aesthetics and mobility by ossi naukkarinen

8/11/2019 Aesthetics and Mobility by Ossi Naukkarinen

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Aesthetics and MobilityA Short Introduction into a Moving Field

(From the Journal of Contemporary Aesthetics)

Ossi NaukkarinenABSTRACT

Aesthetics cannot by any means be defined only as philosophy of art. Everything can be approached from an aesthetic standpoint.Aesthetically interesting ways to move about can be found in most everyday situations. Our everyday mobility consists of various ways ofgetting about and sometimes our approach to them is aesthetically colored. !hat we move in different ways and lin" them with aestheticconsiderations of some sort is deeply rooted in our thin"ing. Our bodily e#periences of the world are typically movement e#periences and ourconceptual thin"ing is also built on them$ %e simply cannot ma"e sense of the world without ma"ing use of conceptions of bodily movement.

KEY WR!S

aesthetics mobility bodily e#periences phenomenology theory of mobility

"# An Aesthetic A$$roach to Mobility

&t is widely accepted that aesthetics is a discipline or a point of view that is relevant toalmost every aspect of human activity and cognition. &n principle everything can beapproached from an aesthetic standpoint even in the face of certain ethical or otherrestrictions. !hus there are studies in the aesthetics of painting theatre film musicmathematics chess science advertising sports coo"ing fashion wine law naturearchitecture and even violence to mention 'ust some e#amples. !hey deal with suchuestions as %hat is art %hat ma"es a landscape beautiful and why *ow do peopleuse aesthetic concepts in mathematics and law

&n fact it seems that at the moment most phenomena or fields which for some reason or

another are important in our cultures be it American +ritish Canadian ,utchEstonian Finnish or some other culture are being analy-ed from the aesthetic point ofview. !hus aesthetics cannot by any means be defined as say philosophy of art only.!his ubiuity of aesthetics can be compared to that of politics ethics and many otheraspects of human life.

!he situation can be simplified schematically as follows$


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!his chart reflects the idea that several different traditions in aesthetics as well as ethicssocial sciences economics history etc. can be used in analy-ing or studying such areasof human endeavor as art (with a number of subcategories) science and fashion. Of

course in reality the borders of such categories are not tight and individual scholars donot necessarily respect any institutionali-ed boundaries between academic disciplines. &naddition these categories are not uite comparable to each other$ some are larger andsome smaller/ some can be described with the help of ob'ects important to them whileothers are characteri-ed by their attitude towards various sorts of ob'ects/ some titlesrefer rather clearly to research traditions and others to targets of research/ and some can

be situated in both the hori-ontal and the vertical columns and others not.

&n any case if we tal" about aesthetics only related but still different uestions andanswers are relevant in different areas and applications. Analytic aesthetics of art isdifferent from phenomenological aesthetics of coo"ing. &t is not possible to

systematically analy-e these differences here. &n fact that would mean writing a series ofvery thic" boo"s on different uses and fields of aesthetics a tas" that would be veryinteresting but probably uite impossible for any single individual unless that individualwas a Frederic" Copleston of aesthetics0 All in all there are plenty of possiblecombinations. !here could even be aesthetics of aesthetics.

&t is obvious that aesthetics is now used in a wide variety of conte#ts probably widerand more varied than ever before and many approaches to aesthetic analysis are applieddepending on the occasion or the circumstances. !his is one meaning of the phenomenonoften called 1aesthetici-ation.1 &t is possible that this simply reveals how eager

philosophers social scientists and other scholars are to use this theoretical point of viewin numerous conte#ts perhaps whether or not these conte#ts otherwise actually


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encourage this eagerness. &f not the use of this theoretical point of view is not very well'ustified. +ut on the other hand this may show the ubiuity of the aesthetic attitudeoutside of academic circles$ that a nonacademic nonscholarly aesthetic approach isdeliberately used in many conte#ts that also ma"es academic aesthetic analyses of these

areas relevant and useful. From this standpoint aesthetici-ation might be both ascholarly and a nonscholarly phenomenon.234

&t seems obvious that mobility in its numerous variations is culturally a very importantfield that is naturally connected with many if not most other important fields of culture.!oday more people ob'ects images vehicles pollution information capital and otherthings move more often faster and farther than ever before.

