Paper Abstracts

Günter Mayer

Reality, Perception-Dimension Aesthetics? Towards a Diversification of the Theory of the Aesthetic Praxis

Opposite the trend that dominated in the 1990s, to detach the “aesthetic” (that is to attribute reality to the unspecified abstract, indeed, to envisage it as an aesthetic construction, assimilating aesthetic evaluation to perception, to “sensation”, without distinguishing between the senses and the evaluating modes), the speaker propounded a thesis aiming at diversification, through the analysis of selected phenomena of the present’s music-sound environment. In the Avant-garde’s perception of sound, in traditional music of the concert rooms, in entertainment music, in “musicalised” environments, as well as in the “songs of the platform’s fans” in a football or hockey on ice field, three types are sketched (with the assistance of video projection), taking into consideration dominant evaluative aesthetic situations: the evolving, the traditional-conservative, and the retrograde.

In conclusion, the speaker mentions a new field of general aesthetics, the ecologically oriented aesthetic formation or perception of non-musical sound phenomena, in societies that are at present dominated by the principle of maximizing the profit.

© Musicology