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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)