In 1995 an Aesthetics and Arts Criticism substrand was included in The Arts Curriculum and Standards Framework document for schools in Victoria, Australia. The researcher believed that in order to implement the new curriculum requirements and cope with the complexities that accompanied the emergence of postmodern art, teachers would need to alter their practice and find strategies for encouraging greater student participation and critical thinking in art room discussions. (For complete abstract open document)

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Western Sydney, 2004. / A thesis presented to the University of Western Sydney, College of Arts, Education and Social Sciences, School of Contemporary Arts, in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, Contemporary Arts. Includes bibliographies. Electronic version minus appendices 2, 3, 4 is also available online at: http://handle.uws.edu.au:8081/1959.7/29745.

'(De)contextualising Buddhist Aesthetics' is a practice-led artistic research project focusing on the interchanging transition between Buddhist and artistic practices. Essentially inspired by the concept of vipassana meditation, I created a series of performances involving repetitive actions centring on the tasks of re-arranging readymade objects into multiple precarious configurations. Many exercises challenge the laws of gravity and other physical limitations of objects, as well as encouraging the learning experience through the process of trial and error. During the course of mindful observation of the performing body and objects, the mental state gradually gains moments of stillness and silence, which approach the meaning of emptiness (suññata) in Buddhism. Repeated failures generate intermittent feelings of exhaustion and disappointment, which naturally become part of the progress, and can be personally used to develop insight into the notions of impermanence and the non-self derived from dhamma (Buddhist teachings). The video and photography documentations were edited and altered to generate a visual experience that echoes my thoughts and feelings developed during the proceedings; these moving images later inspired other series of hand-made artworks, including collages, drawings and paintings on paper and canvas, exhibited as part of the installations. Various techniques were applied so these objective components resonate a comparative experience of uncontrollability and controllability: dynamic and stillness, fast pace and slow rhythm, abstract and representation. Some two-dimensional pieces are transformed to three-dimensional and their displays keep changing from location to location, and from time to time, in conjunction with an unstable state of the mind. All artworks were created in various formats and interrelate and inform each other. They act together as evidence of the endless journey of artistic learning, which also mirrors the concept of self-learning in Buddhist meditation.

Em meio às distintas orientações que atribuem ao termo paisagem um variado conjunto de acepções, este trabalho disserta sobre a paisagem como experiência estética da natureza e tem como objetivo promover a identificação desta associação em um contexto específico, a obra Viagem pelo Brasil, de Carl Friedrich von Martius e Johann Baptiste von Spix, naturalistas que integraram a Missão Austríaca e percorreram o território brasileiro entre os anos de 1817 e 1820. Baseada em conceitos teóricos que compreendem a paisagem enquanto vivência e representação sensíveis da natureza, esta pesquisa versa sobre os parâmetros que justamente permitem compreender a experiência paisagística no âmbito da sensibilidade, ocupando-se, durante o trajeto que nos conduz ao texto de Martius e Spix, de demais questões sintonizadas com o ideário dos viajantes e, sobretudo, com a experiência estética da natureza. Neste caso, igualmente discorremos sobre a paisagem enquanto gênero pictórico, o pensamento estético-científico e demais aspectos relativos às questões propriamente estéticas vigentes entre os séculos XVIII e XIX, estendendo tanto a compreensão sobre a maneira como consideramos a paisagem no presente estudo quanto sua expressão no referido relato de viagem. Finalmente, destacamos que este trabalho não somente oferece subsídios ao entendimento da paisagem como um acolhimento sensível da natureza, mas também evidencia os desdobramentos dessa relação, tangenciando a essência da experiência paisagística circunscrita nos domínios da estética, relacionada à conformação de unidades que, contudo contidas em limites precisos, irrompem nas dimensões ilimitadas do mundo natural. / Among the different orientations that attach to the term landscape a diverse set of meanings, this work discusses the landscape as aesthetic experience of nature and aims to promote the identification in a specific context, the book Journey in Brazil written by Carl Friedrich von Martius and Johann Baptiste von Spix, naturalists who joined the Austrian Mission and traveled along the brazilian territory between the years 1817 and 1820. Based on theoretical concepts that comprise the landscape as a sensitive living and representation of nature, this research runs upon the parameters that allow us to understand the landscape experience in the field of sensibility, occupying, during the course that leads us to the text of Martius and Spix, with other issues that deal with the ideas of travelers and mainly the aesthetic experience of nature. In such case, we also describe the landscape as a pictorial genre, the aesthetic and scientific thought and different aspects related to other themes valid between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, extending the understanding of the way we consider the landscape in this study and its expression in the selected travel report. Finally, we emphasize that this work not only contributes to the understanding of the landscape as a sensitive host of nature, but also highlights the consequences of this relationship, touching the essence of the landscape limited in the fields of aesthetic experience, related to forming units which, however contained in precise limits, erupt in unlimited dimensions of the natural world.

For me, a memory is the thought of a feeling. Feeling, in this case, is the appreciable radiation of sensory emanating from all objects and persons in a given moment of time. “All thought, like all feeling, is a relationship between one human being and another human being or certain objects which form a part of his universe” (Astruc). Be it an instance of attraction to another person, a place, a creation, an object, or purely an aesthetic pleasure, said instance will become ingrained as a part of an aggregation of moment-to-moment experiences that form an individual’s universe and lifetime of perceptions. Through film, I hope to give a visual tangibility for such feelings, a replayable, and relatively more permanent, representation. It’s a process similar to the way a headstone memorializes a life. A few words in stone could never measure up to the present time of actually living, but this is because they are not comparable. In much the same way, a synthesized montage of images cannot be compared to a memory, but should be used as way to experience the memory in a new way.

