Studi di estetica

Introduction

Zhuofei Wang — 2024-12-01

Contingency has an essential importance in the world, and its investigation can be really useful for the better understanding of many aspects of art and aesthetics too. Aesthetic contingency is quite paradoxical: artistic activity seems to contain both design, necessity, rules, pre-planned aspects and at the same time contingent elements, chance, accidents and unforeseen results. While creation always contained some degree of chance, the aesthetic potential of contingency started to become an important topic, and one to be explicitly investigated in the twentieth century. This introduction surveys some of the positions in the theoretical discussions about contingency with its relationship with aesthetics.

Elaborating contingency

Zoltán Somhegyi — 2024-12-01

How does contingency “appear” and how can it be “used” in the creation of artworks? What are the aesthetic and art historical implications of elaborating the possibilities of randomness in art? In this article I investigate these questions with the help of a series of artworks. Therefore, I am not pursuing a mere theoretical survey, i.e. scrutinising just the ideas (both the older conceptualisation and more recent theories) concerning the concept of contingency. Instead of such an ideahistorical approach, here I am more interested in observing the question from the point of view of the actual practice and practitioners, hence what we can learn from the inspection of the works of art themselves. For this, first I examine some exciting aspects and questions around art, aesthetics and contingency, with the help of a piece by Alma Heikkilä. After that I provide an overview of some of the most exciting examples of the manifestation and “use” of randomness in art, ranging from the Renaissance to the 21st century. This will then help us, towards the end of the paper, to identify some curious patterns in the development of the occurrence of contingency and of the artistic “handling” of chance in art practices as well as to understand better the creative significance and aesthetic consequences of elaborating randomness.

The aesthetics of contingency

Thorsten Botz-Bornstein — 2024-12-01

This article is divided into two parts. The first part demonstrates the importance of contingency in art. There is a strong link between contingency and creativity, and it is possible to say that in art this contingency-dependent creativity makes art more “real”. In this first part the “creative contingency” or art model will also transferred to the idea of the “art of life” as a mixture of ethics and aesthetics. The second part analyzes the capacity of algorithms to produce aesthetic expressions by following necessary rules and by excluding contingency. Is this cognitive model compatible with artistic creativity?

Autorialità, contingenza e polifonia nell’estetica di Michail Bachtin

Giordano Ghirelli — 2024-12-01

The notion of contingency seems to apply only improperly to storytelling. From Aristotle to Peter Brooks, the efficacy of a plot is in fact measured by its ability to bind the initial and final situation through a series of events connected according to the principle of causality. Within the plot, each element does not have value in itself, but for the link it has with the preceding and subsequent elements; what at first seemed sensational and fortuitous at a retrospective glance is thus functional to the whole and is cloaked in the veil of necessity. In this contribution, we will see in Mikhail Bakhtin’s concept of the polyphonic novel a way of making contingency coexist with the narrative arrangement of events.

The excessive contingency

Enea Bianchi — 2024-12-01

This article explores the concept of “excessive contingency” through an analysis of the Situationist International’s practice of the dérive and Jean-Luc Nancy’s philosophy of exposition. It argues that contingency, rooted in our fundamental being-with-others, exceeds traditional subject-object divisions. In line with Improvisation Studies scholars Dan DiPiero and Alessandro Bertinetto, Situationist dérive is examined as a “deliberate” engagement with urban contingency that subverts functionalist approaches to space. Nancy’s ontology of exposition further illuminates how contingency is integral to our relational existence. By bringing these perspectives together, the article develops an expanded understanding of contingency as fundamentally tied to our exposition to and entanglement with the world. This “excessive contingency” moves beyond binary oppositions to reveal the inherently relational and open-ended nature of experience. The analysis offers new insights into urban practices, social relations, and the ontological significance of contingency, proposing a reimagining of our relationship to urban spaces, others, and the unfolding of contingent experience itself.

“We consider incomplete a history that was formed on the non-perishable traces”

Linda Bertelli — 2024-12-01

This essay explores the intersection of contingency and aesthetics in contemporary artistic practices, challenging the historical dichotomy between reason and fact, and between necessity and contingency. Through the lens of Italian feminist thought, particularly the work of Carla Lonzi, it examines how contingency can redefine aesthetic gestures and suggests the concept of “dynamic liminality” as the conceptual operator of such redefinition. The study identifies four main components of “dynamic liminality” – instability, repetition, impermanence, and unproductiveness – showing how contemporary artists like Nao Bustamante, Marcel Broodthaers, Chiara Camoni, Lucia Cristiani, Peter Fischli & David Weiss, Laura Grisi, and Beatrice Meoni embody these concepts. Their works demonstrate the critical and transformative potential of contingency, proposing an aesthetics that embraces transient, unstable, and unproductive elements as essential to artistic expression and cultural critique.

La contingence issue de la nécessité et la nécessité issue de la contingence dans les pratiques improvisées en danse

Alessandra Randazzo — 2024-12-01

If artistic improvisation gives a predominant place to contingency, this contingency cannot be absolute, on pain of depriving improvisation of any technique. This article, by taking the case of dance improvisation, will explore the complex relationships between contingency and necessity, by analyzing how a relative contingency can arise from the external necessity of a given framework of action, and how an inner necessity can result from a contingency understood as a creative condition relative to the Kairos of a situation in the making. These two connections will ultimately be linked to two different approaches to the concept of emergence.

