Aesthetics assignment

Aesthetics assignment

(1) Describe how a technology or innovation (an example of an innovation would be the development of perspective in painting) has changed our sensory relationship to the world. For example, a medieval peasant would have a different sensory relationship to the world than a business executive in Paris. Their experiences of the flow of time would be distinct. Their sense of the images of their own bodies would be different. How they “see things” in general would be different–not just the things that they see, but the way that they “see things”.

One way to complete this assignment would be to think about how different senses are privileged and diminished by different technologies currently in use (i.e. photography, sound cinema, fighter jets, automobiles, cell phones, stationary cardio equipment at the gym, glass, satellites, etc.) or how different innovations (computer code, painting perspective, virtual reality goggles) have changed your own experience.

You will only be writing about one thing, a technology or an innovation. I only mention the possibility of writing about an ‘innovation’ rather than a material ‘thing’ so that you’ll have more options.

OPTIONAL QUESTION (2) To add a few points to your grade on this assignment (extra credit on this assignment), how does the discussion of aesthetics harken back to our earlier discussion about Plato? These comments don’t necessarily have to relate to the first part of the assignment.

Solution Preview

Introduction
Human beings are believed to have five major senses that are; smell, taste, sight hearing and touch although of late scientists are coming up with more additional senses. These senses behave in different ways when exposed to different environments. Technology which has advanced hugely for the past years has led to privileging or diminishing these senses in one way or the other (Danius, 2002).

(552 words)