view 
 edit 

 attachments 
 history 
 home 
 changes 
 search 
 help 

good and bad

As I have been thinking about the good and bad thing a couple of things have been sticking in my mind.
  1. I really like that these simple question conflate the moral (ethical) with the aesthetic. I think it demonstrates why the visual is powerful. This is a point in the gagnepain stuff that i like and also i see it a bit in schwitters.
  2. I think in this distinction also lies another question - what of our valueing of things is cultural (conventional) and what of it is about the nature of human experience (please excuse the pop psych terminology). This fits really well with the stuff in Visual Perception about past experience and schema's and the way they focus and frame perception. Below i've made (attempted a) division of the 3 areas of good and bad - down into criteria for these two factors. The hard part is knowing when and how we might be working within a convention. What is good about working within a convention? What is bad about it?
experienceconvention
formgoodhow it looks (is experienced) is good - feels good - looks good - is pleasant -(easy on the eyes) true to experience - lifelikeits form shows or exemplifies a convention of beauty or good looking - good composition - accurate
formbadlooks bad - not pleasant to look at - disturbing to experiencedoes not conform to conventions of beauty - bad likeness - bad composition. Does not connect to any known idea of beauty so viewer does not recognize it.
contentgoodit represents or is about something goodit represents something that represents “goodness” - that is “known to be good”
contentbadit represents or is about something badit representes something that represents "badness" - that is "known to be bad"
contextgoodthe combination of things or item and environment is goodthings are combined in ways that convey convention or good combinations
contextbadthe combination of things or item and environment (figure/ground) is bad (maybe this slips into the analogies in formalism - as in a figure can't even be distinguished from the ground)things are combined in ways that break with conventions and expectations of context

-----------

Link to this Page