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The Relevance of the Aesthetic Experience
There is no difference between the kinds of information or "content"
being presented in an information structure. All content falls
into the basic model of communication discussed by Roman Jakobson
in his essay Closing Statement: Linguistics and Poetics. Jakobson's
theory consists of an addresser, a message, and an addressee (353).
If we use this model as a basis or foundation in painting, the
message of the painting may be a scene or a particular emotive
state. In music, the message may be a series of notes containing
a specific melody - whatever the content - the message itself
must be sent and received. As I have discussed in other essays,
the aesthetic experience is as much a part of the creation of
the message as it is part of the reception, or more precisely
the perception by the receiver, of the message. This suggests
that the message itself is an aesthetic object that can be interpreted
an infinite number of ways by an infinite variety of viewers,
listeners, or in the case of websites - users.
The early twentieth century philosopher, John Dewey, in his book
Art as Experience, makes the distinction between incidents that
can be experienced and incidents that can be composed into an
experience (35). The experience of
day to day living is continuous and does not always come to a
logical or completely fulfilled conclusion. Thus a single memorable
experience is one that comes to a close, is consummated, or fulfills
itself to completion (35). Consummation
as it relates to the aesthetic experience occurs when we experience
a play, listen to music, navigate a website, or read a poem. There
is a beginning and an end to these experiences and it is in this
way that these experiences differ from the long string of experiences
that make up our interpretation of reality. Playing a game, reading
a book, or watching a movie are all a part of a class of experiences
that can be easily defined as having a beginning and an end and
it is the consummation of these experiences that helps define
them aesthetic. Therefore everything that we experience as a complete
event can be considered an aesthetic experience, and this suggests
an ability to enrich the experience of information and structures
of information.
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