Foreclosing on the Appearing Dock

I think of the Aesthetic Way Of Knowing as a move visual way of knowing, rather than the experiential Spiritual WOK. Aesthetics are about how things appear and look, how they work together to be pleasing or unpleasant to the viewer, how different patterns connect to each other and the interpretation of color and composition.

Knowing how to read and communicate visually, rather than through written or spoken language, is an art our society has very much forgotten. The other day in my Lighting Design 1 class we were shown a video about how to read art. The video told us about the symbolism and meaning behind the details in the painting, the stories it told, even though there was no text or even motion of the characters. Our ability to perceive these stories and this meaning has faded. And yet, it still remains one of the most effective means of communication. The saying "a picture is worth a thousand words" is not untrue. So many times I have found myself trying to explain something and instead drawn a picture. There is a reason theater technicians are given drafts and light plots, visual representations, rather than a written description. It is much easier to look at a drawing than it would be to read a whole paragraph detailing the ground plan for a set or the layout of the first electric. We learn visually for the first major chunk of our lives, before we have language to communicate we recognize images.

It is also important to understand how the aesthetics of the things we see affect us, since they do so every day. The way a room is painted can change our mood. The way furniture is arranged can help or hinder productivity. How brightly illuminated our space is can make us more or less afraid. There are countless ways we are influenced visually by the world around us without many people even knowing.

I am a firm believer that all ways of knowing connect. For example, take the aesthetics of a room. The visual flow of the room, how it makes you feel, the color, are all aesthetics. However the layout also effects the flow of energy, which manifests itself aesthetically. Do you have a wall where your visual flow gets stuck in the corner? well so will the energy and so will your things. If your room is aesthetically chaotic, it will influence the energy flow and will cause you to feel chaotic while you are in it. I spent my childhood coming home to my mother having completely rearranged our living room because it didn't have good energy flow. Another example of interconnectedness of the ways of knowing is the intersection between scientific and aesthetic. An artist might look at a sea shell and think that the spiral in it was beautiful, where a scientist might look and know that the spiral pattern in the shell is a reoccurring pattern in nature and that is why we find it calming.

This intersectionality of the ways of knowing is something I would have loved to look into more.

This blog post doesn't really have the definite sections that these blog posts were supposed to have, but this is the way my ideas on this topic came out so I hope that is ok.