This is entry #78 in our ongoing 100 Philosophers, 100 Artworks, 100 Words Series.
Continue readingOlivier Berggruen on Picasso
Mobile Games and Netflix Binges: Why We Should Encourage Easy Entertainment in Hard Times
What follows is a guest post by Dieter Declercq (University of Kent).
The ongoing pandemic poses many challenges to our mental health and wellbeing. Can aesthetics help us out?
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Errol Lord on Kathleen Graber
This is entry #77 in our ongoing 100 Philosophers, 100 Artworks, 100 Words Series.
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Polite Conversations: Philosophers Discuss the Arts
What follows is a guest post by Brandon Polite (Knox College).
In my YouTube series, Polite Conversations: Philosophers Discuss the Arts*, I interview philosophers about their work in aesthetics and the philosophy of art. We typically discuss a particular journal article or public philosophy piece (including some pieces from Aesthetics for Birds), diving into their views and exploring their implications for anywhere from 15 to 40 minutes. The aims of this series are twofold. The first is that I want to show off the cool and innovative work that’s happening in the field of aesthetics right now, both to the wider philosophical community and to the general public. There is some really amazing work being done in our field, and more people should know about it!
The second aim is pedagogical. Getting to see philosophers doing philosophy together can be a really eye-opening experience for students. To that end, these videos can be used as a way to deepen your students’ insights into a text you’ve assigned them to read, which is how I use them. Alternatively, one or more could be used in place of readings if, say, they’re too advanced for an introductory-level course. I have painstakingly edited the captions—including sometimes highlighting key terms and phrases—to make them accessible to those who want or need them. As teaching tools, the videos are compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act.
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Ruth Chang on Judit Reigl
This is entry #76 in our ongoing 100 Philosophers, 100 Artworks, 100 Words Series.
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What’s So Bad About Digital Blackface?
What follows is a guest post by Nicholas Whittaker, PhD candidate in philosophy at CUNY Graduate Center.
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On The Record: An Audio Professional’s Take on Vinyl
What follows is a guest post by musician and recording engineer Michael Connolly. It is a response to an earlier piece that argues for the superiority of vinyl over digital audio.
As a long-time recording engineer and musician, I read Tony Chackal’s post “Spin Me Round: Why Vinyl is Better than Digital” with great interest. The analog-digital debate in audio is a longstanding one, and while it is unlikely to be resolved anytime soon, I thought I might be able to offer some background as a longtime audio professional and musician. Recordings are a beautiful mix of technical and aesthetic concerns, and this post will attempt to tease out how to navigate these two framings of music recording, especially with regard to the often-oversimplified distinction between analog and digital recordings.
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What Really Went Wrong at ‘Reply All’: Norms for a New Medium
What follows is a guest post by Joshua Habgood-Coote, honorary research fellow at the University of Bristol.
Why are non-fiction podcasts so addictive? Why are their stories so persuasive? Part of the answer lies in the directness, intimacy, and richness of solely aural media. But even amongst purely aural media, podcasting seems to have a special grip on listeners. The seductive power of non-fiction podcasting means that when shows get things wrong, their mistakes tend to mislead a large part of their audience. However, because podcasting has yet to be institutionalized, exactly what journalistic norms podcast producers ought to be bound by is up for debate.
Two well-known podcasts—the New York Time’s Caliphate series and the Reply All mini-series on Bon Appétit—recently got into trouble for failures of reporting. The producers of both podcasts framed their responses by appeals to the norms of print journalism, chalking them up to “editorial failings“. But recycling journalistic norms from old media will not give us adequate standards for podcasting. To understand how Caliphate and Reply All have gone wrong, we need to understand how the conventions and function of podcasting have created distinctive forms of media.
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FIVE STRATEGIES FOR ARGUING ABOUT ART ON THE INTERNET
What follows is a co-authored post by Brandon Polite and Matt Strohl. It is a follow-up to an earlier post about online arguments about art here.
Disagreeing about art should be a positive experience. It has the potential to expand our perspective, prompt us to articulate our views more precisely, enrich friendships, and broadly enhance our engagement with works of art. The internet has massively expanded opportunities to engage in disagreement, but has done so in a way that often appears to work against these aims. Characteristically, disagreement about art on the internet is shallow and hostile.
In our previous post, we considered why disagreement about art on the internet is so horrible and unproductive. We argued that the root of the problem is that we are often personally invested in our views about art and that we therefore tend to take certain opposing views as personal attacks. If Jimmy is a passionate Taylor Swift fan and Cynthia tweets that Taylor Swift is a sham artist, Jimmy feels like Cynthia is insulting him. If he posts an angry response to her tweet, it’s not primarily because he believes so strongly that she’s wrong; it’s because he’s defending himself as a Swiftie and lashing out at a Swift Hater. The internet massively expands the scale of opportunities for this sort of interaction and puts us in touch with a huge number of people who we ordinarily wouldn’t discuss art with across a wide range of taste communities. Throw in the disinhibiting effects of online interaction, and it’s a powder keg ready to blow the instant someone posts something testy about The Mandalorian.
In this follow-up post, we suggest a range of strategies for better aesthetic disagreement—ways of avoiding hostile confrontations and instead promoting engaging, illuminating, mutually respectful discourse.
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THE NFT: A WEALTH AND POVERTY OF IMAGINATION
What follows is a guest post by Jack Simpson, and it is one of two pieces we are running on NFTs. See another take on NFTs here.
In recent weeks we’ve seen an exponential rise in discussion around NFTs (non-fungible tokens, for those who’ve missed any of this). In industries ranging from sport to art to music, bets are being made on NFTs being the next big thing. Proponents suggest they can return value to art in digital form by creating an artificial level of scarcity. In music, it has been suggested that they could be transformative for rights, and who gets paid. Sceptics argue that there is no “real” value being created, that NFTs represent yet another piece of crypto hyperbole. First, let’s look at some basics and then at two key areas: One, how could NFTs have an impact on creative work? And two, what are the merits of creating artificially scarce art?
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