Il caso come problema ontologico negli scritti e nella musica di Iannis Xenakis

Sebastiano Gubian — 2024-12-01

The aim of this article is to outline some traits of Iannis Xenakis’ aesthetics, with reference to his conception of chance, which stands in contrast to both determinism in serial music and the theorists of alea. His elaboration of a stochastic music is here understood not as a mere evolution of compositional techniques, but as evidence of a philosophical necessity, considering chance an ontological problem and resulting in a rejection of the hyper-specialization of the different branches of knowledge. Through a look at his theoretical works, some of his references to pre-Socratic philosophy, but also to Plato and to Husserl’s phenomenology are discussed, and a possible interpretation of his non-positivistic cosmo-ontology through the idea of Wittgenstein’s isomorphism is suggested.

Lo show della vita nella Biotech Art

Dana Svorova — 2024-12-01

Bioart emerges as a response to worrying changes in living forms produced by genetic engineering. Indeed, bioartists focus their attention on artistic exploration of biotechnologies and related ethical issues. Their main goal was to inform the public about dangerous genetic engineering techniques, like cloning, inter- and intraspecies experiments, reproductive technologies, genotype and phenotype reprogramming, hybridization techniques, and many others. The paradox lies in the fact that bioartists, in collaboration with scientists, use the same abovementioned techniques and create in laboratory unique living beings with original aesthetic aspects. The use of living organisms for creative or recreational purposes inevitably causes serious cultural and bioethical debates. In this context emerges the concept of contingency linked with living forms, biotech art, and aesthetic experience.

Artificial Intelligence in art

Mario Verdicchio — 2024-12-01

Artificial Intelligence (AI), especially in its current incarnation of Machine Learning (ML), is an endeavor that is characterized by contingencies of two kinds. Intrinsic contingencies stem from the use of specific computational techniques that seem to decrease the control that human users exert on this technology. Relational contingencies emerge from the interaction of AI with other disciplines and contexts. I conduct an analysis of these contingencies on the backdrop of the visual arts with the aim to shed light on the complex relations between technology and creativity.

Nietzsche et le rythme de la traduction

Eleonora Caramelli — 2024-12-01

The essay aims to examine the concept of translation in Nietzsche’s thinking. Starting from the Gay Science, the article questions the continuity/discontinuity between the argument on translation developed in §83 and the topic of the origin of poetry and of its rhythm dealt with in §84. The paper focuses then on a passage from the introduction to the second edition of Daybreak, which thinks of language on the basis of the rhythm of reading. Through the analysis of paragraph 28 of Beyond Good and Evil, the first part of the paper thinks the practice of translating as a poetics of translation. By reversing the theses apparently upheld in §83 of the Gai savoir, i.e. the translation as violence and domestication, the second part of the paper aims to suggest the way the constellation of translation opens to Nietzsche the room for a radical critique of philosophical language and of German culture.

Objektive Stimmungen vs. psychic states

Sara Borriello — 2024-12-01

This paper focuses on two aspects of Maximilian Beck’s philosophical reflection: his adherence to naive (phenomenological) realism and his claim to the autonomous existence of the affective qualities of the objectual world. Therefore, my contribution will be structured as follows: after a brief overview of Beck’s defence of naive realism (§2), I will attempt to show how, in his opinion, the affective qualities characterizing the world (i.e., the places and things we encounter) are in principle independent of the perceiver, possessing an objectivity of their own. It is pertinent to mention here that Beck calls these affective qualities “objective moods” (objektive Stimmungen) (§3). After that, I will try to illustrate the “externalist” aspects of Beck’s theory of the apprehension of Stimmungen, highlighting its differences from the “projective empathy” theses that were circulating at the time, particularly in the version proposed by Theodor Lipps (§4). In the final section, I will present two arguments that Beck puts forward in support of his theory of the objectivity of the Stimmungen (§5).

Rape or “rape”?

Pietro Conte — 2024-12-01

Although incidents of online sexual assault are becoming increasingly common, the concept of virtual rape still needs critical examination. Contrary to conventional wisdom, I first argue that virtual rape should not be seen as a metaphorical term, let alone an oxymoron. Focusing on the embodied conditions that define presence in immersive environments, I then draw a phenomenologically inspired distinction between physical and bodily to challenge the idea that virtual rape is nothing more than psychological violence. Lastly, I introduce the notion of somatechnical body to clarify the specific nature of virtual rape.

Digital ekphrasis?

Charlotte Bolwin — 2024-12-01

This essay takes the concept of “digital ekphrasis” as an opportunity to look at contemporary multimodal AI – or more precisely text-to-image generators, understood as the latest phenomena in the media history of technical images. In my discussion, I raise the question of whether the digitally programmed image generation performed by programs like Stable Diffusion, Midjourney or DALL-E can be thought of as ekphrasis. Following recent discussions in the field of media theory, I thereby ask whether the criterion of operativity is decisive for distinguishing text-to-image generation from ekphrasis in the classical sense. My discussion evolves in a revision of ekphrasis in the art historical sense, confronted with the structural processes of multimodal AI. However, the comparison of these two modes of ekphrasis reveals how impoverished the concepts of both image and language risk being in the context of text-to-image-modelling. This, in turn, does not mean that current AI imageries cannot be discussed regarding a (post-) digital aesthetics. Rather, as recent media artists working with multimodal AI show, text-to-image reformulates old questions about the relationship between art or aesthetics and (media) technology.

Kenneth W. Holloway (ed.), Buddhism and the body Leiden - Boston, Brill, 2023 (collana “Studies in Somaesthetics”, vol. 7), pp. 276

Chiara Mariani — 2024-12-01

Antonino Falduto, Tim Mehigan (eds.), Palgrave handbook on the philosophy of Friedrich Schiller Cham, Palgrave Macmillan, 2023, pp. 663

Alessandro Nannini — 2024-12-01

L’immaginazione e il senso. Su alcune dimensioni dell’estetico

Agnese Di Riccio — 2024-12-01

On Sherri Irvin, Immaterial: rules in contemporary art Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2022, pp. 282

Sherri Irvin — 2024-12-01