terms of authorship of aesthetic surgical literature, significant contributions are now made by other specialties. Plastic surgeons must continue to foster high-quality, peer-reviewed research and innovations to maintain their visibility as leaders in the aesthetic surgery literature and sustain a competitive advantage in aesthetic surgery practice.

The influence of different facial components on facial aesthetics.

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Faure, J.C.; Rieffe, C.; Maltha, J.C.

2002-01-01

Facial aesthetics have an important influence on social behaviour and perception in our society. The purpose of the present study was to evaluate the effect of facial symmetry and inter-ocular distance on the assessment of facial aesthetics, factors that are often suggested as major contributors to

Smell and Anosmia in the Aesthetic Appreciation of Gardens

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Marta Tafalla

2014-01-01

Full Text Available In his Critique of the Power of Judgment, Kant defined the garden as a visual art and considered that smell plays no role in its aesthetic appreciation. If the Kantian thesis were right, then a person who has no sense of smell (who suffers from anosmia would not be impaired in his or her aesthetic appreciation of gardens. At the same time, a visually impaired person could not appreciate the beauty of gardens, although he or she could perceive them through hearing, smell, taste, and touch. In this paper I discuss the role of smell and anosmia in the aesthetic appreciation of gardens. I accept the Kantian idea that the appreciation of a garden is the appreciation of its form, but I also defend that, at least in some cases, smell can belong to the form of gardens and, consequently, the ability or inability to smell influences their aesthetic appreciation.

AUMGARTEN’S AESTHETICS AS THE SCIENCE OF SENSITIVE COGNITION

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Nesrin Erturk

2016-04-01

Full Text Available A. G. Baumgarten grounds the aesthetics of which he was the founder on widely poetic and rhetoric in his ‘Aestetica’ (1750/58. Nevertheless, what is significant here for him is to validate the individualist right of ‘sensitive knowledge.’ The word ‘aesthetics’ (αíσυŋгηικόç here is strictly attached to its basic meaning which is ‘related to sense and perception,’ and ‘sensually understandable.’ The aesthetics of Baumgarten is the philosophy of sensual knowledge and perception, and its sensitivity cannot be perceived as the material of outer stimulation and logic; contrarily, it sincerely sees it as a special genre of the knowledge. Hence, the aesthetics is defined as the ‘science of sensitive knowledge.’ With this study, it has been targeted to draw a general outline of Baumgarten’s aesthetics understanding by discussing the basic chapters of ‘Aestetica.’

The Aesthetics of Junkyards and Roadside Clutter

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Thomas Leddy

2008-01-01

Full Text Available A little more than thirty years ago, Allen Carlson argued that although the concept of "Camp" would seem to allow for the aesthetic redemption of roadside clutter and junkyards, it does not.[1] He opposes those who claim that if one takes the right attitude to roadside clutter it can be seen as aesthetic. In this essay I argue that that there is nothing wrong with this, although I will not base my argument on the idea of Camp sensibility.

Students’ Aesthetics Experience, Creative Self-Efficacy and Creativity: Is Creativity Instruction Effective?

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Yuan-Cheng Chang

2016-12-01

Full Text Available Based on creativity component theory, creativity system theory and creative self-efficacy theory, this study aims to explore the influence of college students’ aesthetics experience and creative self-efficacy on their creativity and the role of creativity instruction as a mediator variable. The participants were 338 college design majors in 50 teams who were working on their graduation exhibitions, and 50 advising professors from departments related to design. Hierarchical Linear Models were applied for analysis. The result showed that instruction on enhancing students’ creative intention positively affect students’ aesthetics experience. Students’ aesthetics experience affects their creativity and creative self-efficacy. Creativity instruction with focus on creativity skills by means of promoting aesthetic attitude, aesthetic understanding, and offering complete experiences had a moderating effect on students’ perception toward creative product. However, there was a negative moderating effect of creative instruction on perceived aesthetic pleasure and students’ perception toward creative product. There was no moderating effect of creative instruction on the relationship between students’ creative self-efficacy and creativity. Accordingly, the study concluded that in order to enhance students’ creativity, universities should stress on the development of students’ aesthetics experiences and re-evaluation of approaches to creativity instruction.

Children's aesthetic understanding of photographic art and the quality of art-related parent-child interactions.

Science.gov (United States)

Szechter, Lisa E; Liben, Lynn S

2007-01-01

This research was designed to examine the quality of children's aesthetic understanding of photographs, observe social interactions between parents and children in this aesthetic domain, and study whether qualitatively different dyadic interactions were associated with children's own aesthetic understanding. Parents and children (7-13 years; 40 dyads) individually completed measures of aesthetic understanding and jointly selected photographs for a souvenir scrapbook. Parents' artistic experience varied widely and was associated with their own performance on aesthetic understanding measures. Children's performance on the individual aesthetic tasks was related to age, but not to parents' art experience nor to the qualities of parent-child discussions of aesthetic concepts. Among both parents and children, artistic experience was associated with aesthetic preferences for photographs.

Aesthetic Relationships and Ethics in "The Oh Fuck Moment"

Science.gov (United States)

Breel, Astrid

2015-01-01

This article explores the aesthetics and ethics of participatory performance through "The Oh Fuck Moment" by Hannah Jane Walker and Chris Thorpe, a performance that aesthetically explores ethically troubling material and manipulation. Ethical criticism of participatory art in recent years has focused on the way the audience member is…

Partying as Everyday Life

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Demant, Jakob; Østergaard, Jeanette

2007-01-01

situates the event in everyday life. By drawing on Maffesoli's (1996) concept of ‘sociality' and Lincoln's (2005) concept of zoning the spatial and social logic of the house, partying is analysed using both qualitative and quantitative material. The analysis suggests that the consumption of alcohol (i.......e. collective intoxication) is one way the parents' dining room is transformed creatively into a space for teenage partying. Hence, the social logic of a party is to consume alcohol collectively as it symbolises commitment to both the party and to the specific group of friends. Finally, attention is drawn...... to reaffirm friendship and is therefore an integrated part of adolescents' everyday life.  ...

Essential Requirements to Setting up an Aesthetic Practice

OpenAIRE

Sachdev, Mukta; Britto, Gillian R

2014-01-01

Aesthetic dermatology is becoming a vital and popular branch of medicine. This article aims to guide dermatologists to set up a professional and ethical aesthetic practice. Dermatologists should have an integrated practice of clinical dermatology, dermatosurgery and cosmetic dermatology. Ethical practice is the gold standard for any medical field, especially with dermatologists, who should avoid doing unnecessary procedures. Proper patient counselling and addressing the patients′ concerns is ...

Modulation of aesthetic value by semantic context: An fMRI study

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Kirk, Ulrich; Skov, Martin; Hulme, Oliver

2009-01-01

Aesthetic judgments, like most judgments, depend on context. Whether an object or image is seen in daily life or in an art gallery can significantly modulate the aesthetic value humans attach to it. We investigated the neural system supporting this modulation by presenting human subjects....... This contextual modulation correlated with activity in the medial orbitofrontal cortex and prefrontal cortex, whereas the context, independent of aesthetic value, correlated with bilateral activations of temporal pole and bilateral entorhinal cortex. This shows that prefrontal and orbitofrontal cortices recruited...... by aesthetic judgments are significantly biased by subjects' prior expectations about the likely hedonic value of stimuli according to their source....

Environmental cognition in the vernacular landscape: assessing the aesthetic quality of Al-Alkhalaf village, Southwestern Saudi Arabia

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Eben Saleh, M.A. [King Saud Univ., Riyadh (Saudi Arabia). Dept. of Architecture and Building Sciences

2001-10-01

Changes in socio-cultural patterns, economic activities, and the technologies for agricultural productions and climate controls are bringing new patterns of visual qualities to the age-old vernacular landscape of Saudi Arabia's Asir region. Unfortunately, the lack of reference between old and new is threatening to destroy the overall environmental quality that is one of the region's greatest economic and cultural assets. Through detailed examination of Al-Alkhalaf vernacular landscape in Asir, one of the largest villages, this paper defines the major components of the landscape and assesses the basis for their aesthetic qualities and values. Throughout the traditional era, a sense of beauty was imparted to this vernacular landscape through an unconscious balancing of natural systems and human needs. Such results owed much to the management efforts of a homogenous group of villagers expressing consensus about their place in the world. Today, in the more complicated context of modern Saudi Arabia, a new appreciation for landscape traditions arises and vernacular invites pertinent commentaries. A more conscious effort is needed to achieve the same old sense of regional and aesthetic values. The paper suggests that such an effort should begin by employing concepts like aesthetic values, aesthetic qualities and visual qualities when searching for new expressions of the relationship between people and nature. (author)

Defining the Aesthetic(s of Negation in El Techo de la Ballena

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Sean Nesselrode

2014-06-01

Full Text Available The radical artist collective El Techo de la Ballena (1961–1968 is primarily remembered as a scandalous, interdisciplinary pioneer of performative public interventions in Venezuela. Yet the group established a contradictory, pluralistic visual aesthetic(s that served as a refusal of the artistic and political hegemony of geometric and kinetic art. This paper examines several case studies to consider El Techo’s complex visual output, which variously draws upon medieval woodcuts, photography and photomontage, and a mode of gestural abstraction that came to be known as informalismo. The group looked to an alternative genealogy of Dada and Surrealist tactics as a means of introducing an arsenal of new artistic strategies that could be adapted to a specifically Venezuelan discourse of development and disillusion. By advancing a visual language of unpredictability and mutability, El Techo actively refused to achieve a singular identity, its deliberate dissonances complementing its guerrilla approach to artmaking and ultimately seeking to undo the perceived academicism of dominant visualities in Venezuelan art and politics.

Aesthetic impact assessment of solar power plants. An objective and a subjective approach

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Torres-Sibille, Ana del Carmen; Cloquell-Ballester, Vicente-Agustin; Cloquell-Ballester, Victor-Andres; Artacho Ramirez, Miguel Angel [Dpto. Proyectos de Ingenieria, Valencia University of Technology, Camino de Vera s/n, 46022 Valencia (Spain)

2009-06-15

Solar energy for the production of electric energy is one source of renewable energy which is experiencing most development in recent years. In countries with high solar radiation indices, as is the case of Spain, expectations of installation of large solar power plants are increasing. Most solar power plants are located in rural environments, where the landscape has remained practically unaltered ever since extensive agriculture was introduced. Because of this, one of the most significant environmental impacts of this type of installation is the visual impact derived from the alteration of the landscape. In this work, an indicator is proposed for the quantification of the objective aesthetic impact, based on four criteria: visibility, colour, fractality and concurrence between fixed and mobile panels. The relative importance of each variable and the corresponding value functions are calculated using expert contribution. A study of the subjective aesthetic impact is then carried out using the semantic differential method, to obtain the perception of a sample of individuals of the initial landscapes and of the landscapes altered through the installation of a solar power plant. The indicator and the study of public perception are applied to five real solar power plants, to test their reliability. Subsequently, a different group of individuals is used to determine preferences between the five solar power plants. The study proves that the combined use of objective indicator and subjective study, faithfully explains user preferences corresponding to the combined comparisons of the five cases. It is concluded that the tools proposed for the evaluation of the aesthetic impact of solar power plants are useful for the selection of optimal plant location and most adequate use of panel technology, to minimise aesthetic impact. (author)

Emotions in Everyday Life.