!his is easily shown by comparing the volume of mobility of the contemporary world tothe situation some 56 years bac". &n 3756 there were 58 million cars in the world/ nowthere are more than 566 million and according to some estimates over 966 million. And

people do use them. &n Finland which is fairly typical in this respect the average ofprivate car is driven more than 36 666 "ilometers per year which is over ten times morethan in 3756. !he growth of air traffic is even more astonishing. &n 3756 :; billion

passenger "ilometers were flown by the worlduite the contrary.2:4

As already stated everything can in principle be approached aesthetically and this goesfor mobility as well. +ut is it wise or relevant to do so &s there anything in theintersection of the columns of aesthetics and mobility in the diagram above

%# Where Is Mobile Aesthetics&

!o begin with aesthetically interesting ways to move about can be found in mosteveryday situations. %al"ing is probably the most fundamental way human beings move

about but nowadays it is normally combined with traveling by car bus tram subway orairplane. Our everyday mobility consists of various ways of getting about and
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sometimes our approach to them is aesthetically colored$ we pay attention to howbeautiful ugly fascinating or enthralling a wal" a drive a car or a route is. !his mayaffect our choice consciously or not of the route to our office or of a 'ogging path.

%hat is even more important the fact that we move in different ways and lin" them withaesthetic considerations of some sort is deeply rooted in our thin"ing in our very being.Our bodily e#periences of the world are typically movement e#periences and ourconceptual thin"ing is also built on them. %e simply cannot ma"e sense of the worldwithout ma"ing use of conceptions of bodily movement. ?eorge @a"off and ar"Johnson for e#ample have shown that many of our very basic concepts such as 1up1and 1down1 1forward1 and 1bac"wards1 and 1fast1 and 1slow1 are built on thisfoundation.284%e are bodily moving beings who categori-e mobile e#periences andcharacteri-e our being in the world with concepts derived from mobility in many ways.One important way is the aesthetic approach indicated by our aesthetic choices as wellas by our aesthetic comments and analyses. %hat this actually means is clarified in moredetail in this volume most directly by Jos de ul and Bentti ttnen. &n 1Fromobile Ontologies to obile Aesthetics1 de ul discusses the changes in mobility andimmobility in our cultural traditions in premodern modern and postmodern conte#ts

paying special attention to the role of information and communication technologiestechnologies that strongly transform our daily lives and aesthetic traditions and relate toour bodily mobility in many interesting ways. ttnen deals with the role of mobilityand action in aesthetic e#periences from the point of view of pragmatism.

*owever both our ways of moving and our aesthetic approaches to them developculturally and are connected with our physical bodily being as well as with each other.

As this ma"es the issue very complicated and opens up several possibilities of how todeal with it it is useful to mention a few more specific areas where mobile aesthetics canbe detected.

First even e#pressly stated aesthetic approaches to mobility are not unusual in oureveryday life as is clearly indicated for e#ample by car advertisements. !hey arerelevant here because they tend to epitomi-e what is rather generally e#pected of cars. &nadvertisements cars do not get into accidents or traffic 'ams and they are driven in

beautiful surroundings by handsome drivers. %hat is typically emphasi-ed is how todrive a car how it loo"s and how it feels. &t is clear that advertisements often ma"e useof language and visual representations that indicate that everyday traffic and the vehicles

we use are seen as aesthetically rich phenomena. &t is hoped at least that carsmotorcycles and other vehicles provide aesthetically rewarding e#periences.

