Dear Chuck, Keith and all

Thanks for qualifying your last sentence and for rearranging words in mine.
I agree there is no experience that does not build on a prior experience.

Without denying that I am still looking for theoretical/practical
aesthetical support for what is today labeled emergent qualities or as
Stolterman and Nelson explains as that-which-in- not -yet-in -existence.

I definitely appreciate what familiarity brings and see the role of  the
development of semiotic which aim to build up common signs and symbols.
  
Platonic view is not where I am coming from my roots are first as personal
and  teacher assistant and student with Rowena Reed preparing for classes at
Pratt Institute and SoHo for two years and the the practical / ergonomic
design culture of Sweden which involved many years of collaboration in
teaching with Rune Monö who has contributed a great deal to developing a
pragmatic and professionally adapted theory of semiotics.  By working with
Rune I became increasingly clear about the core difference between our
aesthetical approaches and our interdependency.  We always experienced
healthy clashes and commonalities as we taught parallel within the same
project. It is through the clarity I have seen develop in the field of
semantics and semiotics that I recognize how under developed the abstract
basic level aesthetics are.

All I know is that is we continue to ignoring research (as it seems Keith
implies) in what modernism called visual language,  or  basic design,  then
we will end up with an archaic way  of sharing this knowledge. If design is
not interested in supporting a continued devoted search into what non
metaphorical, non figurative expressions involve then we will stifle the
development of gestalt at the other end of the loop. The parts making the
whole must be in tune with the expressions of our life values today.

A cults instead of a domain is what we will have at the base of design. When
important knowledge is so closely tied to very few people (because
researchers are not active in the field) then the transfer of knowledge
through generations is bound to the person rather then the domain. It is my
hope that the aesthetical foundation that modernism started will be
reassessed, deconstructed and reconstructed with a respect for the
collective knowledge for the domain.

I wonder where Rosan and design cognition went...

Enjoy your weekend

Cheryl 

P.S. Eduardo I feel I should formulate a better answer but I not quite
there. 



Vihma, Susann.  Products representation. A semiotic and aesthetic study of
design products in University of Industrial Arts Helsinki UIAH 1995


Monö, Rune. Design for product understanding. The aestetics of design from a
semiotic approach. Liber förlag AB, Stockholm l997

Greet Hannah, Gail  The element of design, Rowena Reed Kostellow and the
structure of visual relationships 2000 Princeton Architectural Press.

 

Den 04-06-04 15.19, skrev "Charles Burnette User"
<[log in to unmask]>:

> Dear Cheryl 
> 
> I said in full: "I believe that aesthetics are highly personal and so is
> art. Otherwise, how could we have artists who ignore established
> institutions of art - or rather counter them with their own institutions ie.
> Warhol, Pollock, Laurie Anderson, etc. Thank whatever that we each have our
> own aesthetic emotional response to any kind of object!"
> 
> Perhaps it would make things less dire for you if I qualified my last
> sentence slightly by saying "we each have our own secondary level aesthetic
> emotional response to the kinds of objects that stimulate such responses in
> us." My point here is that our intentions, circumstances and reflections are
> unique to us as individuals, even though we may come to share certain
> preferences and experiences with others. You seem to be committed to some
> absolute Platonic view of aesthetics that I clearly do not share.
> 
> Your idea and Langer's that an aesthetic response introduces "something that
> is not known before" should be rephrased it seems to me as: introduces
> something that is not known in the same way before. It is precisely our
> effort to interpret something that we are stimulated by that calls on prior
> feelings and knowledge to enable us to experience aesthetic pleasure - pain.
> Aesthetic pleasure can be revisited with the same object - it therefore is
> not something that always has a novel stimulus. A familiar response may be
> rewakened.
> 
> Best,
> Chuck
>