The Aesthetics of Atmospheres 1st Edition by Gernot Böhme, ISBN-13: 978-1138324558

The phenomenological analysis of atmospheres has proved very fruitful and its most important, and successful, application has been within aesthetics. The material background of this success may be seen in the ubiquitous aestheticization of our lifeworld, or from another perspective, of the staging of everything, every event and performance. The theory of atmospheres becoming an aesthetic theory thus reveals the theatrical, not to say manipulative, character of politics, commerce, of the event-society. But, taken as a positive theory of certain phenomena, it offers new perspectives on architecture, design, and art. It made the spatial and the experience of space and places a central subject and hence rehabilitated the ephemeral in the arts. Taking its numerous impacts in many fields together, it initiated a new humanism: the individual as a living person and his or her perspective are taken seriously, and this fosters the ongoing democratization of culture, in particular the possibility for everybody to participate in art and its works.

Table of Contents:

Introduction
PART I
Theory: aesthetics and aesthetical economy
1 Atmosphere as a fundamental concept of a new aesthetics
2 Atmosphere as an aesthetic concept
3 The art of the stage set as a paradigm for an aesthetics
of atmospheres
4 Kant’s aesthetics: a new perspective
5 On beauty
6 On synesthesia
7 Contribution to the critique of the aesthetic economy
PART II
Aesthetics of nature and art
8 Aesthetic knowledge of nature
9 Nature in the age of its technical reproducibility
10 Body, nature, and art
11 Nature as a subject
PART III
Architecture
12 The atmosphere of a city
13 Atmosphere as the subject matter of architecture
14 Staged materiality
15 Architecture: a visual art?: On the relationship between
modern architecture and photography
16 Metaphors in architecture – a metaphor?
PART IV
Light and sound
17 Acoustic atmospheres
18 Music and architecture
19 The great concert of the world
20 Seeing light
21 The phenomenology of light
Bibliography
Index