Analytic ethics often neglects the exploration and appreciation of morality as it is actually practised on a day-to-day basis. But by looking at how, in a practical sense, we are able to interact with others in a morally appropriate way we can construct a compelling picture of what some of our most pervasive obligations are. This thesis takes such an approach through the concept of understanding – understanding essentially taken here to involve those processes involved in detecting and correctly responding to beings typically possessing inherent moral significance. In the first two chapters ‘understanding' and the understanding approach are themselves explicated, and placed in the context of several other related approaches in the English-speaking tradition – Adam Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments, Nel Noddings' ethics of care and Richard Hare's preference utilitarianism. This approach is then used to provide us with an alternative idea about what our moral reasoning suggests to be of fundamental ethical significance, and of what kinds of activity morality recommends to us. The activity explored in most detail here is that of engaging with fiction – or more broadly, fictive imaginings. While understanding shows us that fictional characters and events themselves cannot have an inherent moral valence or significance, it also shows us when and how it is possible and appropriate to ethically assess fictive engagement, be it as creator or consumer. This is seen after exploring how and in what ways our moral understanding can be appropriately applied to and exercised by fictions at all, and why fiction should be of particular interest to the understanding agent, looking at the work of Martha Nussbaum, Jenefer Robinson, Peter Lamarque and others on aesthetic cognitivism. Ultimately this leads us to discern a minimal ethical constraint on our interpretation of fiction and art in general, further proving understanding's usefulness.

A presente pesquisa, de natureza teórico-filosófica, argumenta descritivamente a teoria estética do filósofo americano John Dewey, em função do seu chamado \"princípio de continuidade\", próprio do sistema filosófico deweyano como um todo. Nessa empreitada, privilegiou-se o recorte da continuidade entre o estético e o científico, ou entre valor e investigação enquanto característica essencial de tal teoria estética. Na observação dos pressupostos filosóficos gerais do filósofo, verificou-se que sua estética se estabelece, necessariamente, em continuidade ao método experimental das ciências naturais, consolidando proposições características essenciais de sua teoria da arte: Dewey crê na supremacia da contingência do processo que é a própria natureza, contínua, cumulativa, em sentido amplo, o que justifica que o ideal deva deixar de ser contemplativo para se converter num instrumental operativo, ou seja, um método experimental em virtude do meio; assim sendo, a estética deweyana deve ser compreendida, principalmente, em seu caráter investigativo, ou seja, em continuidade à ciência; Dewey rejeita os dualismos filosóficos, a metafísica e a epistemologia tradicionais; logo, sua estética desconsidera igualmente qualquer \"transcendental\" ou \"transcendente\" em termos clássicos; portanto, a arte ou estética, seja ela ato expressivo ou cultura, se daria entre diversos ritmos contínuos, nunca dualistas ou hierárquicos, no sentido da busca de um ideal Absoluto. Segundo a estética de Dewey, o valor reside precisamente no ritmo próprio do processo por exemplo: entre tensão e harmonia, comum e extraordinário, real e ideal etc. Dessa articulação ativa entre os vários aspectos em continuidade é que surgiria o ato expressivo, pela experiência singular imaginativa, e a cultura como um todo, mediante a comunicação. / The present theoretical-philosophical research argues descriptively about the aesthetic theory of the american philosopher John Dewey, in regards to the principle of continuity\" within Dewey\'s philosophical system as a whole. Bearing that in mind, the continuity of the aesthetic and the scientific were focused, as well as value broadly conceived and knowledge viewed as a scientific approach, and as the essential feature of Dewey\'s aesthetic theory. Thus, through the observation of the philosophers general assumptions, it has been verified that his aesthetics is necessarily established in continuity with experimental methods of natural sciences, which consolidates a few of the essential features propositions of his art theory: Dewey\'s supreme belief in the contingent of the process, which is continuous, cumulative, and broadly conceived as nature itself, implies that the ideal must cease to be contemplative and thus become instrumental and operative, which means it should become an experimental method in virtue of the environment. Therefore: Dewey\'s aesthetics must be primarily understood within its investigative character, that is, in its continuity to science; Deweys rejection of traditional metaphysics, epistemology, and philosophical dualisms prevents any classical interpretation of \"transcendental\" or \"transcendent\". Therefore art or aesthetics, as acts of expression or culture, should be continuous to a diversity of rhythms, but never dualistic or hierarchical in the sense of any ideal in pursuit of the Absolute. According to Dewey\'s aesthetics, value resides precisely in the pace of the process itself, such as between tension and harmony, ordinary and extraordinary, real and ideal and so on. From this active articulation between all the aspects of continuity an expressive act would emerge, as the realm of a singular imaginative experience, and of culture as a whole, through communication.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Delaware, 1992. / eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (p. 660-682).

Texte remanié de: Diss.--Freiburg i. Br.--Albert-Ludwigs-Universität, 1986.

The term "primitive art" was used to denote the tribal "art" of those people in Africa, Americas, Asia, Australia and Oceania who were the objects of ethnological or anthro- pological study. As such, it corresponds to the area of so called art that has has often (and unsatisfactory) been called tribal, primitive, aboriginal, native, indigenous or traditional etc. This thesis provides general introduction to some anthropological perspectives on art, and offers variety of approaches to the uneasy concept of art as is defined in our culture. Three case studies show ethnoaesthetic topics (paleolithic rockart, african hairstyles and also tattooing of human bodies in traditional Polynesian cultures).