Aesthetics and the Senses
My understanding of texts began to unravel last week while reading My Mother Was a Computer. I have begun to see the relationship between the text, the work, and perception, which are all shaped by the medium they’re delivered in. The content (the arrangement of letterforms) remains the same, but is not completely consistent as the reader’s understanding is subject to change based on the translation (to/from any language), personal experience, and medium of access. This dialogue rolls into my new perspectives on the “Reader Function”, seen in support and reference to the “Author Function” (as defined by Foucault). I’ll flesh that one out later.
In thinking about the medium of delivery, I went back to an old art school debate. “What is art?” was the subject of many conversations. Of course there was no definition that truly got fleshed out, but there was one thing we could all agree on. Art needs to be sharable. If we back away and see art as “aesthetics”, there are many forms of sharable ideas/concepts/expressions. From 10000 feet (ie. known as a wiki article), we can break down those forms to some general categories:
decorative arts » Craft + Fine Art (2D) + Applied Arts (Graphic Design)
plastic arts » Sculpture (3D) + Industrial Design (?)
performing arts » Theatre, Dance, Music, Opera, Circus..
literature » Novel, Poem, Drama, Short Story
Now, I’ll be the first to admit that this general breakdown is by no means accurate. Dividing an aesthetic experience into appropriate categories runs into all sorts of trouble, but for the sake of argument, I’ll let those be (specifically the mess of the first two categories).
However, even a glance at this list leaves me stumped. In the first three categories, the mediums are implied - metal, wood, air (ie. sound), the body (performance).. but when it comes to literature, the only medium we can glean is paper, paperboard, and (now) code.
Performance Art is accessed through visual and auditory cues. Plastic arts (the ones that can be interacted with), can be experienced in terms of their tactual, thermal, and visual cues. But so far, literature is a distinct sensory experience, dominated by the tactual and motor senses, but processed by the primary visual cortex via the retina.
I’m in the process of exploring what actually happens ‘in your head’ during the reading experience.. but more than anything, I’ve recognized the sensory divide between the aesthetic experience of Reading and Viewing. It borders on the understanding of Active/Passive relationships, but not quite. There is certainly more labor involved in Reading, which aside from the physical work of page turning, is avoided in the mediums of film and performance. But, then again, it’s that very work that makes reading so exceptional. When we have that aesthetic experience, its our world we dream-see, not the director’s. It plays with perception in a completely different sensorial way.