Science.gov (United States)

Trampe, Debra; Quoidbach, Jordi; Taquet, Maxime

2015-01-01

Despite decades of research establishing the causes and consequences of emotions in the laboratory, we know surprisingly little about emotions in everyday life. We developed a smartphone application that monitored real-time emotions of an exceptionally large (N = 11,000+) and heterogeneous participants sample. People's everyday life seems profoundly emotional: participants experienced at least one emotion 90% of the time. The most frequent emotion was joy, followed by love and anxiety. People experienced positive emotions 2.5 times more often than negative emotions, but also experienced positive and negative emotions simultaneously relatively frequently. We also characterized the interconnections between people's emotions using network analysis. This novel approach to emotion research suggests that specific emotions can fall into the following categories 1) connector emotions (e.g., joy), which stimulate same valence emotions while inhibiting opposite valence emotions, 2) provincial emotions (e.g., gratitude), which stimulate same valence emotions only, or 3) distal emotions (e.g., embarrassment), which have little interaction with other emotions and are typically experienced in isolation. Providing both basic foundations and novel tools to the study of emotions in everyday life, these findings demonstrate that emotions are ubiquitous to life and can exist together and distinctly, which has important implications for both emotional interventions and theory.

Emotions in Everyday Life.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Debra Trampe

Full Text Available Despite decades of research establishing the causes and consequences of emotions in the laboratory, we know surprisingly little about emotions in everyday life. We developed a smartphone application that monitored real-time emotions of an exceptionally large (N = 11,000+ and heterogeneous participants sample. People's everyday life seems profoundly emotional: participants experienced at least one emotion 90% of the time. The most frequent emotion was joy, followed by love and anxiety. People experienced positive emotions 2.5 times more often than negative emotions, but also experienced positive and negative emotions simultaneously relatively frequently. We also characterized the interconnections between people's emotions using network analysis. This novel approach to emotion research suggests that specific emotions can fall into the following categories 1 connector emotions (e.g., joy, which stimulate same valence emotions while inhibiting opposite valence emotions, 2 provincial emotions (e.g., gratitude, which stimulate same valence emotions only, or 3 distal emotions (e.g., embarrassment, which have little interaction with other emotions and are typically experienced in isolation. Providing both basic foundations and novel tools to the study of emotions in everyday life, these findings demonstrate that emotions are ubiquitous to life and can exist together and distinctly, which has important implications for both emotional interventions and theory.

Emotions in Everyday Life

Science.gov (United States)

2015-01-01

Despite decades of research establishing the causes and consequences of emotions in the laboratory, we know surprisingly little about emotions in everyday life. We developed a smartphone application that monitored real-time emotions of an exceptionally large (N = 11,000+) and heterogeneous participants sample. People’s everyday life seems profoundly emotional: participants experienced at least one emotion 90% of the time. The most frequent emotion was joy, followed by love and anxiety. People experienced positive emotions 2.5 times more often than negative emotions, but also experienced positive and negative emotions simultaneously relatively frequently. We also characterized the interconnections between people’s emotions using network analysis. This novel approach to emotion research suggests that specific emotions can fall into the following categories 1) connector emotions (e.g., joy), which stimulate same valence emotions while inhibiting opposite valence emotions, 2) provincial emotions (e.g., gratitude), which stimulate same valence emotions only, or 3) distal emotions (e.g., embarrassment), which have little interaction with other emotions and are typically experienced in isolation. Providing both basic foundations and novel tools to the study of emotions in everyday life, these findings demonstrate that emotions are ubiquitous to life and can exist together and distinctly, which has important implications for both emotional interventions and theory. PMID:26698124

Beauty and the brain: culture, history and individual differences in aesthetic appreciation

Science.gov (United States)

Jacobsen, Thomas

2010-01-01

Human aesthetic processing entails the sensation-based evaluation of an entity with respect to concepts like beauty, harmony or well-formedness. Aesthetic appreciation has many determinants ranging from evolutionary, anatomical or physiological constraints to influences of culture, history and individual differences. There are a vast number of dynamically configured neural networks underlying these multifaceted processes of aesthetic appreciation. In the current challenge of successfully bridging art and science, aesthetics and neuroanatomy, the neuro-cognitive psychology of aesthetics can approach this complex topic using a framework that postulates several perspectives, which are not mutually exclusive. In this empirical approach, objective physiological data from event-related brain potentials and functional magnetic resonance imaging are combined with subjective, individual self-reports. PMID:19929909

A Matter of Motivation: Everyday Engagement and Cultural Heritage

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Iversen, Ole Sejer; Dindler, Christian

2010-01-01

A central issue for museums is to create strong links between the museum and the everyday life of the visitor. Pursuing such an agenda entails a commitment to understanding structures of visitor curiosity, interest, and engagement and the potential intersections between the everyday life of visit......A central issue for museums is to create strong links between the museum and the everyday life of the visitor. Pursuing such an agenda entails a commitment to understanding structures of visitor curiosity, interest, and engagement and the potential intersections between the everyday life...

Everyday listening questionnaire: correlation between subjective hearing and objective performance.

Science.gov (United States)

Brendel, Martina; Frohne-Buechner, Carolin; Lesinski-Schiedat, Anke; Lenarz, Thomas; Buechner, Andreas

2014-01-01

Clinical experience has demonstrated that speech understanding by cochlear implant (CI) recipients has improved over recent years with the development of new technology. The Everyday Listening Questionnaire 2 (ELQ 2) was designed to collect information regarding the challenges faced by CI recipients in everyday listening. The aim of this study was to compare self-assessment of CI users using ELQ 2 with objective speech recognition measures and to compare results between users of older and newer coding strategies. During their regular clinical review appointments a group of representative adult CI recipients implanted with the Advanced Bionics implant system were asked to complete the questionnaire. The first 100 patients who agreed to participate in this survey were recruited independent of processor generation and speech coding strategy. Correlations between subjectively scored hearing performance in everyday listening situations and objectively measured speech perception abilities were examined relative to the speech coding strategies used. When subjects were grouped by strategy there were significant differences between users of older 'standard' strategies and users of the newer, currently available strategies (HiRes and HiRes 120), especially in the categories of telephone use and music perception. Significant correlations were found between certain subjective ratings and the objective speech perception data in noise. There is a good correlation between subjective and objective data. Users of more recent speech coding strategies tend to have fewer problems in difficult hearing situations.

From cultural aesthetic to perfor- mance technique: continuities and ...

African Journals Online (AJOL)

Introduction. A broad-based survey of Malawian dances that I undertook several years ago aimed rather ambitiously to identify persistent regional forms of these dances as well as their governing aesthetic(s). In the course of the field work, a recurrent ~estion emerged: how do we approach dance as cultural performance?

Mediating epistemic access through everyday language resources ...

African Journals Online (AJOL)

In most rural and township English additional language classrooms, everyday language discursive practices of bi/multilingual students are underutilised. This study reports on how grade 4 emergent isiZulu-English bilingual children used their everyday language resources as a tool for epistemic access. Drawing on ...

Use of aesthetic rhinoplasty procedures in reconstructive nasal surgery.

Science.gov (United States)

Ghassemi, Alireza; Rübben, Albert; Bohluli, Behnam; Hölzle, Frank; Ghassemi, Mehrangiz

2015-01-01

Resection of cancer often involves the excision of underlying hard tissue, and some procedures in aesthetic rhinoplasty can be used in reconstructive nasal surgery to increase the margin of safety while still achieving an acceptable aesthetic and functional outcome. We have used techniques from aesthetic rhinoplasty to shape the nasal framework. Osteotomy and formation of the tip were used in 17 patients with defects (ranging from 1 to 3.5 cm in size) from the nasal root to the tip of the nose. After the underlying bony or cartilaginous framework, or both, had been removed, the resulting open roof deformity had to be corrected by osteotomy of the bony nasal wall and the tip shaped by excision and suturing, including insertion of the tip graft and columellar strut graft. After this, and narrowing of the nose, the defect was smaller and could be closed with local tissue without tension. There were no deformities in the contour, and patency of the airway was maintained. Patients were satisfied with both the aesthetic and functional results. Although the margin of safety was increased, shaping the nasal framework reduced the size of the defect, which allowed tension-free closure with a local flap. The operation requires a thorough knowledge of procedures used in aesthetic rhinoplasty. Copyright © 2014 The British Association of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgeons. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Aesthetic preference recognition of 3D shapes using EEG.

Science.gov (United States)

Chew, Lin Hou; Teo, Jason; Mountstephens, James

2016-04-01

Recognition and identification of aesthetic preference is indispensable in industrial design. Humans tend to pursue products with aesthetic values and make buying decisions based on their aesthetic preferences. The existence of neuromarketing is to understand consumer responses toward marketing stimuli by using imaging techniques and recognition of physiological parameters. Numerous studies have been done to understand the relationship between human, art and aesthetics. In this paper, we present a novel preference-based measurement of user aesthetics using electroencephalogram (EEG) signals for virtual 3D shapes with motion. The 3D shapes are designed to appear like bracelets, which is generated by using the Gielis superformula. EEG signals were collected by using a medical grade device, the B-Alert X10 from advance brain monitoring, with a sampling frequency of 256 Hz and resolution of 16 bits. The signals obtained when viewing 3D bracelet shapes were decomposed into alpha, beta, theta, gamma and delta rhythm by using time-frequency analysis, then classified into two classes, namely like and dislike by using support vector machines and K-nearest neighbors (KNN) classifiers respectively. Classification accuracy of up to 80 % was obtained by using KNN with the alpha, theta and delta rhythms as the features extracted from frontal channels, Fz, F3 and F4 to classify two classes, like and dislike.

Right hypoglossal nerve paralysis after tracheal intubation for aesthetic breast surgery

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Sammy Al-Benna

2013-01-01

Full Text Available Aesthetic and functional complications caused by general anesthesia have been rarely described after aesthetic surgery. We report a case of unilateral right hypoglossal nerve paralysis following the use of a cuffed endotracheal airway in a 24-year-old woman undergoing aesthetic breast surgery. Neurological examination and magnetic resonance imaging of the head failed to provide additional insights into the cause of the nerve injury. Postoperatively, the patient was carefully monitored and made a full recovery within 2 weeks without any pharmacological treatment. The transient hypoglossal nerve paralysis seemed to be due to neuropraxia. In this patient, we postulate that the right hypoglossal nerve was compressed between the endotracheal tube cuff and the hyoid bone, which was inflated with 30 cm H 2 O. Patients undergoing aesthetic surgery must be appropriately and adequately informed that postoperative aesthetic and functional deficits can occur due to anesthesia as well as the surgery.

Conduct of everyday life and social self-understanding after depression

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Hybholt, Lisbeth; Mørck, Line Lerche

2015-01-01

This paper theoretically and empirically explores critical psychological conceptualisations of conduct of everyday life and social self-understanding. The analysis of conduct of everyday life for people who have been hospitalized with depression shows experiences of doubleness. We understand...... doubleness as dilemmas, conflicts and contradictions in the conduct of everyday life. The case analysis of Steven serves to illustrate how cyclic routines can matter, fulfilling meaning in life and being both in conflict and contradiction to other concerns and aspects of meaning that vary over time....... The paper empirically how these kind of conflicts, dilemmas and contradictions are much more complex, than what is possible to grasp in Holzkamp's understanding of conduct of everyday life (Holzkamp, 1998), which tends to produce dualistic opposition between cyclic everyday conduct (such as everyday life...

Everyday Attention Failures: An Individual Differences Investigation

Science.gov (United States)

Unsworth, Nash; McMillan, Brittany D.; Brewer, Gene A.; Spillers, Gregory J.

