Search for Beauty 2017

In this post, I’ll be looking at 20th-century rhetorical theorist Kenneth Burke’s concept of what defines and undergirds the human condition and consider a potential interplay between this and the concept of art which is, in part, the focal point of this class. Burke’s summary of the human condition comes most succinctly in his essay “The Definition of Man,” found in his book Language as Symbolic Action, published in 1966. The first and foremost component of his five-part definition is that man is the “symbol-using animal.” In saying this, he draws the line between us and other animals at our ability to communicate symbolically, i.e. via complex language. In essence, Burke asserts that every human success and, indeed, failure) is built fundamentally on language. For humans, reality itself is comprehended and experienced through language/symbol. Language is naturally substitutional and abbreviative. In this we see a connection with Cassirer’s assertion that language, along with sci...

9/27 I realize I am very late to this blogging train but now I'm aboard and ready to share my thoughts! So something I have been thinking about that deals with the beginning of class with art and beauty is my own view of unconventional art. My dog boomer is 6 months old and a tyrant at that. He is teething very badly and will rip up basically anything he can get his paws on. The other night I came home to one of my beautiful throw pillows torn up and the fluffing everywhere. My first reaction was to get angry; punish him; tell him how he's such a bad boy. After that overwhelming feeling of anger subsided, I realized that he is a baby and he's MY baby and I love him. Therefore, all the rotten things he does actually makes me appreciate his life and that he is imperfect just like me and I am overcome with emotions like love and gratitude because I see this life inside of him! He has so much personality! The rotten things that he does are beautiful and to me they are art ev...

A lot of the readings we discuss in class talk about how Art helps us discover reality. To me, part of the most beautiful things in the world can not be explained or understood. The most interesting part of neuroscience is the fact that we hardly understand any of it. There is still so much left to be discovered and explained. Art also helps explain reality and life which many people also can not begin to comprehend the entirety. There seems to be this underlying need for knowledge in all men. Most of our lives revolves around explaining our surroundings and ourselves. Artists help us in learning about life. In the brain there are neurons that are individual building blocks in the brain that aren't physically connected but share neurotransmitters which almost serve as information to perform a function. In many ways, sharing knowledge among humans through art reminds me of this There is an undying need for explanation and knowledge so that artists who offer constantly new perspe...

This reading was very similar to the readings we read for my study abroad trip I took with Kip this past summer. The trip was a pilgrimage and we often discussed the difference between pilgrims and tourists. I felt like I wasn't only a tourist experiencing Spain but I also couldn't be only a pilgrim since it was my first time in Spain and I couldn't help but want to experience some of the more touisty things and appreciate my surroundings rather than just focusing inward. It also was interesting that in this paper it quoted Edith and Victor Turner, who's book I read last May for my own pilgrimage. It talks about how every year millions visit America's national parks and forests for both recreational purposes but also to renew love of land and country. In this example, trips can be both tourism and also spiritual quests. This paper also brought up Thoreau which I found very relevant to my previous blog posts and personal interests. Thoreau spoke of pilgrimages...

Nature of Art: Aristotle In the second chapter of “The Nature of Art,” Aristotle’s perspective of art is presented. Similar to Plato, Aristotle contends that art is representative or imitative of some sort of immortal form. The introduction establishes that Aristotle will be arguing from a teleological perspective, seeking the goal or objective of art by analyzing the various mediums. Specifically, this reading focuses on the function and essence of Greek drama. Greek tragedy contains six elements: plot structure, character, style, thought, spectacle, and lyric poetry. Epic and lyric poetry is utilized in order to create “garnished” language as described in the reading. Emphasis is placed on the style and dramatic presentation of this narrative, eliciting a purging or “ katharsis” of emotion. This dramatic caricature of action and dialogue reproduces emotion over and over again through the repetition of performance. Hence, this recurring generation of emotion is also a for...