Deal driving is not uite the same thing as the vision that advertisements offer us butdriving may also have its aesthetic aspects. !o ta"e a somewhat dubious and e#tremee#ample that also advertisements sometimes refer to we might want to drive fast ta"ecurves and pass other drivers aggressively or 1burn rubber1 when accelerating from adead stop. uch acts whether acceptable or not to others offer strong "inetic visual andauditory e#periences that can be seen as aesthetically interesting. Everyday driving neednot be as e#treme as this to be aesthetically rewarding of course but on such occasionsan aesthetic attitude is often accentuated. &n any event it is obvious that the aesthetics of

driving fast or aggressively is very different from say 1cruising1 slowly or ta"ing atram. !his large area of aesthetic e#perience with its positive and negative aspects has
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been touched upon by many writers including %olfgang achs imi heller and asearly as the 3756s by Doland +arthes briefly in his Mythologies.24&n this volume Gr'Hepnmaa deals with this area in his article 1!he Aesthetics of the Doad Doad Art andDoad !raffic1 on the aesthetics of actual driving or 1being on the road1 and on the

aesthetics of road environments and road art.

&t is noteworthy that imaginary and real traffic live side by side especially in urbansettings. !here we drive cars and other vehicles and see ads selling cars and other

products that are meant for car drivers< eyes and are often even pasted or painted onmoving cars. !he whole is an evermoving traffic system where different aestheticob'ects and approaches mingle. Elsewhere in this special issue Basi Iolhonen


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with it have been analy-ed by %olfgang %elsch in a more polemic manner by ,avid?elernter and by numerous contributors of the 'ournalLeonardo.24&n this volume ofContemporary Aesthetics Jos ,e ul


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Aesthetics# $ro%lems in the $hilosophy o" Criticism. &t also approaches morecontemporary versions of discourse analysis and other conte#ts where one analy-es howaesthetic e#pressions are used. !his however is hardly a separate field but rather a partof all studies in philosophical aesthetics and thus also entirely appropriate for this special

volume of Contemporary Aesthetics.

'# Further (uestions

?iving hints about where mobile aesthetics can be found is a good way to get started andsuggests a number of interesting problems. . !o go further however one has toformulate these problems better. Of course this has already been done to a certain e#tentin the literature mentioned above. *ere & have to settle for as"ing some crucial uestionsand leave it to the rest of the articles to offer some answers.

ome of the problems concerning the aesthetics of mobility are very theoretical(discussed in academic conte#ts mostly) while others are more practical (more li"ely tocome up also in concrete decisionma"ing situations such as city planning). !heyinclude the following among others274$

a) %here and how can aesthetics actually be detected in these conte#ts &n everydaylifemobility or in art that has to do with motion &n tourism *ow is it possible to pinpointthe aesthetic aspects of traffic or information flow &n order to answer such uestionsone has to have a wellformulated philosophical conception of aesthetics or 1theaesthetic1 so nicely referred to in ?erman as das &sthetische. And of course one needsto "now what is meant by mobility or movement as well. *owever this conception does

not have to be a rigorous definition.

!his is one point where various traditions of aesthetics differ from each other andbecause there are several possibilities in proceeding & did not actually define aestheticsat the outset of the article and will not do that now either. One may describe aestheticswith the help of such concepts as e#perience sensuousness art and creativity or throughseveral other candidates and the whole problem might be seen as a linguistic one or assome other type. !here are many ways to s"in the aesthetic cat. %hat is clear is that theaesthetics of aggressive car driving to ta"e one e#ample is rather different from theaesthetics of wal"ing in the forest and the aesthetician must find the best possibleconceptual tools for ma"ing sense of both. !he result however will probably differ

depending on whether one writes in a ar#ist phenomenological feminist or analytictradition or is from +ra-il Japan lovenia or weden. !he aesthetics of mobility li"ethe rest of aesthetics inevitably e#ists in the plural as Iarl ,ahlhaus so perceptivelyobserved in his Musik'sthetik in 3792364. !his is the case even within a single

publication such as issue of Contemporary Aesthetics.

