• Today’s goals (2/16/25)

for defining aesthetic experience, use the root word of aesthetic experience!!!

To figure out what companionable art and aesthetic experience might be, we must first define, at least in the context of this essay - for doing so is really an impossible task - what is "art" and what is "aesthetic experience".

To answer the question of what might companionable art and aesthetic experience look like, we must first make a detour and discuss the differences and similarities between art and aesthetic experience. After all we have been referring to these terms as separate yet using them in conjunction with one another. So what exactly do we mean when we say “art” and “aesthetic experience” respectively?

• first open with something like art and aesthetic experience cannot be defined
  • for art it’s like Alva Noe and Anjari quotes and essentialist; no one is happy
  • Aesthetics too faces this (quote applying everyday aestehtics on defining)
  • but for a paper that is rigorously trying to define and delineate words, we must have foundations to work with
• something about since companionable and everyday are deeply intertwined, we inevitably find ourselves adopting the perspectives of scholars in the field of everyday aesthetics in how we define art and aesthetic experience.
  • art are objects made with intention to be art
  • aesthetics is defined as a SENSORY science, and aesthetic experience is thus… aesthetic expeirence is…
  • tldr; art is objects (physical or otherwise) intended to be art and can be

OED defines art as: skills: its display, application, or expression. This immediately raises issues in the art world as there are works that are created where pieces are designated as “art” but may lack skill. On the other end of the spectrum we have philosophical views of art: Which may be more aligned…is not what we think of when considering “art” and “aesthetic experience”.

Okay maybe this also sucks…how about let’s go with, we do an overview of perspectives and come up with a definition of our own for the time being…

but the key points essentially are

• art and aesthetic experience escapes definition, many conflicting views such as

• rather than pick a camp, art is any object (physical, conceptual or otherwise) designated by someone (its creator or otherwise) to be art; and aesthetic experience is any phenomlogical experience that is a result of sensory interaction with the world which with affective qualities of the sublime and beauty*

  • go back to the root of aesthetics…; but making sensory perceptions alone is problematic because every interaction with the world involves sensory perception,

• Quotes

Art

Amidst the countless literature that attempts to define art, two particular ones stand out to us → optional opening

• Lit review of definitions
  • Quote Alva noe
  • Quote aesthetic brain
• Something from art as agent …
  • If in this essay a companion can be anything, art too of course can be an a companion, meaning that - jumping the gun a little - art too has agency to acknowledge a relationship. Taking this view, we must then of course include definition from art agency
• Art Vs artwork? Artworks are always manmade. Art…is? Artwork is a piece of art.
  • Art can be the works, can be the field, can be the technique. In this essay we really just mean artworks then?