2012-01-01

The present study examined individual differences in everyday attention failures. Undergraduate students completed various cognitive ability measures in the laboratory and recorded everyday attention failures in a diary over the course of a week. The majority of attention failures were failures of distraction or mind wandering in educational…

Reassessing Aesthetic Appreciation of Nature in the Kantian Sublime

Science.gov (United States)

Brady, Emily

2012-01-01

The sublime has been a relatively neglected topic in recent work in philosophical aesthetics, with existing discussions confined mainly to problems in Kant's theory. Given the revival of interest in his aesthetic theory and the influence of the Kantian sublime compared to other eighteenth-century accounts, this focus is not surprising. Kant's…

Forming Future Teachers' Aesthetic Culture in Foreign Educational Practice

Science.gov (United States)

Sotska, Galyna

2016-01-01

The article deals with a theoretical analysis of foreign educational experience in solving scientific problems of forming future teachers' aesthetic culture. Given the current socio-cultural situation, it has been noted that a teacher who developed his/her aesthetic culture can make a direct contribution to the social and cultural challenges of a…

Toward a neural chronometry for the aesthetic experience of music.

Science.gov (United States)

Brattico, Elvira; Bogert, Brigitte; Jacobsen, Thomas

2013-01-01

Music is often studied as a cognitive domain alongside language. The emotional aspects of music have also been shown to be important, but views on their nature diverge. For instance, the specific emotions that music induces and how they relate to emotional expression are still under debate. Here we propose a mental and neural chronometry of the aesthetic experience of music initiated and mediated by external and internal contexts such as intentionality, background mood, attention, and expertise. The initial stages necessary for an aesthetic experience of music are feature analysis, integration across modalities, and cognitive processing on the basis of long-term knowledge. These stages are common to individuals belonging to the same musical culture. The initial emotional reactions to music include the startle reflex, core "liking," and arousal. Subsequently, discrete emotions are perceived and induced. Presumably somatomotor processes synchronizing the body with the music also come into play here. The subsequent stages, in which cognitive, affective, and decisional processes intermingle, require controlled cross-modal neural processes to result in aesthetic emotions, aesthetic judgments, and conscious liking. These latter aesthetic stages often require attention, intentionality, and expertise for their full actualization.

The environmental aesthetics of Sarajevo: A city shaped by memory

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Erna Husukić

2017-06-01

Full Text Available This article discusses aesthetic singularity in present-day Sarajevo and shows how time generates a social response to the visual quality of space. Acknowledging the metamorphosis of the cityscape with regard to the identity reformulation of post-war Sarajevo, it examines the sensory engagement of people with the urban environment in relationship to the traumatic events and shifting realities imposed by globalisation. The hypothesis is that the environmental aesthetics of post-war cities are defined by the traumatic memory of physical and social destruction. This article offers insight within a broad range of theoretical discussions on the changes in the visual language and aesthetic quality of urban spaces in post-war Sarajevo. In particular, it presents the notion of urban memory and its role in shaping the aesthetic experience in post-war cities. Finally, the findings show that architectural remnants, or ruins in the urban fabric, instead of being unstable entities, have the potential to become drivers of a continuum. Ultimately, this article accepts the values of incompleteness and opens new perspectives towards playful experimentation, which potentially relieves the aesthetic experience of a rigid and monotonous urban image.

Toward a Neural Chronometry for the Aesthetic Experience of Music

Science.gov (United States)

Brattico, Elvira; Bogert, Brigitte; Jacobsen, Thomas

2013-01-01

Music is often studied as a cognitive domain alongside language. The emotional aspects of music have also been shown to be important, but views on their nature diverge. For instance, the specific emotions that music induces and how they relate to emotional expression are still under debate. Here we propose a mental and neural chronometry of the aesthetic experience of music initiated and mediated by external and internal contexts such as intentionality, background mood, attention, and expertise. The initial stages necessary for an aesthetic experience of music are feature analysis, integration across modalities, and cognitive processing on the basis of long-term knowledge. These stages are common to individuals belonging to the same musical culture. The initial emotional reactions to music include the startle reflex, core “liking,” and arousal. Subsequently, discrete emotions are perceived and induced. Presumably somatomotor processes synchronizing the body with the music also come into play here. The subsequent stages, in which cognitive, affective, and decisional processes intermingle, require controlled cross-modal neural processes to result in aesthetic emotions, aesthetic judgments, and conscious liking. These latter aesthetic stages often require attention, intentionality, and expertise for their full actualization. PMID:23641223

Learning and using technology in intertwined processes: a study of people with mild cognitive impairment or Alzheimer's disease.

Science.gov (United States)

Rosenberg, Lena; Nygård, Louise

2014-09-01

People with mild cognitive impairment and Alzheimer's disease are likely to be challenged by the multitude of everyday technology in today's society. The aim of this study was to explore how they try to prohibit, avoid or solve problems in everyday technology use, maintain skills, and learn to use new technology. To explore how the participants applied and reasoned about using everyday technology in real-life situations interviews were conducted while the participants used their own technology in their homes. Interviews were conducted with 20 participants with mild cognitive impairment (n = 10) or Alzheimer's disease (n = 10). The analyses were inspired from grounded theory and resulted in one core category and three sub-categories that represent sub-processes in the core. The core finding presents a continuous, intertwined process of learning and using everyday technology, highlighting how the context was interwoven in the processes. The participants used a rich variety of management strategies when approaching technology, including communication with the everyday technologies on different levels. The findings underscore that it is important to support continued use of everyday technology as long as it is valued and relevant to the person with mild cognitive impairment or Alzheimer's disease. The intertwined process of learning and using everyday technology suggests how support could target different sub-processes. © The Author(s) 2013 Reprints and permissions: sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav.

Self psychology and the modern dance choreographer.

Science.gov (United States)

Press, Carol M

2009-04-01

Theory and research methodology of self psychology are integrated with the experiences of modern dance choreographers to investigate the importance of creativity, art making, and aesthetics in mental health and our everyday lives. Empathy, as aesthetically based, is explored to understand the capacity of the arts to unite us in our humanity. Connections between aesthetic development, creativity, and infant patterns of learning are drawn. The influence of sensual and exploration/assertion motivational systems upon the contemporary choreographer are highlighted, leading to an understanding of the selfobject function of sensation and movement for the dance artist. Through an examination of the moment to moment ritualized experiences of studio work, the creative process in making dances is discussed. Ultimately understanding creativity and aesthetically based empathy inform our delineation of mental health and the need for aesthetic experience in everyday life.

Cognitive Predictors of Everyday Problem Solving across the Lifespan.

Science.gov (United States)

Chen, Xi; Hertzog, Christopher; Park, Denise C

2017-01-01

An important aspect of successful aging is maintaining the ability to solve everyday problems encountered in daily life. The limited evidence today suggests that everyday problem solving ability increases from young adulthood to middle age, but decreases in older age. The present study examined age differences in the relative contributions of fluid and crystallized abilities to solving problems on the Everyday Problems Test (EPT). We hypothesized that due to diminishing fluid resources available with advanced age, crystallized knowledge would become increasingly important in predicting everyday problem solving with greater age. Two hundred and twenty-one healthy adults from the Dallas Lifespan Brain Study, aged 24-93 years, completed a cognitive battery that included measures of fluid ability (i.e., processing speed, working memory, inductive reasoning) and crystallized ability (i.e., multiple measures of vocabulary). These measures were used to predict performance on EPT. Everyday problem solving showed an increase in performance from young to early middle age, with performance beginning to decrease at about age of 50 years. As hypothesized, fluid ability was the primary predictor of performance on everyday problem solving for young adults, but with increasing age, crystallized ability became the dominant predictor. This study provides evidence that everyday problem solving ability differs with age, and, more importantly, that the processes underlying it differ with age as well. The findings indicate that older adults increasingly rely on knowledge to support everyday problem solving, whereas young adults rely almost exclusively on fluid intelligence. © 2017 S. Karger AG, Basel.

New-generation radiofrequency technology.

Science.gov (United States)

Krueger, Nils; Sadick, Neil S

2013-01-01

Radiofrequency (RF) technology has become a standard treatment in aesthetic medicine with many indications due to its versatility, efficacy, and safety. It is used worldwide for cellulite reduction; acne scar revision; and treatment of hypertrophic scars and keloids, rosacea, and inflammatory acne in all skin types. However, the most common indication for RF technology is the nonablative tightening of tissue to improve skin laxity and reduce wrinkles. Radiofrequency devices are classified as unipolar, bipolar, or multipolar depending on the number of electrodes used. Additional modalities include fractional RF; sublative RF; phase-controlled RF; and combination RF therapies that apply light, massage, or pulsed electromagnetic fields (PEMFs). This article reviews studies and case series on these devices. Radiofrequency technology for aesthetic medicine has seen rapid advancements since it was used for skin tightening in 2003. Future developments will continue to keep RF technology at the forefront of the dermatologist's armamentarium for skin tightening and rejuvenation.

Forming Life: Aesthetic Awareness in Mental Health Care

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Arild Berg

2013-12-01

Full Text Available Using cross-disciplinary perspectives from artistic research, aesthetic theory, and mental health care, this article discusses qualities in sensuous surroundings in mental health facilities. Although the background for the article is in the increased awareness in aesthetic research concerning sensuous surroundings and their connection to health and well-being, this aesthetic research is only reflected to a small extent in research on mental health care surroundings. A further development of these perspectives is suggested in this article by introducing the concept of life forms from the art theorist Nicolas Bourriaud and the concepts of presentation and perception in theatrical communication from theatre researcher Willmar Sauter. These theories are discussed and exemplified on the basis of data from two mental health care wards: one from a psychogeriatric ward and the other from a polyclinic for eating disorders. Some essential qualities identified in the examples were that aesthetic environment and activity could be seen as formative to the “inner landscape”, and that different forms of sensuous activation and interaction could help patients escape communicative isolation. It is further demonstrated how participatory strategies can challenge artistic practice and that art can contribute to a health promoting and communicative space in mental health care. In the discussion section, it is argued that an activating, and possibly empowering, environment can be created through an increased awareness of the aesthetic strategies used in health care institutions. The study seeks to contribute to knowledge transfer in artistic practice and healthcare practice, as a part of a cross-disciplinary art didactic discourse, which intends to address specific societal challenges.

Visually representing reality: aesthetics and accessibility aspects

Science.gov (United States)

van Nes, Floris L.

2009-02-01

This paper gives an overview of the visual representation of reality with three imaging technologies: painting, photography and electronic imaging. The contribution of the important image aspects, called dimensions hereafter, such as color, fine detail and total image size, to the degree of reality and aesthetic value of the rendered image are described for each of these technologies. Whereas quite a few of these dimensions - or approximations, or even only suggestions thereof - were already present in prehistoric paintings, apparent motion and true stereoscopic vision only recently were added - unfortunately also introducing accessibility and image safety issues. Efforts are made to reduce the incidence of undesirable biomedical effects such as photosensitive seizures (PSS), visually induced motion sickness (VIMS), and visual fatigue from stereoscopic images (VFSI) by international standardization of the image parameters to be avoided by image providers and display manufacturers. The history of this type of standardization, from an International Workshop Agreement to a strategy for accomplishing effective international standardization by ISO, is treated at some length. One of the difficulties to be mastered in this process is the reconciliation of the, sometimes opposing, interests of vulnerable persons, thrill-seeking viewers, creative video designers and the game industry.

Measuring aesthetic emotions: A review of the literature and a new assessment tool

OpenAIRE

Schindler, I.; Hosoya, G.; Menninghaus, W.; Beermann, U.; Wagner, V.; Eid, M.; Scherer, K.

2017-01-01

Aesthetic perception and judgement are not merely cognitive processes, but also involve feelings. Therefore, the empirical study of these experiences requires conceptualization and measurement of aesthetic emotions. Despite the long-standing interest in such emotions, we still lack an assessment tool to capture the broad range of emotions that occur in response to the perceived aesthetic appeal of stimuli. Elicitors of aesthetic emotions are not limited to the arts in the strict sense, but ex...