b) Another slightly different uestion is how to deal with different versions of mobileaesthetics in different traditions hould we do so with words %hat "ind of words%ith pictures oving or still pictures %ith secondorder movements

!his methodological uestion does not have a single answer either but it is nevertheless

e#tremely important. &t is uite obvious that conceptual and physical tools have a greatimpact on what we notice in the first place. A microscope shows us different things than
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a telescope and pictures can convey different messages than words. !hey cannot replaceeach other. !raditionally the ma'ority of philosophers of aesthetics have been rathersatisfied with the possibilities provided by words and they have been suspicioussometimes even hostile (is)*)(isother ways of formulating ideas and dealing with

things. Of course this has been uestioned with words mainly0 by such thin"ers asaurice erleauBonty and John ,ewey lately by Joseph @a"off and ar" Johnsonand in a way initially by the founders of modern aesthetics Ale#ander +aumgarten&mmanuel Iant and by many Domantic thin"ers. !hey have emphasi-ed that verballyunarticulated bodily feelings emotions and sensations do have a role in thin"ing anddealing with the world in general.2334

till the basic uestion remains$ %hat is the best way and in which conte#t to deal withaesthetics of mobility both in theory and in the actual e#perience of mobility itself andwhat should the relationship between philosophy and other practices be !his issomething every aesthetician of mobility has to reconsider in each case as this issue ofContemporary Aestheticsdemonstrates uite clearly.

c) !he third uestion has to do with aesthetic valuations. %hat "ind of mobility isaesthetically rewarding %hy !o whom %hen %here And what "ind isunrewarding An aggressive car driver surely has different aesthetic valuations from a

person who prefers to wal" in the forest. &n both cases it is interesting to analy-e whatma"es a way of moving aesthetically attractive. &s it the bodily feeling or somethingelse oreover it is worth pondering where and how this person or a group of peoplehas learned to appreciate this particular way of moving about and what larger worldview or life style his or her valuations are related to. For e#ample what role does

individuality or aiming at harmony with nature play in one


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connected with the oil business.

On a more general level many have been worried about the conseuences of increasedmobility for our very basic conceptions of the world. Especially do we lose our sense of

place by being enthralled by fast ways of moving about And as a conseuence do welose the whole idea of homeL,o we become blind to our physical local environmentseven if we are ultimately dependent on them !hus if we are enchanted by the aestheticsof speed or by the possibilities of communicating with people on the other side of the

planet in real time does this lead us to some sort of placelessness And what happensthen to our very identity uch uestions have been as"ed by Baul Kirilio Christian

Morbergchul- iwon Iwon and Edward . Casey.2384

e) Get another uestion$ &f our aesthetic valuations do have very concrete conseuencescan and should they also be actively and strategically used in city planning for e#ample&f aesthetic considerations motivate us to move in a certain way should that be steeredso that for e#ample the aesthetics of ecologically less harmful ways to move about aresupported rather than some others &f yes how should that be done in practice And ifthat is done would and should aesthetics be subordinated to ecology or not Of coursehere one faces the old problem of the autonomy and nonautonomy of aesthetics now inthe conte#t of mobility combined with ecology a problem that comes up when aestheticsapproaches cultural studies as mentioned above. uch uestions pertaining toenvironmental and socalled applied aesthetics have been addressed by such writers asArnold +erleant Allen Carlson J. ,ouglas Borteous and Gr'H epnmaa.234

f) A separate pro'ect would be to map broadly the history of aesthetics paying special

attention to mobility. *ow and by whom has the aesthetics of mobility been dealt with inthe past whether in academic philosophy of aesthetics in art criticism architecturestudies or in te#ts written by artists %hat can be used from that tradition in analy-ing

