THINQon : Aesthetic considerations

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rhea nödel

Aesthetic considerations

Latest Post: December 13, 2011 at 9:00 PM

11 followers

It's the age of the internet. So are aesthetic considerations still a purview of bourgeois privilege?

Here's what brought this up:
An internet forum I have been a member of for several years was recently upgraded, and in the process the look changed dramatically. So much in fact that I find myself unable to go there without feeling upset. Previously the over-all colour was a soothing sage green; now it's different shades of grey, with some accent bars - very corporate lower management office. It's so depressing.
The thing that turns it into an issue though, is that the some persons seem to think there is something pathological about attaching this much importance to aesthetics that I would let it get in the way of going to a site that, I freely admit, I miss terribly. It has been suggested I need to go on psych meds for this problem, although that seems to just be the standard solution for those who function well on them.

Is it really so outlandish that I wouldn't want to spend my free time in a place I wouldn't want to work in, but for pay I'd suck it up?
I don't feel that it's crazy at all, but I have felt that my preferences could be judged as elitist, and certainly - having preferences at all is so not zen. That does give me a little twinge of self-judgement. I tell myself that it should not matter, but the desolation I feel when am exposed to this aesthetic is not worth it. It feels like hours standing on line at a bank, waiting in airport lounges.

Coincidentally my daughter and I recently went to a high school tour at a place with seriously interesting offerings. And yet - after touring the premises my daughter is not interested, and I can understand why. The place was beige with accents and poorly fluorescently lit. I would shrivel there, no matter the course offerings. The school at the top of her list not only has an array of interesting course offerings, but also a colourful and stimulating environment. Interestingly, one of their offerings is an award winning business program, that meets in a room set up just like a real office, decorated pretty much in the look I object to so much in my hobbyist forum. Both of them are public schools, and I am not certain how funding works for them, but obviously their philosophy is different when it comes to aesthetics.

In the case of physical structures and space, financial considerations can affect the possible very much. When it comes to the internet, I don't think that colour costs more than grey, although putting colours together certainly takes a bit more thought in either case. Any fool can put together an array of greys and add a single other colour without any risk of being offensive except to the occasional outlier such as myself. I suppose, when one has to hire a designer to put colours together, then colours become a privilege, maybe bourgeois even.

Edna Stern tagged this post as Insightful.

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Mia Vialti

November 21, 2011 at 8:08 PM

67 followers

Hey,
it's a great question. I'm also someone who reacts very strongly to aesthetics in my environment, so I sympathize entirely (both about the site and the school).
What kind of nut suggests medication for aesthetic sensitivity? Seriously.

Though I do think there's something interesting going on with aesthetics in the age of the internet. I'll try to think through this aloud, by analogy, though am not yet sure where it will take us.

For the moment, instead of images consider words.
We're certainly in an age where the verbal matters tremendously. I was talking with a friend the other day about Esther Perel's book on erotic intelligence, which apparently makes the point that we've become almost fixated on expressing ourselves and our emotions through language to the exclusion of, say, movement or in many cases, touch. That is, we somehow feel that to share our emotions is first and foremost to verbalize them, and thus that intimacy is something which is almost exclusively the domain of language. Even sex is something which our culture endlessly, perhaps obsessively talks about (note: this is not an attempt to accurately summarize Perel).

I find this an interesting constellation of ideas, which I think relates back to your original question as follows. Our obsession with words/text is, I think, mirrored in a kind of hypersensitivity to aesthetics and images, in this internet age of ours. Constantly we're bombarded by images which mediate our relation to our bodies, our sexuality, our feelings, our wants etc etc. But they are images which are in many ways incomplete. When we look at a picture of a beautiful resort, we don't get to feel the sun on our skin, smell the scent of magnolias or hear the roar of the sea. Most of the body doesn't have access to what's being transmitted and so we don't notice how the floor is too cold, the couch is the wrong texture or the wrong scent; all of our profound ability to perceive is pushed into color, design, proportion etc.

How does this ultimately affect our interaction with the real world? Would be interesting to try to figure this out. I tried to say something about the way it affects our looking at people here (that is as still images vs figures in motion).

Books Discussed

Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence
by Esther Perel

Reply to: or

rhea nödel

November 24, 2011 at 12:54 PM

11 followers

Thank you for your response, Mia. The fact that you "got it" has me so excited I'm having trouble taming the jumble of thoughts and feelings into words. I do love words too, but they have a way of truncating other experiences at times. Just to keep the verbal volume down sometimes requires excising a small slice of experience to address, disregarding all else it is connected to.

The connections and parallels you draw are interesting in light of the fact that I do think of my "affliction" as a cultural dissonance of sorts, and very much connected to sensuality. What you refer to - sensual experience - seems to in fact be sadly secondary in many people's lives. It may be an odd thing to say, but I think people value convenience over sensuality; but then again it may be odd that I don't, since I am just as tired as they are. Yet I think of sensual experience as a form of nutrient that keeps me going. In the culture that surrounds me, it seems that sensuality is regarded mostly as an attribute to sex - sort of like an added flavour. To me sensual experience is in the everyday mini peaks of pleasure I can get from certain smells, the sensation of clothes on my skin, the observation of a cat stretching, the play of light, the flavour of a tomato, the feel of a fountain pen moving across paper, warm sand under bare feet, etcetera, etcetera. Sex is good too, but regarding sex as the only source of or purpose for sensuality is so . . . sad. I don't really think it does much for the sex either when the senses are not accustomed to usage. I am looking forward to reading Esther Perel's book - the title is so apt.

One of the things I wonder about in connection with this, and colour in particular, is whether others are affected and unaware, or whether there are people who are simply not affected by the colours that surround them. Only sounds and odours are similarly pervasive, and I think people are more conscious of them.
Also - what about one's particular sensate capabilities? We all have senses we favour, and some of us can't use some of them at all (deafness, blindness, neuropathy). I do know that nobody else I personally know is nearly as particular about colour, although, now that I think about it, my siblings and my father - they can agonize over hues for hours also. Now I'm stumped. Is this nature or nurture? Was there never much choice (genetics), or did my family ruin my capacity to enjoy drab ugliness?

Mia Vialti tagged this post as Insightful.

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Mia Vialti

In response to rhea nödel

November 28, 2011 at 7:24 PM

67 followers

:-)

and in response to your last paragraph: Surely there must be some amount of unlearning? I don't believe that so many people innately dislike vegetables, for instance. Would people really prefer cheetos if they remembered the taste of fennel roasted in the oven, pan-fried endives, perfectly ripe tomatoes still smelling of the vine? And yet you can feed a person who's been eating mainly cheetos such things, and they won't immediately be able to taste them the way we would. I suspect the process of becoming dead to the world is a long one.

But that said, you can't be alert to everything; perhaps, as you hint, most of the time we have to choose where to specialize. I know people who are extremely musically sensitive, can practically hear through walls and are in tune to sounds of all kinds, but are not as sensitive to color. And of course it is possible to be a painter and be tone-deaf (but not deaf to all kinds of tones). Whether this is physical, environmental or personal is hard to say. I feel like the quality of looking is something learned: not necessarily learned from other people, but certainly learned over time -- no?