Paradigms of Social Aesthetics in Themne Oral Performance

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Amadu Wurie Khan

2009-03-01

Full Text Available Based on a long-term study from 1987 to the present and incorporating storytelling apprenticeship, ethnographic fieldwork, and (largely informal interviews, this paper discusses the dynamic nature of oral art as manifested through Themne storytellers’ efforts to vary the oral performance. It explores the relationship between multimedia resources, both intrinsic and external to the performance environment, as well as artistic variation and social aesthetics, along with the audiences’ appreciation and interpretation of oral performances. It argues that the impulse toward social aesthetics is responsible for the oral artists’ deployment of multimedia resources and their varying of oral narratives during storytelling. Specifically, it examines how sociability, the physical setting of performance, and belief systems or worldview function as paradigms of social aesthetics, focusing on their influence on artistic variation and creativity among the Themne of Sierra Leone.

Teaching and Learning Science for Transformative, Aesthetic Experience

Science.gov (United States)

Girod, Mark; Twyman, Todd; Wojcikiewicz, Steve

2010-11-01

Drawing from the Deweyan theory of experience (1934, 1938), the goal of teaching and learning for transformative, aesthetic experience is contrasted against teaching and learning from a cognitive, rational framework. A quasi-experimental design was used to investigate teaching and learning of fifth grade science from each perspective across an entire school year including three major units of instruction. Detailed comparisons of teaching are given and pre and post measures of interest in learning science, science identity affiliation, and efficacy beliefs are investigated. Tests of conceptual understanding before, after, and one month after instruction reveal teaching for transformative, aesthetic experience fosters more, and more enduring, learning of science concepts. Investigations of transfer also suggest students learning for transformative, aesthetic experiences learn to see the world differently and find more interest and excitement in the world outside of school.

Difference-theoretical Analysis of Aesthetic Media and Forms

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Franz Kasper Krönig

2018-04-01

Full Text Available The general medium/form-difference-theory as proposed by Fritz Heider (cf. Heider, 1959 has been seized on by the sociological systems theory as an epistemological and heuristic basis of such a generality that it can be applied to virtually all conceivable fields of research. One could arguably speak of a new paradigm that overcomes traditional differences such as subject/object and cause/effect. This approach has been applied to all types of art, and various research questions in the fields of aesthetics and art theory. This paper proposes a differentiation and categorisation of aesthetic media and forms in order to lay the groundwork for art criticism on a third way between subjective appreciation and objective reasoning. Musical examples demonstrate the applicability of the medium/form-difference-theoretical approach for the aesthetics of music and music criticism.

Model, Materialism, and Immanent Utopia in Relational Aesthetics

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Degn Johansson, Troels

), is crucial for the understanding of contemporary, socially and politically oriented fine art of the mid-1990 and onwards and its challenge of established aesthetic conceptions within art as well as theory. The concept of model is a reoccurring figure in RA and connects to a widespread "lab" (laboratory......  This paper seeks to contribute to the development of socio-aesthetics by analysing the notion of model established in the discourse of relational art--that is of course with special reference to French art critic Nicolas Bourriad's theoretical writings. His seminal book, Relational Aesthetics (RA......) metaphor where social reality is staged and facilitated in order to document and present its development. At the same time however, the notion of model is difficult to dissociate from Bourriaud's materialism which draws on such different figures as the late Althusser, Lucretius, and Deleuze and which...

Complex aesthetic treatment on anterior maxillary teeth with malposition

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Febriastuti Febriastuti

2008-12-01

Full Text Available Background: Complex aesthetic treatment on anterior teeth involves more than one caries tooth with malformed shape and malposition. Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to find the alternative treatment for anterior maxillary teeth with malposition. Case: In this case, a 25 year-old man with a peg shaped teeth and caries on several teeth and malposition can be treated with complex aesthetic treatment. Case management: Endodontic pulpectomy treatment on anterior maxillary teeth and post construction with splint porcelain fused to metal crowns on 11, 12, and 21, 22 to correct the shape and position into normal position. Conclusion: Malformed and malpositioned teeth with caries can be treated with complex aesthetic treatment.

The Aesthetics of Sustainable Design

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Folkmann, Mads Nygaard; Riisberg, Vibeke

This paper will investigate the aesthetics of sustainable design by exploring different strategies of communicating products as being sustainable. It can be questioned how the sustainable element is present and detectable in design: Whether it is a principle of internal construction, operates...... as a strategy of emotional commitment and subsequent prolonged use through employing symbolic elements or is detectable through ‘external’ signs designating e.g. “eco design” through a specific colour palette. “Aesthetic coding” will be employed as a central concept to describe the relationship between outer...... physical manifestation and inner idea of the object in the question of how the specific meaning content can be physically manifested and reflected in a variety of ways. In this way, the expression and appearance of sustainability in design may be contested along with the notions of sustainability behind...

Aesthetic Learning about, in, with and through the Arts: A Curriculum Study

Science.gov (United States)

Lindstrom, Lars

2012-01-01

Aesthetic learning is a major issue in arts education. The "method of art" is often expected to facilitate in-depth learning not only in the arts but across the curriculum. This article defines aesthetic learning in terms of a conceptual framework based on two dimensions, one representing the goal and the other the means of aesthetic learning. The…

Lessons in Equality: From Ignorant Schoolmaster to Chinese Aesthetics

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Ernest Ženko

2017-09-01

Full Text Available The postponement of equality is not only a recurring topic in Jacques Rancière’s writings, but also the most defining feature of modern Chinese aesthetics. Particularly in the period after 1980’s, when the country opened its doors to Western ideas, Chinese aesthetics extensively played a subordinate role in an imbalanced knowledge transfer, in which structural inequality was only reinforced. Aesthetics in China plays an important role and is expected not only to interpret literature and art, but also to help building a harmonious society within globalized world. This is the reason why some commentators – Wang Jianjiang being one of them – point out that it is of utmost importance to eliminate this imbalance and develop proper Chinese aesthetics. Since the key issue in this development is the problem of inequality, an approach developed by Jacques Rancière, “the philosopher of equality”, is proposed. Even though Rancière wrote extensively about literature, art and aesthetics, in order to confront the problem of Chinese aesthetics, it seems that a different approach, found in his repertoire, could prove to be more fruitful. In 1987, he published a book titled The Ignorant Schoolmaster, which contributed to his ongoing philosophical emancipatory project, and focused on inequality and its conditions in the realm of education. The Ignorant Schoolmaster, nonetheless, stretches far beyond the walls of classroom or even educational system, and brings to the fore political implications that cluster around the fundamental core of Rancière's political philosophy: the definition of politics as the verification of the presupposition of the equality of intelligence. Equality cannot be postponed as a goal to be only attained in the future and, therefore, has to be considered as a premise of egalitarian politics that needs to operate as a presupposition.   Article received: May 21, 2017; Article accepted: May 28, 2017; Published online

THE AESTHETIC AXIOMATIC: DECONSTRUCTION

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

IRINA VASKES SANTCHES

2007-08-01

Full Text Available Resumen: El presente trabajo contribuye al debate sobre la actualidad estética, abordando diferentes enfoques del polémico concepto de deconstrucción, introducido por Jacques Derrida. Esta categoría es de referencia casi obligatoriacuando se habla sobre teoría estética contemporánea, forma parte de su nuevo aparato conceptual y expresa bien la nueva realidad que no tiene análogos históricos en lo que antes llamaban arte, estética y cultura. La elaboracióndel concepto de deconstrucción, el análisis de cómo funciona esa nueva forma del pensamiento crítico, y el método creativo de la interpretación y de la producción del texto artístico, nos permite entrar en el código de muchas obras artísticas actuales donde el espacio entre arte y teoría del arte es cada vez más incierto, especialmente en las diversas formas de arte conceptual o “performance art”.Abstract: Tackling polemic concept of deconstruction, introduced by Jacqes Derrida, from different approaches this article contributes to the debate on aesthetic current issues. This category is of almost obligatory reference when discussing about contemporary aesthetic theory. Deconstruction belongs to its new conceptual apparatus, and expresses well new reality that does not have historical analogy with what before was called art, aesthetics and culture. The elaboration of the concept of deconstruction, and the analysis of how this new form of strategical “procedure” of interpretation and production of the text (as textual reading is functioning allow us to enter the code of many current art works where the space between art and theory of the art is more and more uncertain, specially in the diverse forms of conceptual art or “performance art“.

"The Word I Would Use Is 'Aesthetic'": Reading David Hawkins.

Science.gov (United States)

Featherstone, Helen; Featherstone, Joseph

2002-01-01

Discusses the life of David Hawkins, one of the most influential educators involved in school reform in the 1960s. Focuses on the aesthetic as the center of Hawkins' vision of schooling. Compares Hawkins' perspective to Dewey's in terms of the aesthetic. (KHR)

Brain correlates of aesthetic expertise: A parametric fMRI study

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Kirk, Ulrich; Skov, Martin; Christensen, Mark Schram

2009-01-01

Several studies have demonstrated that acquired expertise influences aesthetic judgments. In this paradigm we used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to study aesthetic judgments of visually presented architectural stimuli and control-stimuli (faces) for a group of architects and a grou...

Reflexive fatherhood in everyday life

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Westerling, Allan

2015-01-01

This article looks at fathering practices in Denmark, using the findings from a research project on everyday family life in Denmark. It takes a social psychological perspective and employs discursive psychology and theories about reflexive modernisation. It shows how fathers orient towards intimacy...... in their relationships with their children. Moreover, it discusses how fathers’ relatedness reflects individualisation and detraditionalisation. It is argued that reflexive modernisation entails subjective orientations that enable novel pathways to intimacy in contemporary father–child relationships. Through...... this analysis and discussion, the article offers a way to understand the complexities of fathering in everyday life from the perspective of fathers....

Flexible thermoplastic denture base materials for aesthetical removable partial denture framework.

Science.gov (United States)

Singh, Kunwarjeet; Aeran, Himanshu; Kumar, Narender; Gupta, Nidhi

2013-10-01

Conventional fixed partial dentures, implant supported Fixed Partial Dentures (FDPs) and removable partial dentures are the most common treatment modalities for the aesthetic and functional rehabilitation of partially edentulous patients. Although implants and FDP have certain advantages over removable partial dentures, in some cases, removable partial dentures may be the only choice which is available. Removable cast partial dentures are used as definitive removable prostheses when indicated, but location of clasps may affect aesthetics. So, when patient is concerned about aesthetics, flexible partial dentures which is aesthetically superior to flipper and cast partial dentures, may be considered. But for the success of flexible removable partial denture, proper diagnosis, treatment planning and insertion technique of this prosthesis is very important, which have been thoroughly described in this article.

Perception of dentists, dental students, and patients on dentogingival aesthetics

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Migueli DURIGON

Full Text Available Abstract Introduction Patients’ demand for dentogingival aesthetics has increased significantly in recent years, and this is a complex concept due to numerous factors involved in obtaining patient/professional satisfaction. Some dentogingival features may alter smile harmony, such as excessive gingival display. Objective To evaluate whether the presence of gingival display has a negative influence on the perception of dentogingival aesthetics. Material and method 180 individuals (60 dentists, 60 dental students, and 60 patients evaluated images of volunteer smiles. These images were digitally altered by the Adobe Photoshop™ software, creating different situations of gingival display (4 mm, 2 mm, 0 mm, -2 mm, -4 mm, and graded by the evaluators with the following scores: (01 very pleasant smile, (02 pleasant smile, and 03 unpleasant smile. The scores assigned were analyzed using ANOVA (α=0.05. Result Gingival displays between 0 and 2 mm were considered aesthetically pleasing. Changes of -4 and +4 mm were defined as the most disharmonious smiles. The 0-mm female smile was considered the most harmonious for dentists (1.51 and dental students (1.77, by Student's t test (p<0.05. In the opinion of patients, the smile of +2 mm was considered the most aesthetic. In the image evaluations of men, the 0-mm smile was considered the most aesthetic (p <0.05 for dentists (1.85 and dental students (1.62. The patients considered +2 mm of gingival display the most harmonious smile. Conclusion The aesthetic perception of dental students and dentists was different when compared to the group of patients.

