{"title":"Pedagogy, Hyperreality, and Agency— To Sound Out Education Effects Ascribed to a Video Game","authors":"A. Kraus","doi":"10.5406/15437809.56.4.05","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5406/15437809.56.4.05","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:Whereas utopia is the vision of an ideal community, dystopias create the image of a cataclysmic decline of society and environment. This article deals with the construction of personal agency and the analysis of digital simulation that is reflected in an online commercial for a first-person survival horror video game. Agency is understood here as the capacity to act in the virtual environment that is ascribed to the actor by the marketing strategy. Applying approaches from phenomenology, simulation theory, and sound studies, the analysis proceeds in reference to a corresponding educational political agenda. The findings show a certain discrepancy between the more utopian education political rhetoric and the more dystopian construction of personal agency in the video game context, a discrepancy from which specific educational challenges emerge. Finally, even if a case study generally cannot be seen as representative, its results present a direction for the further investigation of virtual reality from the education perspective as suggested by international policies.","PeriodicalId":45866,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF AESTHETIC EDUCATION","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2022-11-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42201810","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Turnspits and Other Malenky Machines: Laziness and Cowardice in Burgess’s","authors":"Jan-Boje Frauen","doi":"10.5406/15437809.56.4.06","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5406/15437809.56.4.06","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This article argues that the first-person narrator and anti-hero of Anthony Burgess’s famous dystopia is far from being the symbol for human freedom he has traditionally been taken to be. Quite the opposite, he is to be seen as a symbol for human “self-imposed nonage” at every point of the novel: from his alleged rebellion to his farewell to rape and aggression in the final chapter. All of his apparent acts of freedom are determined by the dynamic interplay of biological disposition and political exploitation. Burgess’s theory of freedom, however, is more sophisticated than Alex’s “turnspit freedom.” It is displayed in two minor characters, F. Alexander and the prison chaplain, modelled on Burgess and his cousin the Catholic Archbishop George Dwyer, respectively, who display “political awareness” that leads to decisions based on informed judgment.","PeriodicalId":45866,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF AESTHETIC EDUCATION","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2022-11-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49307801","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Onstage Emotion as Imagination","authors":"Yuchen Guo","doi":"10.5406/15437809.56.4.03","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5406/15437809.56.4.03","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:Although many actors report experiencing genuine emotions befitting a specific character’s circumstances, the actors themselves are neither their characters nor in their characters’ circumstances. Moreover, it seems that if our circumstances do not afford certain emotions, we will not experience these emotions. Thus, actors experience “a paradox of onstage emotion.” This article aims to provide a solution to this paradox. I argue that actors’ onstage emotions are repeatable, controllable, scripted, and impersonal; however, everyday genuine emotions are neither repeatable nor controllable nor scripted and are always personal. Therefore, onstage emotions are not genuine emotions. I then argue that imagination is a repeatable and controllable mental state and that it can be scripted and impersonal. Finally, given that imagination is seen as a re-creation of occurrent experiences, I conclude that onstage emotions are not genuine emotions but rather are imaginative emotions—a re-creation of genuine emotions, and the solution of imaginative emotions better accounts for actors’ onstage performance.","PeriodicalId":45866,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF AESTHETIC EDUCATION","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2022-11-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46571614","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"G. H. Mead: Socially Structured Aesthetic Experiences","authors":"S. K. Wertz","doi":"10.5406/15437809.56.4.01","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5406/15437809.56.4.01","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:In speaking of his analyses, George Herbert Mead (1863– 1931) announces: “It is behavioristic where the approach to experience is made through conduct.” He turns this approach to the practice of the arts and the aesthetic experience. His approach consists of an analysis of gestures and attitudes as the beginning of acts that we bring with us to the activities in which we are engaged. A gesture would be, for example, offering someone a chair who has entered a room. Usually gestures and their responses form a conversation, in this case, acceptance or rejection of the offer. The attitude behind the offer would be generosity and friendliness—a sign of welcome. Within music, “a temporal dimension as that of the melody, or recognition of the notes and their distance from each other in the scale, and our appreciation of these as actually affected by the beginning of our response to the later notes, as when we are expecting a certain sort of ending . . . . It is that attitude that gives the character of our appreciation of all extended musical compositions.” Instead of the part–whole understanding of the arts, he argues for a whole–part relationship within a social context of the actions that make up a performance or object. How far will this thesis take us? I explore answers to this question.","PeriodicalId":45866,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF AESTHETIC EDUCATION","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2022-11-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42671171","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Fantasy and Adult Development","authors":"A. Langer","doi":"10.5406/15437809.56.4.04","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5406/15437809.56.4.04","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:As new digital technologies, consumer demand, and social issues such as COVID-19 render workplaces increasingly data-centric, employers will require culturally and technologically adept workers who can utilize creativity in every stage of the production process. To prepare students for this demand, institutions of higher education must establish flexible programs that provide professional or technical curricula combined with a liberal arts education that fosters students’ abilities to build imaginations beyond conventionally accepted norms. The capacity for creative fantasy intersects with cognitive maturity and higher-order thinking and thus can be measured using models of adult development. Schools should develop knowledge platforms that can first assess a student’s maturity stage and then design a personalized liberal and professional education plan that maximizes their creative abilities. This article therefore engages adult development theory to map possible trajectories toward students’ constructive use of innovative fantasy and to address ways educational institutions can reorient their approaches.","PeriodicalId":45866,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF AESTHETIC EDUCATION","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2022-11-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49148852","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"A New Interpretation of the Essence of Aesthetic Experience: From the Perspective of Cognitive Neuroaesthetics and Aesthetic Anthropology","authors":"Fanjun Meng, Yushui Liang","doi":"10.5406/15437809.56.4.07","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5406/15437809.56.4.07","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:In