Empirical reality
Governing principle
Aesthetic identity
Artworks function as afterimages of empirical experience. The larger the experiential base, the more aesthetic possibilities manifest. Such experience need not all be operative in conscious awareness, but also can accrue from unformed sensation arising from engagement.
“There is no aesthetic refraction without something being refracted; no imagination without something imagined.” – Theodor W. Adorno
Categorical scheme
Definitely stated
Progress stage
The passage of time is inscribed in the details of a viscerous building edifice. There are aspects of actualities which both restrict thought and stimulate imagination.
“The accurate expression of the final generalities is the goal of discussion and not its origin.” – Alfred North Whitehead
Narrowly focused
Light source
Indication
The sunlight lines-up and animates the otherwise ordinary.
“Human life is driven forward by its dim apprehension of notions too general for its existing language.” – Alfred North Whitehead
Conveying things
Leaning over the
Portals of consciousness
The late afternoon sunlight highlights an architectural detail in the city. To us, things are what they are as they are perceived, not as they are in themselves.
“Some other faculty than the intellect is necessary for the apprehension of reality.” – Henri Bergson
All in my eyes
Spark in the eve
Sustain itself
Colored lights and reflections adorn an intimate urban edifice.
“A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and goes to bed at night and in between does what he wants to do.” – Bob Dylan
Field of regard
Prospective viability
Visual aspect
A concern with small, perhaps trivial details is sometimes the direct result of observational proximity. Of course, it might also be possible that an inability to focus on important details of a situation comes from a fixation on the big picture.
“The only thing you sometimes have control over is perspective. You don’t have control over your situation. But you have a choice about how you view it.” – Chris Pine
Elaborately adorned
Renaissance design
Illustrious past
Rumored to be haunted by several ghosts, the Bentley Hotel features a magnificent lobby. For some unknown reason, the current management promulgates rules that limit photography. Specifically, they stipulate that dedicated cameras cannot be used, while cell phones cameras can. I suppose they think cell phones can only produce lousy, unusable images.
“Instead of causing us to remember the past like the old monuments, the new monuments seem to cause us to forget the future.” – Robert Smithson
Prime spot
Over the top
Easy access
Unity involves the connexity of things, an interdependence and interrelationship between and among particular individuals elucidated into some coherence of understanding. The choice of emphasis is how the infinite manages its concentration of attention.
“There is no reason to hold that confusion is less fundamental than is order.” – Alfred North Whitehead
Intrinsic notion
Merely objective
Reciprocal concurrence
Sensibilities heighten in the pre-evening when walking around an unfamiliar city for the first time. Under such enchanting circumstances, aesthetic intuition itself becomes absorbed in the objective experience.
“The highest consummation of natural science would be the complete spiritualizing of all natural laws into laws of intuition and thought.” – Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling
Rigorous description
Periodic generalization
Matter of expediency
Aesthetics can access a discriminating domain of experience that penetrates the camouflage of rationality.
“Anyone who has begun to think, places some portion of the world in jeopardy.” – John Dewey