The effect of system aesthetics on trust, cooperation, satisfaction and annoyance in an imperfect automated system.

Science.gov (United States)

Weinstock, Alona; Oron-Gilad, Tal; Parmet, Yisrael

2012-01-01

Lack of system reliability has been repeatedly identified as a factor that decreases trust. However, aesthetics has an important role in the development of trust. Most of the research concerning the connection between aesthetics and trust focused on mobile commerce and websites while very little has been done in examining aesthetics in automated systems. This study integrated aesthetics manipulations into an imperfect in-vehicle automation system and focused on the power of aesthetics to decrease the negative effects of errors on trust, satisfaction, annoyance, and human-automation cooperation perceptions. Participants used the navigation system in either 100% or 85% accuracy levels with an aesthetic or non aesthetic system (4 conditions). In both aesthetic and non aesthetic systems, perceptions of trust, satisfaction and human automation cooperation were decreased in the imperfect system compared to the perfect one. However, in the annoyance rating, this trend was found only in the aesthetic system while in the non-aesthetic system no difference was found between the two levels of accuracy. This single effect may indicate upon the possibility that in automated systems aesthetics affects trust and satisfaction more moderately compared to mobile commerce applications and websites. However, more research is needed to assess this assumption.

Evaluation of the Aesthetics of Physical Methods of Euthanasia of Anesthetized Rats

Science.gov (United States)

Hickman, Debra L; Johnson, Steven W

2011-01-01

Dissection of living brain tissue for in vitro experiments requires the use of a rapid euthanasia method. However, the method must not subject animals to unnecessary pain and must be aesthetically acceptable to experimenters. The purposes of the current study were to assess the aesthetics of 6 euthanasia methods, measure the procedure duration, and evaluate brain for pathology after each procedure. We digitally recorded euthanasia of isoflurane-anesthetized rats by 6 physical methods: anesthetic overdose, cardiac exsanguination, decapitation, closed intrathoracic transection of the great vessels and heart, thoracic percussion, and thoracotomy with rupture of great vessels. Volunteer researchers and animal caretakers watched the video and completed an associated questionnaire. Anesthetic overdose and cardiac exsanguinations were rated most aesthetically pleasing, although these procedures took the longest to complete. In contrast, decapitation and thoracic percussion were the least aesthetically pleasing, but these methods were the quickest. No demographic factor was identified that could predict whether a given euthanasia procedure would be favored for aesthetic reasons, and participants provided a wide variety of rationales for the aesthetic ratings they assigned. Although all of these euthanasia methods meet the criteria of approved methods of euthanasia of anesthetized rats as defined by the AVMA, aesthetic features and the scientific need for rapid euthanasia are both considerations in selecting a method. PMID:22330717

The Use of Newer High Translucency Zirconia in Aesthetic Zone

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Zishan Dangra

2014-01-01

Full Text Available Loss of anterior tooth causes aesthetic and functional disharmony. Although no restorative material can approach the appearance of intact tooth enamel, glass ceramic, at the increased risk of brittle fracture, can mimic original tooth color better than the other restorative options. The newest zirconia material comes with unparalleled individualization in aesthetics and optimal physical properties. One of the basic principles of tooth preparation is conservation of tooth structure. This clinical report describes the replacement of maxillary and mandibular incisor with latest generation zirconia adhesive fixed partial denture. The authors have achieved unmatched aesthetics with newer high translucency zirconia.

The Dance of Attention: Toward an Aesthetic Dimension of Attention-Deficit.

Science.gov (United States)

Levin, Kasper

2018-03-01

What role does the aesthetics of bodily movement play in the understanding of attention among children diagnosed with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)? This article animates a phenomenological approach to attention and embodiment with a special focus on the relation between aesthetic or expressive bodily movement and behavioral awareness in children diagnosed with ADHD. However, beyond this it is argued that the aesthetic aspect of movement calls for an expansion of the phenomenological perspective. In this context Gilles Deleuze's notion of aesthetics as a "science of the sensible" is activated and discussed in relation to the phenomenological concept of perception. Empirically the article takes point of departure in a qualitative study conducted with a group of children with attention-deficit practicing the Afro-Brazilian marital art, capoeira. Combining ethnographic and phenomenological methods, it is demonstrated that capoeira can be considered a form of aesthetic movement that offers a transition of attention-deficit into a productive force of expression that changes the notions of sensation and movement in ADHD.

Demographics and macroeconomic effects in aesthetic surgery in the UK.

Science.gov (United States)

Duncan, C O; Ho-Asjoe, M; Hittinger, R; Nishikawa, H; Waterhouse, N; Coghlan, B; Jones, B

2004-09-01

Media interest in aesthetic surgery is substantial and suggestions of demographic changes such as reductions in age or an increase in the number of male patients are common. In spite of this, there is no peer reviewed literature reporting demographics of a contemporary large patient cohort or of the effect of macroeconomic indicators on aesthetic surgery in the UK. In this study, computer records 13006 patients presenting between 1998 and the first quarter of 2003 at a significant aesthetic surgery centre were analysed for procedures undergone, patient age and sex. Male to female ratios for each procedure were calculated and a comparison was made between unit activity and macroeconomic indicators. The results showed that there has been no significant demographic change in the procedures studied with patient age and male to female ratio remaining constant throughout the period studied for each procedure. Comparison with macroeconomic indicators suggested increasing demand for aesthetic surgery in spite of a global recession. In conclusion, media reports of large scale demographic shifts in aesthetic surgery patients are exaggerated. The stability of unit activity in spite of falling national economic indicators suggested that some units in the UK might be relatively immune to economic vagaries. The implications for training are discussed.

Political Conversation in Everyday Communicative Contexts

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Ângela Cristina Salgueiro Marques

2008-10-01

Full Text Available This article looks at forms of interaction and communicative exchanges in discussion groups composed of beneficiaries of a Brazilian income transfer program (Bolsa-Família Program and at how these forms contribute to the deliberative process. Discussion groups are used as a method for showing how everyday conversation and political discussion are interrelated. Our interest is not to analyze this program, but rather represents an attempt to capture and research moments in which group participants establish their own position relative to one another. At such moments, conversations on everyday subjects and personal dramas shift towards attitudes that include taking the risk of expressing dissonant opinions, explaining background assumptions, and producing counter-narratives. Eight discussion groups were established in two Brazilian cities in the Southeastern region: four in Belo Horizonte (MG and four in Campinas (SP. Keywords: everyday conversation; political discussion; deliberative process; discussion groups; poor women.

Menneskerettighedernes Æstetik /The Aesthetics of Human Rights

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

2012-01-01

The idea of this thematic issue on "The Aesthetics of Human Rigths" of the journal "Academic Quarter" is to focus on the staging of human rights in popular culture and fine arts and in different media and genres.......The idea of this thematic issue on "The Aesthetics of Human Rigths" of the journal "Academic Quarter" is to focus on the staging of human rights in popular culture and fine arts and in different media and genres....

Aesthetic Emotions and Aesthetic People: Openness Predicts Sensitivity to Novelty in the Experiences of Interest and Pleasure

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Kirill eFayn

2015-12-01

Full Text Available There is a stable relationship between the Openness/Intellect domain of personality and aesthetic engagement. However, neither of these are simple constructs and while the relationship exists process based evidence explaining the relationship is still lacking. The current research looked to clarify the relationship by evaluating the influence of the Openness and Intellect aspects on several different aesthetic emotions. Two studies looked at the between- and within-person differences in the emotions of interest, pleasure and confusion in response to visual art. The results suggest that Openness, as opposed to Intellect, was predictive of greater interest and pleasure, while both aspects explained less confusion. Differences in Openness were associated with within-person emotion appraisal contingencies, particularly greater novelty-interest and novelty-pleasure relationships. Those higher in Openness were particularly influenced by novelty in artworks. For pleasure this relationship suggested a different qualitative structure of appraisals. The appraisal of novelty is part of the experience of pleasure for those high in Openness, but not those low in Openness. This research supports the utility of studying Openness and Intellect as separate aspects of the broad domain and clarifies the relationship between Openness and aesthetic states in terms of within-person appraisal processes.

Confronting "Difficult Knowledge": Critical Aesthetics and War in the Classroom

Science.gov (United States)

Heybach Vivirito, Jessica A.

2012-01-01

This qualitative multi-site case study explores critical aesthetic experiences in teacher education classrooms, and advocates for the inclusion of theoretical and practical knowledge of "difficult knowledge," visual culture, and critical aesthetics in the classroom. Social reality consists of a perpetual stream of tragic and horrific…

Scoliosis brace design: influence of visual aesthetics on user acceptance and compliance.

Science.gov (United States)

Law, Derry; Cheung, Mei-Chun; Yip, Joanne; Yick, Kit-Lun; Wong, Christina

2017-06-01

Adolescent idiopathic scoliosis is a common condition found in adolescents. A rigid brace is often prescribed as the treatment for this spinal deformity, which negatively affects user compliance due to the discomfort caused by the brace, and the psychological distress resulting from its appearance. However, the latter, which is the impact of visual aesthetics, has not been thoroughly studied for scoliosis braces. Therefore, a qualitative study with in-depth interviews has been carried out with 10 participants who have a Cobb angle of 20°-30° to determine the impact of visual aesthetics on user acceptance and compliance towards the brace. It is found that co-designing with patients on the aesthetic aspects of the surface design of the brace increases the level of user compliance and induces positive user perception. Therefore, aesthetic preferences need to be taken into consideration in the design process of braces. Practitioner Summary: The impact of visual aesthetics on user acceptance and compliance towards a rigid brace for scoliosis is investigated. The findings indicate that an aesthetically pleasing brace and the involvement of patients in the design process of the brace are important for increasing user compliance and addressing psychological issues during treatment.

Image Feature Types and Their Predictions of Aesthetic Preference and Naturalness

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Marc G. Berman

2017-04-01

Full Text Available Previous research has investigated ways to quantify visual information of a scene in terms of a visual processing hierarchy, i.e., making sense of visual environment by segmentation and integration of elementary sensory input. Guided by this research, studies have developed categories for low-level visual features (e.g., edges, colors, high-level visual features (scene-level entities that convey semantic information such as objects, and how models of those features predict aesthetic preference and naturalness. For example, in Kardan et al. (2015a, 52 participants provided aesthetic preference and naturalness ratings, which are used in the current study, for 307 images of mixed natural and urban content. Kardan et al. (2015a then developed a model using low-level features to predict aesthetic preference and naturalness and could do so with high accuracy. What has yet to be explored is the ability of higher-level visual features (e.g., horizon line position relative to viewer, geometry of building distribution relative to visual access to predict aesthetic preference and naturalness of scenes, and whether higher-level features mediate some of the association between the low-level features and aesthetic preference or naturalness. In this study we investigated these relationships and found that low- and high- level features explain 68.4% of the variance in aesthetic preference ratings and 88.7% of the variance in naturalness ratings. Additionally, several high-level features mediated the relationship between the low-level visual features and aaesthetic preference. In a multiple mediation analysis, the high-level feature mediators accounted for over 50% of the variance in predicting aesthetic preference. These results show that high-level visual features play a prominent role predicting aesthetic preference, but do not completely eliminate the predictive power of the low-level visual features. These strong predictors provide powerful insights for

Questionnaire-based evaluation of everyday competence in older adults.