the transformation from classical to modern aesthetics, the proposition and exploration of aesthetic experience constitutes one of the major dimensions of various aesthetic problems. Pragmatic aesthetics, phenomenological aesthetics, hermeneutic aesthetics, analytical aesthetics, and new pragmatic aesthetics have comprehensively analyzed and discussed aesthetic experience. Through the construction and deconstruction of aesthetic experience in aesthetic history, the study of the key concept seems to have come to a certain predicament. This is mainly reflected in the fact that the subjective and objective attribute of experience remains unclear, and the material base of aesthetics is not solid enough. In this regard, cognitive neuroscience and anthropology provide new ways to understand aesthetic experience. From the perspective of aesthetic anthropology, the study on aesthetic experience is rooted in a broad field and serves as a solid material basis for its objectification. Cognitive neuroaesthetics explains the psychological mechanism of aesthetic experience. Together, they provide an opportunity for the study on aesthetic experience to enter a new realm. Moreover, the new interpretation of the essence of aesthetic experience will help to improve the theory and practice of aesthetic education.","PeriodicalId":45866,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF AESTHETIC EDUCATION","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2022-11-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45726769","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Complex Art of Murder","authors":"R. McGregor","doi":"10.5406/15437809.56.3.04","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5406/15437809.56.3.04","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This article demonstrates the literary value of hardboiled detective fiction. I consider two different arguments for literary value, one based on Martin Heidegger’s philosophy of art and the other on the tradition of form-content inseparability in literary aesthetics and literary criticism. The former is reliant on the genre’s combination of formal complexity with substantive superficiality and the latter on the combination of formal complexity with substantive complexity. I employ Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep (1939) and Nelson DeMille’s Plum Island (1997) as examples, focusing on the question of whether they have thematic content. I demonstrate that the novels instantiate substantive themes—about corruption, alienation, and moral amnesia—in consequence of which the argument for form-content inseparability is more compelling. I conclude by suggesting that form-content inseparability underpins both the literary value of hardboiled detective fiction and the genre’s capacity for aesthetic education.","PeriodicalId":45866,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF AESTHETIC EDUCATION","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2022-07-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42512752","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Pedagogical Primacy of Language in Mental Imagery: Pictorialism vs. Descriptionalism","authors":"E. Luft","doi":"10.5406/15437809.56.3.01","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5406/15437809.56.3.01","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This paper argues for the primacy of language over vision as a means of communication. Words convey information more clearly, accurately, reliably, and profoundly than images do. Images by themselves give only impressions; they do not denote, unless accompanied by some sort or level of description. Also, any visual image, whether physical or mental, unless it is eidetic, must involve some degree of interpretation, interpolation, or description for it to be capable of conveying information, having meaning, or even being intelligible. Pictorialism is the theory that mental imagery is visual, while descriptionalism holds that mental imagery is nonvisual. As an epistemology, pictorialism supports representationalism as a philosophy of art. The poverty and limitations of representational theories of art militate against pictorialism. Descriptionalism as an epistemology supports several versions of symbolist theories of art. The richness and versatility of symbolic interpretations of art works support descriptionalism. Pictorialism fails the test of consistency unless eidetic imagery exists. Any pictorialism that claims support from noneidetic imagery or invokes the photographic fallacy is in fact a crypto- or quasi-descriptionalism. Since the photographic fallacy denies eidetic imagery, it is invalid and misbegotten as a defense of pictorialism. The interplay between the richness of visual images and the precision of verbal descriptions is a key element in developing a comprehensive pedagogy of aesthetics.","PeriodicalId":45866,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF AESTHETIC EDUCATION","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2022-07-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44871719","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"What Do We Look At When We Look at Art? The Bible, Visual Art, and the Redemption of Existence","authors":"J. Hoult, A. Kulak","doi":"10.5406/15437809.56.3.02","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5406/15437809.56.3.02","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This study is dedicated to examining how the principles and values that mark the difference between the ancient Greco-Roman and biblical traditions help us to think about what (and who) we look at when we look at art. We begin with the Bible’s self-reflexive communication to its readers regarding the status of its own images and then consider works by Michelangelo, Tejo Remy, and Charles White—while also calling on Shakespeare, Hegel, and Kierkegaard—to show that art in the biblical tradition presupposes and expresses love as the transformation of life’s finite immediacies, the transformation of its finite givens, into the gift. We argue, overall, that the art of the biblical tradition demands that viewers pose the question of whether, where, and how deeply they find in those works—and in themselves—the principle of love as the redemption of finitude, the redemption of existence.","PeriodicalId":45866,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF AESTHETIC EDUCATION","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2022-07-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48007131","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Deep Interdisciplinarity: Team-Teaching and Critical Thinking about Art","authors":"Mavis Biss, K. Boeye","doi":"10.5406/15437809.56.3.05","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5406/15437809.56.3.05","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This essay discusses an interdisciplinary art history/philosophy course cotaught by a professor from each discipline. Fundamental questions about how we experience, understand, and communicate about art can be answered more effectively through such interdisciplinary collaboration than through each discipline alone. Students in the course tended to think of art either in purely subjective terms, in which art was simply an expression of personal taste, or entirely essentialist ones, in which the artness of a work resided completely within the object. Readings and class discussions helped students articulate these extreme viewpoints and challenge them. As a result, many of the students developed more sophisticated understandings of art and the experiences of art that avoided the pitfalls of subjectivism and essentialism. Insights from selected student papers are presented to demonstrate the kinds of thinking fostered by the course. In sum, the essay argues for the importance and success of interdisciplinary approaches to teaching art, art history, and the philosophy of art.","PeriodicalId":45866,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF AESTHETIC EDUCATION","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2022-07-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45508872","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}