Since most of my out of class readings relating to our class are about environmental conservation and the beauty of nature, I found an article from Harvard University titled the Beauty in nature. Today (9/25) in class we talked about nature and the beauty of it. This resonated with me and my strong relation with nature. This article talks about how the beauty of nature is so great that it has profound effect upon our senses. In this class we talk about the more senses that are involved, the more real art is. Dance was art that involved many senses while music involved the least amount. Nature involves every sense. When in nature, you can see it, you can hear the wind and the animals, you can smell it, you can feel it, and you can even taste some berries and plants. This article talks about how the entirety of nature dazzles our senses and cause us to declare that it is beautiful. It also talks about the perception of things in nature gives us pleasure and therefore is crucial to expe...

Before we draw too far from dance in our foray up van der Leeuw’s model of artistic progression, I’d like to relate in more detail a phenomenological experience of the dance which undergirds and informs my understanding of what van der Leeuw and Harris assert in regards to dance, ritual, and participation. This experience came as a part of my Appalachian Trail adventure this past summer, an event of enormous aesthetic value which must remain unexplored until later posts. It came smack in the middle of the two weeks, during our reprieve in the town of Damascus, VA, in the midst of Trail Days, an annual festival celebrating hiker culture in which backpackers, an eclectic group by any standards, come from near and far to revel in the glorious communitas of the Trail. As part of our little AT excursion, we students were encouraged to join in the revelry, which is where the story begins. The dancing took place in a large building at the center of town (most probably the town hall),...

Art as Imitation: Plato In the beginning of the chapter, Plato’s concept of “forms” is introduced – which are non-physical and eternal versions of material items. The best way I was able to envision this concept is through Allegory of the Cave from the Republic.   Although his ideas were conveyed through Socrates, Plato describes prisoners who were chained, permanently facing away from the cave entrance. The light from the entrance allowed shadows to cast on the back of the cave. For the entirety of their imprisonment, they had only experienced shadows passing on cave wall. Although they observed silhouettes, they remained uncertain of the truest form of the objects. If the prisoners were unchained and turned around, they would realize the world is not what they initially conceived. Through this metaphor, Plato implies that we are all prisoners who have only perceived the world through its shadows, or imitative form. Question: Plato claims that artists are imitators – How...

Since I'm a neuroscience major I love the brain. I googled beauty of the brain and found an article by the Smithsonian Magazine. It talks about how complex the brain in and how when we hypothesize, we are using our brains to understand itself. Some scientists are focusing on making brains into art objects. One collected images of the brain from microscopes and MRI machines. It's interesting to see people make these images into art. I've looked at brains under microscopes and slice brains and then stained them which I also found beauty in. Some scientists stain neurons with a fluorescent gene found in jelly fish to make individual neurons glow. Other's use stains to show colorful fibers stretching throughout the brain. Often, in my classes my teacher's comment on how beautiful stains and images of the brain can be. It's a sense of photography which captures reality rather than portrays what an artist interprets. For me, it is the complexity of the brain that ...

Rosseau said art is not a description or reproduction of the empirical world but an overflow of emotions and passions. This is an interesting definition of art. Many artists' feel very connected to their work through the emotions portrayed when they create art. It makes sense to me when I read it I just had never thought about the definition of art. And the realization that what makes it special is the emotion rather than the reproduction of the empirical world that I seem to focus on when looking at art. Rosseau and Goethe began characteristic art which gained a definitive victory over imitative art. What does definitive victory mean? What is characteristic art? How can we know the artist's intuition and vision? Aristotle: Difference between poetry and history. Drama is a complete whole in itself while historians deal with not 1 action but  period to happened to one or more persons. This is another quote that stuck out to me in the reading. It's another explanation tha...

Reflection on,  Art as Cognition: Aristotle, from "The Nature of Art" In this week’s reading, a specific chapter of the Aristotle excerpt in “The Nature of Art” stood out to me amongst the rest.   In the sixth chapter of The Poetics, Aristotle addresses what defines a poem as a tragedy in comparison to other forms of poetry.   Aristotle believes that tragedies are the most critiqued form of poetry, and therefore follow specific guidelines to be classified as such.   Aristotle discusses the six elements that make a tragedy what it is: plot structure, character, style, thought, spectacle, and lyric poetry.   These elements are important because it makes a tragedy into a story that depicts the character’s struggle against despair not just for himself but for the civilization itself in a very dramatized or extravagant way.   Another criterion that tragedies should follow is that the setting stays static, or changes very little.   Unlike epic...