ASAGE - American Society for Aesthetics Graduate E-Journal
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Can Digital Pictures Qualify as Photographs?
No full textCan digital pictures qualify as photographs? The commonsensical answer is that they can. We are happy to call a picture of a scene made with a digital camera a photograph. According to William Mitchell, however, we are wrong to do so. Pictures made with digital cameras would not qualify as photographs, because they lack a certain realism essential to classical, i.e. film-based, photography. In the following, I first present two ways in which film-based photographs are realistic (section 1). Next, I discuss Mitchell?s position that pictures made with digital cameras are not realistic and, consequently, not truly photographic (section 2). Finally, I argue ? against Mitchell ? that pictures made with digital cameras are realistic and, thus, do qualify as photographs (section 3)
Enhancing Presence: Sensory Integration and Proprioception in Cinema
No full textFilm theory and aesthetics have been influenced by recent research on perception in cognitive science and neuroscience, as well as in computing and new media technology. We need to approach film with this kind of research in mind and focus on the conscious processing of film, treating it as a kind of immersive perceptual event. My paper is divided in three parts. In the first part, I review the renewed interest in realism in film as expressed through the concept of presence. In the last two sections I focus on two areas in which recent scientific research in the mechanisms of perception can serve to enhance the sense of presence: sensory integration and proprioception. The integration of information coming from different modalities is a fundamental feature of cognition. Research has shown that visual stimulation is enhanced by auditory and olfactory stimulation, as well as by the kinesthetic sensation involved in proprioceiving these stimuli. My aim in this paper is to suggest that the cinema spectator should not be treated as a passive viewer, but as an active and embodied perceiver, called to experience a media event. The dominance of vision should be abandoned in favor of a percept that is multi-sensory. A better understanding of how we perceive of the actual world will enhance our understanding of the perception, creation and appreciation of the filmic world
Humanization of Christian Sacred Art and its Erosion as a Vehicle of Contemplative Intellection
No full textThis paper argues that for sacred art to remain sacred art it must follow certain traditional forms of aesthetics, which in turn allow it to be conducive as a vehicle toward intellection. Moreover, this paper argues that sacred art can only be called such when it follows the inherent symbolism of the religion from which it originates. The arguments for the above position take place against the background of Aldous Huxley?s definition of the perennial philosophy and a more traditional approach to aesthetics, this is somewhat contrary to the rationalization and humanization of sacred art, which has become more apparent since the Renaissance.
The Mathematical and Temporal Basis of Judgments of the Sublime
No full textIn this paper, I elaborate the difference between the concept of infinity and the idea of infinity through Cantor's diagonalization proof to illuminate a passage in Kant's Critique of Judgment. Taking Lyotard's analysis of aesthetic judgments as the basis for my own project, I focus on the idea of a collapse of temporality required for objective cognition and its concomitant preclusion of cognitive subjectivity. Finally, after borrowing language from Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit, I show that even though there is not a cognitive subject in judgments of the sublime, there is nevertheless a subjectivity that consciousness is tasked with, even if it never fulfills this task when it is confronted with a mathematically sublime object, and it is an subjectivity that would transcend time in order to know the object in-itself
