Antagonism and Relational Aesthetics

Antagonism and Relational Aesthetics

On the occasion of its opening in 2002, the Palais de Tokyo immediately struck the visitor as different from other contemporary art venues that had recently opened in Europe. Although a budget of 4.75 million euros was spent on converting the former Japanese pavilion for the 1937 World’s Fair into a “site for contemporary creation,” most of this money had been used to reinforce (rather than ren...

Relational Properties in Interaction Aesthetics: The Ubiquitous Music Turn

Taking as a point of departure recent theoretical advances in Interaction Design and HumanComputer Interaction (Löwgren 2009), we discuss a body of knowledge gathered in Ubiquitous Music practices (Keller et al. 2011a) during the last six years. New concepts and methods have been proposed to describe aspects of the ideation and materialisation of experiences with technology. Pliability (Löwgren...

Engineering Aesthetics and Ergo-Aesthetics:

Human factors researchers and practitioners have been focusing research attention on the easeof-use, productivity, safety, comfort, and effectiveness aspects of product and system design. This article argues that it is time that we add another important dimension to the fields of human factors research and practice—the aesthetic dimension. This article discusses the need for the establishment o...

Darwinian Aesthetics Informs Traditional Aesthetics

The aesthetics of neuroscience—and the neuroscience of aesthetics

Samuel Johnson, the colourful 18th-century English lexicographer, asserted that ‘No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money’ (Boswell, 1934). Since unlikely to be applicable to the two books discussed here, Dr Johnson’s quip leads one to seek alternative motives and ask what led the authors to write these books, and why and for whom each book was written. Dealing first with what inspir...