Science.gov (United States)

Kalisch, Tobias; Richter, Julia; Lenz, Melanie; Kattenstroth, Jan-Christoph; Kolankowska, Izabela; Tegenthoff, Martin; Dinse, Hubert R

2011-01-01

Gerontological research aims at understanding factors that are crucial for mediating "successful aging". This term denotes the absence of significant disease and disabilities, maintenance of high levels of physical and cognitive function, and preservation of social and productive activities. Preservation of an active lifestyle is considered an effective means through which everyday competence can be attained. In this context, it is crucial to obtain ratings of modern day older adults' everyday competence by means of appropriate assessments. Here, we introduce the Everyday Competence Questionnaire (ECQ), designed to assess healthy older adults' everyday competence. The ECQ includes 17 items, covering housekeeping, leisure activities, sports, daily routines, manual skills, subjective well-being, and general linguistic usage. The ECQ was administered to a population of 158 healthy subjects aged 60-91 years, who were divided into groups on the basis of their physical activity. These groups were community-dwelling subjects, those living independently and having a sedentary lifestyle, those living independently but characterized by a general lifestyle without any noteworthy physical activity, and those living independently and exercising regularly. Age, gender, and education levels were balanced between the groups. Using the ECQ, we could identify and distinguish different everyday competence levels between the groups tested: Subjects characterized by an active lifestyle outperformed all other groups. Subjects characterized by a general lifestyle showed higher everyday competence than those with a sedentary lifestyle or subjects who needed care. Furthermore, the ECQ data showed a significant positive correlation between individual physical activity and everyday competence. The ECQ is a novel tool for the questionnaire-based evaluation of everyday competence among healthy subjects. By including leisure activities, it considers the changed living conditions of modern

Gynaecomastia and scrotal rhacosis: two aesthetic surgical operations for men in Byzantine times.

Science.gov (United States)

Papadakis, Marios; Manios, Andreas; de Bree, Eelco; Trompoukis, Constantinos; Tsiftsis, Dimitris D

2010-08-01

Nowadays, as in the past, much attention is paid to aesthetic operations in women, while only infrequently have such operations been referred to in males. Generally, male aesthetic surgery was introduced to surgical practise during the 19th century. In this study, we analysed the practise of such operations in Byzantine times and in other ancient cultures with surgical knowledge, i.e. ancient India and China The sixth book of Paul of Aegina's "Epitome of Medicine" was studied for description of aesthetic operations in males in the Byzantine period, since this book is completely devoted to surgery and is generally considered to be the most important reference for surgery in Byzantine times. The original text and its excellent translation by Francis Adams were used. References concerning aesthetic operations for males were identified. Accordingly, historical work and reviews on plastic surgery in ancient India and China were studied. Mainly, two aesthetic surgical procedures for males in the Byzantine period were identified. These two procedures comprise gynaecomastia and rhacosis (scrotal relaxation). Two different techniques were reported for the surgical management of gynaecomastia, through sub-mammary or supra-mammary access. Two procedures were noted for rhacosis, for which Paul of Aegina reproduced the respective chapters from Leonides' and Antyllus' works. Evidence supporting male aesthetic surgery in ancient India and China or elsewhere was not found. Despite the dubious aesthetic result, the existence of different aesthetic surgical techniques in males substantiate the advanced level of surgery achieved by physicians in the Byzantine period. Copyright 2010 British Association of Plastic, Reconstructive and Aesthetic Surgeons. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

The Effects Of Feedback And Selected Personality Variables On Aesthetic Judgment

Science.gov (United States)

Stallings, William M.; And Others

1973-01-01

This present study is an attempt to investigate the extent to which knowledge of results in various forms (true, none, and false) may modify aesthetic judgment in "typical" (with respect to aesthetic judgment) students. (Author)

All ye need to know? : aesthetics from a design perspective

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Akkermans, H.A.; Lammers, I.S.; Weggeman, M.C.D.P.

2004-01-01

In support of the notion that the aesthetic side of organisations is as yet underdeveloped in organisation theory, we develop in this paper a research agenda for studying the impact of aesthetics on organizations. We take a design perspective (Romme, 2003; Van Aken, 2004) and structure the field of

The role of sleep in aesthetic perception and empathy: A mediation analysis.

Science.gov (United States)

Peretti, Sara; Tempesta, Daniela; Socci, Valentina; Pino, Maria C; Mazza, Monica; Valenti, Marco; De Gennaro, Luigi; Di Dio, Cinzia; Marchetti, Antonella; Ferrara, Michele

2018-02-06

The ability to experience aesthetics plays a fundamental role in human social interactions, as well as the capacity to feel empathy. Some studies have shown that beauty perception shares part of the neural network underlying emotional and empathic abilities, which are also known to affect sleep quality and duration. In this study, we evaluated for the first time the effects of sleep on the relation between aesthetic perception and empathic abilities in healthy subjects using a mediation analysis approach. One-hundred and twenty-six subjects participated in this study. One-hundred and one subjects slept at home (Sleep Group). The remaining 25 subjects were tested as controls after 1 night of sleep deprivation to assess the effects of lack of sleep on aesthetic perception and empathy (Sleep-Deprived Group). All participants underwent one testing session in which they performed a battery of empathy tests and an aesthetic perception task (Golden Beauty). The results showed that sleep duration mediates the relationship between empathy and aesthetic perception in the sleep group. The mediation effect of sleep was more evident on the emotional empathy measures. Conversely, in the sleep deprivation group the lack of correlations among empathy, aesthetic perception and sleep variables did not allow to perform the mediation analysis. These results suggest that adequate sleep duration may play a significant role in improving cognitive and emotional empathic abilities as well as the capability to give accurate aesthetic judgements. © 2018 European Sleep Research Society.

Values and strategies of literary aesthetic appreciation in college English teaching in Chinese campuses

OpenAIRE

Wang, Wen; Guo, Yingjie

2012-01-01

Literary aesthetic appreciation is an indispensable part of college English teaching. As an important content of aesthetic education as well as one of the basic qualities of the compound-type foreign language learners, literary aesthetic appreciation is also an essential part of the college teaching innovation, curriculum construction and training objectives. In the course of students' acquiring aesthetic knowledge, college English teachers need to combine moral education and highlight the va...

The everyday challenges of Pro-environmental practices

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Berthou, Sara Kristine Gløjmar

2013-01-01

Much research and policy planning aimed at climate change mitigation currently focuses on individual behavioural change as a means to reduce carbon emissions. An often used approach in order to achieve this is the attempt to influence behaviour through transfers of knowledge and information...... guiding everyday pro-environmental practices, the aim was to examine the challenges experienced in this regard. Based on visits to households in Copenhagen, four major challenges are identified and discussed. The paper argues that everyday life, as the starting point of individual pro......-environmental practices, is characterised by a complexity which people have to navigate, and thus that pro-environmental practices should not be seen as one demarcated field, but as interlinked with other practices in everyday life....

The aesthetic and cultural pursuits of patients with stroke.

Science.gov (United States)

O'Connell, Clare; Cassidy, Aoife; O'Neill, Desmond; Moss, Hilary

2013-11-01

There has been an increasing interest in the arts in health care, with a suggestion that the arts and aesthetics can augment patient outcomes in stroke and other illnesses. Designing such programmes requires better knowledge of the artistic, aesthetic, and cultural pursuits of people affected by stroke. The aim of this study was to obtain the insights of this group about the profile of art and aesthetic activities in their lives and the influence of stroke on these aspects. Patients attending a stroke service were administered questions adapted from the Irish Arts Council's 2006 questionnaire on participation in aesthetics and cultural pursuits. Information was also collected on stroke type and present functional and cognitive status. Thirty-eight patients were interviewed. Of these, 20 were inpatients in hospital at the time of the interview and 18 were interviewed in an outpatient setting. Popular activities included mainstream cinema, listening to music, dancing, attending plays or musicals, and being outdoors. Many patients ceased these activities after their stroke, mostly because of health issues and inaccessibility. Most of the patients valued the importance of the arts in the health-care setting. This study gives a perspective for the first time on the aesthetic and cultural pursuits of stroke patients before their stroke. It portrays a wide variety of cultural and leisure activities and the cessation of these poststroke. It revealed the restrictions patients felt on gaining access to leisure pursuits both while in hospital and following discharge. Copyright © 2013 National Stroke Association. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Investigating Effects of Screen Layout Elements on Interface and Screen Design Aesthetics

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Ahamed Altaboli

2011-01-01

Full Text Available A recent study suggested the use of the screen layout elements of balance, unity, and sequence as a part of a computational model of interface aesthetics. It is argued that these three elements are the most contributed terms in the model. In the current study, a controlled experiment was designed and conducted to systematically investigate effects of these three elements (balance, unity, and sequence on the perceived interface aesthetics. Results showed that the three elements have significant effects on the perceived interface aesthetics. Significant interactions were also found among the three elements. A regression model relating the perceived visual aesthetics to the three elements was constructed. When validating the model using standard questionnaire scores of real web pages, high correlations were found between the values computed by the model and scores of questionnaire items related to visual layout of the web pages, indicating that layout-based measures are good at assessing the classical dimension of website aesthetics.

Brain Correlates of Aesthetic Expertise: A Parametric fMRI Study

Science.gov (United States)

Kirk, Ulrich; Skov, Martin; Christensen, Mark Schram; Nygaard, Niels

2009-01-01

Several studies have demonstrated that acquired expertise influences aesthetic judgments. In this paradigm we used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to study aesthetic judgments of visually presented architectural stimuli and control-stimuli (faces) for a group of architects and a group of non-architects. This design allowed us to test…

Expression, Imagination, and Organic Unity: John Dewey's Aesthetics and Romanticism

Science.gov (United States)

Granger, David

2003-01-01

We are presently witnessing a renewed interest in the aesthetics of philosopher and educator John Dewey. And it would seem that this interest marks a significant intellectual reorientation and not simply a passing fad. The publications Educational Theory, Studies in Philosophy and Education, The Journal of Aesthetic Education, The Journal of…

Early Childhood Pre-Service Teachers' Views about Visual Arts Education and Aesthetics

Science.gov (United States)

Bilir-Seyhan, Gamze; Ocak-Karabay, Sakire

2018-01-01

Purpose: Pre-service teachers start their university study with only a limited knowledge of art and aesthetics. Early childhood pre-service teachers should be equipped with visual arts education and aesthetics so they will be able to direct artistic activities. Elective courses about art and aesthetics raise pre-service teachers' awareness of…

Morality in everyday life.

Science.gov (United States)

Hofmann, Wilhelm; Wisneski, Daniel C; Brandt, Mark J; Skitka, Linda J

2014-09-12

The science of morality has drawn heavily on well-controlled but artificial laboratory settings. To study everyday morality, we repeatedly assessed moral or immoral acts and experiences in a large (N = 1252) sample using ecological momentary assessment. Moral experiences were surprisingly frequent and manifold. Liberals and conservatives emphasized somewhat different moral dimensions. Religious and nonreligious participants did not differ in the likelihood or quality of committed moral and immoral acts. Being the target of moral or immoral deeds had the strongest impact on happiness, whereas committing moral or immoral deeds had the strongest impact on sense of purpose. Analyses of daily dynamics revealed evidence for both moral contagion and moral licensing. In sum, morality science may benefit from a closer look at the antecedents, dynamics, and consequences of everyday moral experience. Copyright © 2014, American Association for the Advancement of Science.

