Re ...learn something about real aesthetics.
One afternoon in 1991, it was the conference room of the Denon
Factory in Shirakawa, I arrange my mockup of the Audio System and pin
up my sketches. I then wait for people to take their seat - and stand
next to the model and wait. Kitagawa-san gestures for me to sit down.
I sit down mystified. I have prepared my presentation and have many
things to say about the form and its
meaning.
The group gazes at the model for a good five minutes. And then people
nod and begin to speak.
Later the phenomenon is explained to me. In short I was witness to
the practice of 'gazing at the blossoms' during the cherry blossom
festival. The gaze, in this case of the staff of Nippon-Columbia, was
a trained one. So I got interested in the gaze, even if only because
I was usually unable to keep my mouth shut and only gaze. And gave a
lecture years later on the gaze of the 'roadside romeos' in New
Delhi. A gaze that was long, intense, trained and said 'yeah what?'.
Though it often was an act of stripping away clothing.
I feel intensely the tension between the aesthetic event (accompanied
by a physical sensation) and the analyser of the aesthetics of a
phenomenon. And being really old fashioned feel a loss of innocence,
read guilty, at any engagement with intellectualizing aesthetics.
(but then I was never any good at mathemaatics).
Dr. Soumitri Varadarajan
Associate Professor
Industrial Design Program
School of Architecture and Design
RMIT University
Web: http://users.tce.rmit.edu.au/Soumitri.Varadarajan/index.htm
"Curious things, habits. People themselves never knew they had them"
- Agatha Christie (1890 - 1976)
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