Dear all, This Thursday, Professor Robin Le Poidevin from the University of Leeds will be talking on "Stereoscopy: Some Aesthetic - and Ontological - Issues" (abstract below).
As usual, we'll meet in the Faculty Board Room from 1-2.30pm. Feel free to bring your lunch. All welcome! Best, Dan. Abstract. With the invention of the stereoscope, photography was able to provide a surprising and vivid way of capturing depth, a phenomenon that delighted Victorian audiences. The experience is still enjoyed today, particularly with the popularity of 3-D cinema. Does it raise interesting, perhaps even distinctive, philosophical issues? This talk looks at a number of questions to do with the relationship between stereoscopy and photography: does the stereoscopic presentation of photographs provide a particularly valuable aesthetic experience (rather than one that's just fun)? How? Does it affect the way we understand depiction, in particular its spatial and causal aspects? What does it suggest about the relationship between photographic realism and what I will call photographic modesty (the tendency of photography to direct us to the object photographed, rather than to the photograph)? Finally, does it cast any light on that most perplexing of aesthetic questions: what, exactly, is the object of aesthetic appreciation? Could it, ultimately, be something only in the mind? -- Daniel Williams PhD Candidate in Philosophy Email: [email protected] Trinity Hall, Cambridge _____________________________________________________ To unsubscribe from the CamPhilEvents mailing list, or change your membership options, please visit the list information page: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEvents List archive: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEventsArchive Please note that CamPhilEvents doesn't accept email attachments. See the list information page for further details and suggested alternatives.