EVERYDAY LANDSCAPE AND MEANING IN URBAN LIVING

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

LAKSHMI PRIYA RAJENDRAN

2013-11-01

Full Text Available This paper conceptualizes landscape from a temporal and spatial perspective which emphasizes peoples’ interactions and activities as an inherent part of understanding the landscape itself. Today, peoples’ interaction with the landscape has become more complex, largely owing to the changing notions of place in contemporary urban living. In this context, the paper examines the role and significance of the landscapes of everyday life in urban environment and delineates how it (reconstructs ordinary human and social meanings that are necessary conditions for our existence. The paper is presented in three sections. In the first section, it discusses the concept of everyday life and its relevance in the contemporary urban living. In the following section, it examines the complexities encountered in urban landscapes today .The third section of the paper discusses how meaningful interaction experienced with everyday landscapes offer valuable insights for addressing the challenges posed by the complexities of urban city living. The paper concludes by highlighting the need for attention towards the largely neglected or overlooked domains of ‘ordinary’ everyday landscape by designer professionals, which plays a crucial role in creating meaningful relationship between people and place.

Standards of performance and aesthetics in counselling and beyond

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Nissen, Morten

2016-01-01

The article discusses performance standards in relation to Danish experiments with expanding drug counselling into ‘aesthetic documentation’ which is a hybrid of art with narrative practice. This relation is problematic, since the instrumental use defies the point in art, and since ‘aesthetic...... subjectivity. Then five claims are made about ‘aesthetic documentation’ as an alternative: The art works can be seen as prototypes rather than rigid standardizations; they represent collaboration rather than individualized performance; they work as staging or display in close connection with the substantial...... meaning of activities and their products; they objectify and thus achieve social recognition of clients and professionals; as art, they open to flexible, diverse and transforming attributions of meaning and value; and they address social problems rather than individualized malfunctions. In conclusion...

How Aesthetics and Economy Become Conversant in Creative Firms

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Austin, Robert D.; Hjorth, Daniel; Hessel, Shannon

2017-01-01

theory to describe how the economic and aesthetic can be constructively combined. We propose the concept of conversation as a way of theorizing a constructed sociality via which creative firms manage this conflict; we also propose the concept of ensemble as a way of theorizing a conversationally nurtured......Research on creative organizations often highlights a concern that economic influences on creative work might crowd out aesthetic influences. How this concern can be managed, however, is not well understood. Using a case study of an economic/aesthetic conflict within a design firm, we develop...... but fragile form of intensified sociality that most successfully combines conflicting influences when it can be achieved. Together, these theoretical conceptualizations contribute new insights and help organize a fragmented landscape of ideas about work in creative firms....

Moral and Aesthetic Aspect of the Professional Training of Teachers

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Olena Budnyk

2017-06-01

Full Text Available The article highlights the results of diagnosis of forming moral and aesthetic component of personal and professional readiness of teachers to educational activities in school. The study of moral and aesthetic readiness of students was conveyed using the method of diagnosis empathetic abilities (V. Boyko, the author's methods of detection of readiness for activities of actional moral and aesthetic sense and personal predisposition to conflict behavior (test K. Thomas. The experiment proved that future teachers have had developed moral ideals and spiritual values; and formed aesthetic consciousness (feelings, attitudes, tastes, needs, feelings and motivation and are ready for active transformative activities in the system of interpersonal communication. The majority of future teachers who participated in the study display a lack of following formed skills and abilities: attention, perception and thinking focused on the state, problems and behavior of another person; emotional sensitivity, the abilities to observe behavior of a partner, traits that promote openness, the ability to understand another person on the mutual basis due to emotional flexibility and the ability to accept other behaviour. This may adversely affect their future professional activities, including working with neglected pupils and their parents. The author considers that a high level of moral consciousness of a teacher being a unity of rational and sensual aspects to facilitate moral and aesthetic relations in professional collaboration.

Aesthetic and emotional effects of meter and rhyme in poetry.

Science.gov (United States)

Obermeier, Christian; Menninghaus, Winfried; von Koppenfels, Martin; Raettig, Tim; Schmidt-Kassow, Maren; Otterbein, Sascha; Kotz, Sonja A

2013-01-01

Metrical patterning and rhyme are frequently employed in poetry but also in infant-directed speech, play, rites, and festive events. Drawing on four line-stanzas from nineteenth and twentieth German poetry that feature end rhyme and regular meter, the present study tested the hypothesis that meter and rhyme have an impact on aesthetic liking, emotional involvement, and affective valence attributions. Hypotheses that postulate such effects have been advocated ever since ancient rhetoric and poetics, yet they have barely been empirically tested. More recently, in the field of cognitive poetics, these traditional assumptions have been readopted into a general cognitive framework. In the present experiment, we tested the influence of meter and rhyme as well as their interaction with lexicality in the aesthetic and emotional perception of poetry. Participants listened to stanzas that were systematically modified with regard to meter and rhyme and rated them. Both rhyme and regular meter led to enhanced aesthetic appreciation, higher intensity in processing, and more positively perceived and felt emotions, with the latter finding being mediated by lexicality. Together these findings clearly show that both features significantly contribute to the aesthetic and emotional perception of poetry and thus confirm assumptions about their impact put forward by cognitive poetics. The present results are explained within the theoretical framework of cognitive fluency, which links structural features of poetry with aesthetic and emotional appraisal.

Towards a neural chronometric framework for the aesthetic experience of music

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Elvira eBrattico

2013-05-01

Full Text Available Music is often studied as a cognitive domain alongside language. The emotional aspects of music have also been shown to be important, but views on their nature diverge. For instance, the specific emotions that music induces and how they relate to emotional expression are still under debate. Here we propose a mental and neural chronometry of the aesthetic experience of music initiated and mediated by external and internal contexts such as intentionality, background mood, attention, and expertise. The initial stages necessary for an aesthetic experience of music are feature analysis, integration across modalities, and cognitive processing on the basis of long-term knowledge. These stages are common to individuals belonging to the same musical culture. The initial emotional reactions to music include the startle reflex, core ‘liking’, and arousal. Subsequently, discrete emotions are perceived and induced. Presumably somatomotor processes synchronizing the body with the music also come into play here. The subsequent stages, in which cognitive, affective, and decisional processes intermingle, require controlled cross-modal neural processes to result in aesthetic emotions, aesthetic judgments, and conscious liking. These latter aesthetic stages often require attention, intentionality, and expertise for their full actualization.

Activating Aesthetics: Working with Heidegger and Bourdieu for Engaged Pedagogy

Science.gov (United States)

Grierson, Elizabeth

2015-01-01

This article seeks to investigate art in public urban space via a process of activating aesthetics as a way of enhancing pedagogies of engagement. It does this firstly by addressing the question of aesthetics in Enlightenment and twentieth-century frames; then it seeks to understand how artworks may be approached ontologically and…

The Male Aesthetic Patient: Facial Anatomy, Concepts of Attractiveness, and Treatment Patterns.

Science.gov (United States)

Keaney, Terrence C; Anolik, Robert; Braz, André; Eidelman, Michael; Eviatar, Joseph A; Green, Jeremy B; Jones, Derek H; Narurkar, Vic A; Rossi, Anthony M; Gallagher, Conor J

2018-01-01

BACKGROUND: The number of nonsurgical aesthetic procedures performed in men is growing rapidly. However, there are limited data on treatment principles and goals for the male aesthetic patient. OBJECTIVE: To review the objective data available on male aging and aesthetics and to synthesize with expert opinion on treatment considerations specific to male patients. METHODS: Expert advisors met to discuss anatomical differences in male versus female facial anatomy related to aging, facial treatment preferences in aesthetically oriented men, and current dosing data for facial injectable treatments in male versus female patients. RESULTS: Symmetry, averageness, sexual dimorphism, and youthfulness are generally accepted as factors that contribute to the perception of attractiveness. There are differences between men and women in facial anatomy, concepts of attractiveness in the context of masculinity and femininity, and treatment objectives. A communication gap exists for men, as evidenced by the lack of information available online or by word of mouth about injectable treatments. CONCLUSIONS: Approaches to aesthetic consultation and treatment should differ between men and women based on the fundamental dissimilarities between the sexes. Educating men about available aesthetic treatments and about the safety and side effects associated with each treatment, as well as addressing concerns about their treatment results looking natural, are key considerations. J Drugs Dermatol. 2018;17(1):19-28..

A gray matter of taste: sound perception, music cognition, and Baumgarten's aesthetics.

Science.gov (United States)

Pannese, Alessia

2012-09-01

Music is an ancient and ubiquitous form of human expression. One important component for which music is sought after is its aesthetic value, whose appreciation has typically been associated with largely learned, culturally determined factors, such as education, exposure, and social pressure. However, neuroscientific evidence shows that the aesthetic response to music is often associated with automatic, physically- and biologically-grounded events, such as shivers, chills, increased heart rate, and motor synchronization, suggesting the existence of an underlying biological platform upon which contextual factors may act. Drawing on philosophical notions and neuroscientific evidence, I argue that, although there is no denying that social and cultural context play a substantial role in shaping the aesthetic response to music, these act upon largely universal, biological mechanisms involved with neural processing. I propose that the simultaneous presence of culturally-influenced and biologically-determined contributions to the aesthetic response to music epitomizes Baumgarten's equation of sensory perception with taste. Taking the argument one step further, I suggest that the heavily embodied aesthetic response to music bridges the cleavage between the two discrepant meanings-the one referring to sensory perception, the other referring to judgments of taste-traditionally attributed to the word "aesthetics" in the sciences and the humanities. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Questionnaire-based evaluation of everyday competence in older adults

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Tobias Kalisch

2011-01-01

Full Text Available Tobias Kalisch1, Julia Richter3, Melanie Lenz1, Jan-Christoph Kattenstroth2, Izabela Kolankowska2, Martin Tegenthoff1, Hubert R Dinse21Department of Neurology, BG-Kliniken Bergmannsheil, 2Neural Plasticity Lab, Institute for Neuroinformatics, Department of Theoretical Biology, 3Faculty of Psychology, Department of Methods, Diagnostics and Evaluation, Ruhr-University Bochum, GermanyBackground: Gerontological research aims at understanding factors that are crucial for mediating “successful aging”. This term denotes the absence of significant disease and disabilities, maintenance of high levels of physical and cognitive function, and preservation of social and productive activities. Preservation of an active lifestyle is considered an effective means through which everyday competence can be attained. In this context, it is crucial to obtain ratings of modern day older adults’ everyday competence by means of appropriate assessments. Here, we introduce the Everyday Competence Questionnaire (ECQ, designed to assess healthy older adults' everyday competence.Methods: The ECQ includes 17 items, covering housekeeping, leisure activities, sports, daily routines, manual skills, subjective well-being, and general linguistic usage. The ECQ was administered to a population of 158 healthy subjects aged 60–91 years, who were divided into groups on the basis of their physical activity. These groups were community-dwelling subjects, those living independently and having a sedentary lifestyle, those living independently but characterized by a general lifestyle without any noteworthy physical activity, and those living independently and exercising regularly. Age, gender, and education levels were balanced between the groups.Results: Using the ECQ, we could identify and distinguish different everyday competence levels between the groups tested: Subjects characterized by an active lifestyle outperformed all other groups. Subjects characterized by a general

The history of aesthetic medicine and surgery.

Science.gov (United States)

Krueger, Nils; Luebberding, Stefanie; Sattler, Gerhard; Hanke, C William; Alexiades-Armenakas, Macrene; Sadick, Neil

2013-07-01

The history of beauty is as old as mankind itself--throughout history people have tried to improve their attractiveness and to enhance their beauty. The technical basis for many of nowadays procedures like lipoplasty, breast augmentation or rhinoplasty was thereby initiated more than a hundred years ago and evolved to the modern standards of today. The aim of this article is to recall the early days of aesthetic medicine and show the swift progress up to the highly specialized medical discipline of our modern time. Combining the past, present and future of aesthetic medicine, allows to incorporate this perspective and ultimately to delivery better patient care.

The biological roots of aesthetics and art.

