Re: [microsound] return of metaphysics

[Ian Andrews <i.andrews@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

tasty radishwrote:

> 
> 
> "interesting point.. please consider that beauty,
> understood as an harmonic construction of the whole,
> occurs as a mechanism to eliminate those parts not
> fitting into this concept. it causes oppression and
> exclusion. the root of it all may be the equalization
> of beauty and truth, already present in platos
> thinking, and still alive today... its the never
> ending return of  that metaphysical idea that there
> has to be a good, true and beautiful whole that gives
> sense to its parts. through the centuries a lot of
> people tried to work against this normative
> concept..postmodernism claimed its death...with little
> success..

True. However, the separation of beauty from truth and goodness began with
the onset pf modernity when integrated culture and life divided into
separate spheres of aesthetics, ethics and logic (truth only cognition).
Kant was thus able to examine beauty as distinct from truth, as a judgement
of taste within the autonomous domain of aesthetics. The aesthetic category
of beauty, according to Kant is a judgement without interest or concept.
Judgements relating to the beautiful require a disinterestedness towards the
aesthetic object. It is also a requirement that they be universal.
Kant describes two categories of aesthetic judgement in his Third Critique:
the beautiful and the sublime. The sublime, according to Kant is the feeling
we get when we are confronted with grand features of the natural world
(mountains, chasms, volcanoes, etc.), a feeling of awe and insignificance on
the part of the viewer against such grandeur. For Adorno the reception of
great works of modern art (including music) comes to resemble the reception
previously reserved for the sublime in nature.
In post-modernism, with Lyotard, the sublime finally replaces the idea of
the beautiful and moves towards chaos.
With Derrida, however, links Kant's idea of the sublime to that which
exceeds presentation: the colossal. Here the sublime leads to the
unconditional (gift without return or profit).

> isn?t an "aesthetics of failiure" a concept opposed to
> that of "beauty".. if we use failiure to construct
> just another homogenous structure - wouldn?t it be
> easier to keep the old one?
> to define our "postmodern" aesthetics we should think
> of concepts based on divergence, not beauty... "
> 

The "aesthetics of failure" Fluxus, conceptual art, and what we might refer
to as a "post-modern aesthetics" all have their roots in the work of Marcel
Duchamp. Duchamp's readymades were not chosen according to a position which
opposed beauty, rather they were, according to Duchamp, chosen according to
a criteria which was anesthetic: neither beautiful nor ugly. In this
movement aesthetic values recede to the background and "context" is brought
to the foregroud. This, however did not stop them from being appreciated as
"beautiful objects." Many of Duchamp's colleges remarked on the inherent
beauty of the urinal, bottlerack, etc. much to Duchamp's disappointment.

> beautifully said! ;)  .  (perhaps there can be a new
> almost monstorous beauty born from the break from the
> whole, as that breaks open, akin to kierkegard's sorta
> wild sense of the cosmos-God)

the sublime perhaps?
> 
> question regarding aesthetics of failure-> do folks
> find that this sensibility is romantic?  I do at
> times, and think that when it goes this route, it is
> pretty conventional activity (in so far as it what it
> triggers or opens up in terms of dimensions at a
> perceptual level).
> -andrew
> 
> 
> 
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