present day mobile aesthetics

& have already referred to Doland +arthes John ,ewey and aurice erleauBontywho have written with insights on these matters. any others writing within a variety ofacademic traditions and of different positions of time can only be mentioned here. omeof them have dealt with various uite physical modes of moving about (as have many ofthose mentioned above) in a way that could be of interest to aesthetics. !his is also whymost aspects of "inetics or the branch of mechanics that deals with motion of ob'ects and

masses for e#ample are not relevant in this conte#t. Other wor" that is relevant can byfound in such different writers as %alter +en'amin and his$assagen)+erkwith its noteson"l,neurs the studies of *enri @efebvre Camillo itte and Ievin @ynch on living andmoving in the city/ *enry ,avid !horeau


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motion. *ere it is possible to mention two different subgroups by which the fle#ible ormobile interpretations of truth reality and other philosophically interesting concepts areopposed to idea(l)s where such concepts are seen as fi#ed universal and stable. On theone hand there are the classical and more recent (American) pragmatists such as

%illiam James Charles anders Beirce and John ,ewey as well as Dichard Dorty andDichard husterman whose roots go bac" to Charles ,arwin and Dalph %aldo Emerson.234On the other there are (European) poststructuralists or postmodernists such asJacues ,errida and JeanFranNois @yotard as well as ?illes ,eleu-e and Fli# ?uattariwhose bac"ground lies in thin"ers such as Friedrich Miet-sche and even ichel deontaigne.2394ome of these thin"ers and of others not directly pragmatist or postmodern are dealt with in the articles that follow while others await future treatmentfrom the point of view of mobility.

All in all it cannot be said that the area of mobile aesthetics is totally terra incognita.*owever if one compares this area to many other traditional core areas of aestheticssuch as philosophy of art it is uite evident that the discussion has not been evenremotely as active and productive. !here is much less material and the discussion isoften much less systematic and penetrating.

+ut perhaps that is a good thing. &t may guarantee that the field will "eep on living andmoving for a long time. !he fact that we live in a culture of mobility undoubtedly shapesour aesthetic culture and aesthetic ideas and valuations have an impact on what "ind ofmobility culture we have. !he 'ob of philosophers and other scholars in aesthetics is tofind out what to ma"e of all this. !his special volume of Contemporary Aestheticsshowssome ways to proceed in doing that/ ways that inevitably remain unelaborated in a

general introduction li"e this.

!he articles of this volume are not classified in groups. any of the abovementionedthemes such as traveling roads mobile art wal"ing mobile technology and urbanenvironments are dealt with in several articles and any classification would be highlyarbitrary. !here is a certain order for the te#ts however. !he first te#ts by Jos de ul andBentti ttnen deal with rather large philosophical issues while the uestions becomemore specific towards the end. After the first articles a# Dyynnen and BasiIolhonen


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d8mocrati:ue (Baris$ ?rasset 3776)/ i"e Featherstone Consumer Culture ; $ostmodernism(@ondon!housand Oa"s and Mew ,elhi$ A?E Bublications 377P3773)/ Dichard Florida The !ise o" theCreati(e Class# And 5o


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0 >3 edited by Jo Ann +oydston with an introduction byAbraham Iaplan (Carbondale$ outhern &llinois =niversity Bress 37;9P378)$ aurice erleauBonty

$h8nom8nologie de la perception (Baris$ ?allimard 375)/ @a"off and Johnson 3777/ Ale#ander+aumgarten !e"lections on $oetry. Ale7ander ottlie% aumgarten6s Meditationes philosophicae denonnullis ad poema pertinenti%us translated with the original te#t an introduction and notes by IarlAschenbrenner and %illiam +. *olther (+er"eley and @os Angeles$ =niversity of California Bress375P3985)/ *ans Dudolf chwei-er &sthetik als $hilosophie der sinnlichen Erkenntnis. Eine


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ass./ *arvard =niversity Bress 378337) has ; volumes/ and ,ewey

aesthetics and mobility by ossi naukkarinen

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