Science.gov (United States)

Heinrich, Bernd

2013-07-18

Animals' choice behavior is driven by motivation that is attributable to both innate urges and from positive and negative reinforcements. Using a comparative approach as well as experimental evidence, I explore how the first involves fitness-enhancing benefits from aesthetics that are derived from ancestral choices via natural selection. Innate urges and aesthetics help guide animals to produce appropriate positive and negative choices that are species-specific. Choices of food, habitat and mates or associates are considered. I propose that art is not a uniquely human product, but a representation or an extension of the maker, as are the ornaments, displays, and songs of a bird.

The Role of Aesthetics in Web Design

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Thorlacius, Lisbeth

2007-01-01

Web sites are rapidly becoming the preferred media choice for information search, company presentation, shopping, entertainment, education, and social contacts. At the same time we live in a period where visual symbols play an increasingly important role in our daily lives. The aim of this article...... is to present and discuss the four main areas in which aesthetics play an important role in the design of successful Web sites: aesthetics play an important role in supporting the content and the functionality, in appealing to the taste of the target audience, in creating the desired image for the sender......, and in addressing the requirements of the Web site genre....

Toward Measuring Network Aesthetics Based on Symmetry

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Zengqiang Chen

2017-05-01

Full Text Available In this exploratory paper, we discuss quantitative graph-theoretical measures of network aesthetics. Related work in this area has typically focused on geometrical features (e.g., line crossings or edge bendiness of drawings or visual representations of graphs which purportedly affect an observer’s perception. Here we take a very different approach, abandoning reliance on geometrical properties, and apply information-theoretic measures to abstract graphs and networks directly (rather than to their visual representaions as a means of capturing classical appreciation of structural symmetry. Examples are used solely to motivate the approach to measurement, and to elucidate our symmetry-based mathematical theory of network aesthetics.

The Biological Roots of Aesthetics and Art

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Bernd Heinrich

2013-07-01

Full Text Available Animals' choice behavior is driven by motivation that is attributable to both innate urges and from positive and negative reinforcements. Using a comparative approach as well as experimental evidence, I explore how the first involves fitness-enhancing benefits from aesthetics that are derived from ancestral choices via natural selection. Innate urges and aesthetics help guide animals to produce appropriate positive and negative choices that are species-specific. Choices of food, habitat and mates or associates are considered. I propose that art is not a uniquely human product, but a representation or an extension of the maker, as are the ornaments, displays, and songs of a bird.

Aesthetics and Political Culture in Modern Society

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Nielsen, Henrik Kaare

Do aesthetic appeals to senses and emotions in political debate necessarily marginalise political reason and reduce citizens to consumers – thus dangerously undermining democracy? Or is sensuous-emotional engagement, on the contrary, a basic fact of the political process and a crucial precondition...... in the political process do not by definition undermine politics’ content of reason. Instead, a differentiation must be made between a multiplicity of aesthetic forms of intervention – some of which tend to weaken the political judgement of citizens while other forms tend to stimulate competent judgement....... This book will be of interest to scholars in the fields of political science, sociology, media studies, and cultural studies....

Can medicine be aesthetic? Disentangling beauty and health in elective surgeries

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Edmonds, A.

2013-01-01

This article analyzes tensions between aesthetics and health in medicine. The blurring of distinctions between reconstructive and cosmetic procedures, and the linking of plastic surgery with other medical treatments, have added to the legitimacy of an emerging "aesthetic medicine." As cosmetic

Social media: implications for everyday life, politics and human agency

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

André Jansson

2013-11-01

Full Text Available With the current saturation of digital devices in contemporary society, the boundaries between humans and machines have become increasingly blurred. This digitalization of everyday life both obscures and reminds us of the fact that identity, agency and power cannot be attributed to the individual or the machine alone: rather, they are the outcome of interactions and negotiations within a network of actors. Social media, such as Facebook, blogs, Twitter and YouTube, show clearly that the ‘meaning’ or ‘effect’ of digital technologies is formed through the practices in which they are used and the social relations and institutions that develop around them. This article presents views expressed during a panel discussion on the implications of social media for everyday life, politics and human agency at the Aboagora Symposium, held on 14th August 2013. The panel was organized as a dialogue between the participants and the discussion was structured around three questions, presented below. The participants in the panel were; Professor André Jansson (Karlstad University, Professor Susanna Paasonen (University of Turku and adjunct Professor Johanna Sumiala (University of Helsinki. The panel was chaired by Professor Mia Lövheim (Uppsala University.

Development of Prototype Outcomes-Based Training Modules for Aesthetic Dentistry

Science.gov (United States)

Andres, Maricar Joy T.; Borabo, Milagros L.

2015-01-01

The objective of the study is to know the essential components of Aesthetic Dentistry that will be a basis for prototype Outcomes-based training modules. Using a 5-point Likert scale, the researcher-made questionnaire assessed the different elements of Aesthetic Dentistry which are needed in the designing of the training module, the manner of…

Towards a Wittgensteinian Aesthetics. Wollheim and the Analysis of Aesthetic Practices

OpenAIRE

Giovanni Matteucci

2013-01-01

In order to investigate the possibility to develop Wittgenstein's suggestions about aesthetics, this paper will focus on the organic perspective elaborated by Richard Wollheim in «Art and Its Objects». In this regard we will try to emphasize how the concept of art as a "form of live" - explicit in Wollheim - involves the analysis of the practices embodied in the experience of art starting from those of representation. The inception modes of such practices of representation need to be describe...

Eco-aesthetic dimensions: Herbert Marcuse, ecology and art

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Malcolm Miles

2016-12-01

Full Text Available In his last book, The Aesthetic Dimension (1978, Marcuse argued that a concern for aesthetics is justified when political change is unlikely. But the relation between aesthetics and politics is oblique: “Art cannot change the world, but it can contribute to changing the consciousness … of the men and women who could change the world.” (p. 33. Marcuse also linked his critique of capitalism to environmentalism in the early 1970s: “the violation of the Earth is a vital aspect of the counterrevolution.” (Ecology and Revolution, in The New Left and the 1960s, Collected Papers 3, 2005, p. 173. This article revisits Marcuse’s ideas on aesthetics and ecology, and reviews two recent art projects which engage their audiences in ecological issues: The Jetty Project (2014 by Wolfgang Weileder—which used recycled material and community participation to construct a temporary monument within a wider conservation project on the Tyne, N-E England—and Fracking Futures by HeHe (Helen Evans and Heiko Hansen—which turned the interior of the gallery at FACT, Liverpool, into what appeared to be a fracking site. The aim is not to evaluate the projects, nor to test the efficacy of Marcuse’s ideas, more to ask again whether art has a role in a shift of attitude which might contribute to dealing with the political and economic causes of climate change.

``Sober or enjoying`` - Energy consumption and everyday life in Norwegian households; Noektern eller nytende. Energiforbruk og hverdagsliv i norske husholdninger

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Aune, Margrethe

1998-12-31

This Dr.polit. thesis studies the energy consumption in houses and transport in Norway and contributes to a new sociological understanding of the role of energy in everyday life. It discusses energy consumption and everyday life both individually and their interplay. Private cars provide 86% of all passenger transport. The efforts taken to influence the behaviour of the energy consumers have not been very successful as far as the measures aimed at the households are concerned. If the aim is to decrease the energy consumption in Norwegian households, for environmental protection, then clearly increased knowledge is needed about the extent and complexity of the implications of behaviour for the technological conditions. Thus the thesis examines the interrelationship between everyday life and energy consumption. 165 refs., 14 figs., 16 tabs.

``Sober or enjoying`` - Energy consumption and everyday life in Norwegian households; Noektern eller nytende. Energiforbruk og hverdagsliv i norske husholdninger

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Aune, Margrethe

1997-12-31

This Dr.polit. thesis studies the energy consumption in houses and transport in Norway and contributes to a new sociological understanding of the role of energy in everyday life. It discusses energy consumption and everyday life both individually and their interplay. Private cars provide 86% of all passenger transport. The efforts taken to influence the behaviour of the energy consumers have not been very successful as far as the measures aimed at the households are concerned. If the aim is to decrease the energy consumption in Norwegian households, for environmental protection, then clearly increased knowledge is needed about the extent and complexity of the implications of behaviour for the technological conditions. Thus the thesis examines the interrelationship between everyday life and energy consumption. 165 refs., 14 figs., 16 tabs.

Aesthetic possibilities in removable prosthodontics. Part 1: the aesthetic spectrum from perfect to personal.

Science.gov (United States)

Besford, J N; Sutton, A F

2018-01-12

Patients requiring dentures are getting older and as a result can be difficult to treat owing to various co-morbidities. This series of papers presents an overview of the processes involved in making removable dentures which the patient considers to be functionally and aesthetically successful. We hope not only to provide technical suggestions but also to address the issue of the clinician's, technician's and dental nurse's relationships with the dentally depleted patient. It is increasingly clear from defence organisation reports that this has a decisive effect on the success of this fundamentally difficult enterprise ('The only branch of dentistry in which you are trying to attach something to nothing' [Hubert Aïche]). It seems best to conduct the planning and the treatment itself as a co-production - the patient assuming responsibility for choosing between the treatment options offered and playing the leading role in making aesthetic decisions. Distinctions are drawn between the idealised whiter-than-white, 'nobody-in-particular', attention-seeking denture at one extreme, and the highly personalised, discreet and naturalistic denture at the other. Reproducing nature in this way is time consuming and therefore expensive, but many 'denture sufferers' see it as good value. Methods for creating the latter, which through its very normality switches off the social observer's attention, are explained in detail in papers two and three of this series. These papers are designed to help clinicians and technicians involved in providing removable prosthodontics improve the appearance of their dentures and increase their patients' aesthetic satisfaction. They are not scientific articles in the Popperian sense of advancing theories which are capable of being falsified. Instead, they are an amalgamation of 72 years of combined experience in providing removable dental prostheses. We have found this branch of dentistry immensely interesting and have on many occasions had the

Combined aesthetic interventions for prevention of facial ageing, and restoration and beautification of face and body

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Fabi S

2017-10-01

Full Text Available Sabrina Fabi,1 Tatjana Pavicic,2 André Braz,3 Jeremy B Green,4,5 Kyle Seo,6 Jani AJ van Loghem7 1Cosmetic Laser Dermatology, San Diego, CA, USA; 2Private Practice for Dermatology and Aesthetics, Munich, Germany; 3Division of the Policlínica Geral do Rio de Janeiro (PGRJ, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; 4Skin Associates of South Florida, Miami, 5University of Miami Department of Dermatology, Miami, FL, USA; 6Seoul National University, Seoul, South Korea; 7Doctors Inc., Amsterdam, The Netherlands Abstract: The Merz Institute of Advanced Aesthetics Expert Summit was held in Prague, Czech Republic, from 19–20 November 2016. The meeting had a distinct advisory board character and invited aesthetic practitioners from all over the world to hear an international faculty present a range of keynote lectures and conduct live injection sessions with an emphasis on recent developments in combination aesthetic interventions for face and body rejuvenation and beautification. Aging is associated with changes in bones, muscles, ligaments, adipose tissue, and skin and, moreover, involves interactions among these tissue types. To achieve the most natural and harmonious rejuvenation of the face, all changes that result from the aging process should be corrected, which generally involves treatment with more than a single agent or technology. Presentations described innovative treatment algorithms for the face and body and focused on patients’ desires for natural-looking rejuvenation and how this requires a three-dimensional approach combining products that relax the musculature, volumize, and re-drape the skin. Besides treating the aging face, these procedures are increasingly used to enhance facial features as well as to delay facial aging in younger patients. The presentations covered patients from different ethnicities as well as the treatment of non-facial areas, with a particular focus on the use of Ultherapy® for skin lifting and tightening, and new aesthetic