Mike Mallory cites William's observation (below) and comments:
> "The message about reinvention with recollection is important. I believe
> this is particularly true with our memories of artworks."
>
Indeed this is true of all the sights and sounds we are exposed to. "When you
hear any sound, this pullulating lump of links retrieves its unruly
associations with the sound -- a bank of feelings, thoughts, images, that's
constantly
morphing like a writhing cloud."
That, combined with with the fact that our receiving apparatuses all differ,
implies that EVERYONE's "aesthetic experience" is "unique", whether it's the
experience when we look at a painting, a poem, a play, or whatever. If we
agree
the "meaning" to each of us of a play is the flood of notion it occasions in
our individual minds, then to speak of "THE CORRECT MEANING" of Hamlet or
Gatsby is absurd.
And when William reasonably says, "any experience is too complex to
> be set up as a mechanistic process," it implies to me that trying to
"understand" an "aesthetic experience" by examining the mechanistic processes
of our
neurons is futile.
In The New Yorker of July 28,2008, there's a piece about a neurologist's
study of "inspiration/insight" ("The Eureka Hunt"). He gets excited when he
observes that the neural activity in a certain specific part of the brain is
heightened as we focus on a problem. At best we might say that tells us WHERE
the
insight is being born, but it tells us nothing the specific neural why's and
how's.
However, then we are even deprived of the "where" as he emphasizes the entire
cortical net needs to come into play. Where The New Yorker is most
interesting is when it points out such things as this (though it's nothing
very new):
insight tends to arrive during "relaxation", when we are not "thinking about"
the problem -- e.g. when we're taking a shower, or just sitting in a subway
being carried along. But when he does this he is, in effect, talking about our
conscious state. "Put the problem aside for a while; go do something else,
something not cerebral." I like the story (which I read elsewhere) of the
physicist whose Nobel Prize inspiration came to him during a long car drive.
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "William Conger" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Subject: Re: an aesthetic experience and science
>
>
> >
> > I can't give you mileposts for my "experience". I can't even relate my
> > experience the same way twice because, like everyone else, I reinvent my
> > experiences with each recollection. And any experience is too complex to
> > be set up as a mechanistic process. Nevertheless, my comment was clear
> > enough in suggesting that. a., my human brain has genetically and evolved
> > preferences for apprehending information and b., I happen to know a lot
> > about art, its history and practices, to say nothing of a decades long
> > acquaintance with the artist whose work I saw and wrote about in my post.
> > These two conditions help to make my "aesthetic" experience unique and
> > helpful to my basic preferences for newness.
>
>
>
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