RATV 312-01 Spring 2001

Chapter 1:  Applied Media Aesthetics

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Applied Media Aesthetics Definition

Considers art and life as mutually dependent and essentially interconnected.  Aesthetics is a process in which we examine anumber of media elements, such as lighting and picture composition, and our perceptual reactions to them.  The criteria of applied aesthetics let you employ formative evaluation – you can evaluate the relative communication effectiveness of the aesthetic production factors step-by-step while the production is still in progress.

Applied aesthetics and contextualism

Emphasizes that art is not an isolated object hidden away in a museum and that aesthetic experiences are very much part of everday life.

Contextualism, or contextualistic aesthetics, serves as a convenient frame of reference for the discussion of applied media aesthetics.  “Perceptual incidents”

Various contextual fields of applied media aesthetics:  light, space, time/motion, and sound.  Three major points are:  stabilizing the environment, selective seeing, and the power of content.

Context and Perception

We perceive our world in terms of contextual relationships.

Humans tend to group certain event details into patterns and simple configurations, perceive the size of an object as constant regardless of how far away we are from it, and see the same color regardless of the actual color variations when part of the color ofject is in the shade.

Figure-ground principle:  we order our surroundings into foreground figures that lie in front of or move against, a more stable background.

Selective seeing/Selective Perception

Context – establishes a code that dictates, at least to some extent, your perception and how you interpret what you see.

The medium as structural agent

Marshall McLuhan “the medium is the message,” the media occupy an important position not only in the distribution of the message but also in shaping the message. 

Encoding (production) process, Decoding (reception) process

 Applied media aesthetics:  method

The method of presenting applied media aesthetics is an inductive one based on theories and practices developed by the Russian painter and teacher Wassily Kandinsky.  Build a scene by combining the “graphic elements”  the fundamental building blocks of painting, such as points, lines, planes, color, texture, and so forth.

 Fundamental Image Elements

(1)     light and color

(2)     two-dimensional space

(3)     three-dimensional space

(4)     time/motion

(5)     sound 

Encoding -- An idea needs to be molded so that it fits the mediums technical as well as aesthetic production and reception requirements.

 The basic purpose of applied media aesthetics is to clarify, intensify, and interpret events for a large audience.

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01.15.01

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