Environmental Aesthetics

Created: Wed Jun 18 2025 20:00:00 GMT-0400 (Eastern Daylight Time)

Word vomit and notes on readings mixed with some thoughts

Notes on Environmental Aesthetics from Stanford article

So did terms like "picturesque" and "sublime" come from philosophers? I wonder what other words come from philosophy that describes art.

Kant

Wilderness

"Nature's masterpieces"

Park systems derived from the idea of picteresque, to protect the visual, the beauty of landscapes.

"positive aesthetics" - John Muir. Ugliness is when human intervenes, while everything in nature is beautiful, even environmental disasters like hurricanes or tornadoes.

Motorized tourism

"One line of thought, for example, argued that because nature is not intentionally designed, it cannot be aesthetically appreciated (Mannison 1980; Elliot 1982; though see Elliot 1997)." Who thought this...robots?

"Should we aim to experience and appreciate the widest variety of environments, or should we instead cultivate our attachments to those select few places to which we feel some special, affective attachment?" - What I think about on do we actually need to travel to appreciate what we have?

Natural Environmental Model

"sense of place"

cognitive vs non-cognitive / conceptual vs non-conceptual / narrative vs ambient

"anthropogenic climate change is creating unprecedented and unpredictable types of “mixed environments” that may not fit the aesthetic concepts of the past"

Aesthetic Protectionism

Positive Aesthetics

Biodiversity

"rewild" as a term

"Tourist Traffic"

“new aesthetics of strangeness and uncertainty”

"the role of sound in environmental appreciation (J. Fisher 1998, 1999; Dyck 2016; Prior 2017)" Would like to know more about this since it can relate to giving a voice to rivers. But one thing I keep on thinking about is our projection on non-human things. Can we truly do understand and do justice to non-human entities?

Ecological Aesthetics

Global Perspectives

Back to Sublime and Picturesque

The Aesthetics of Animals

Mediated Appreciation

Climate Change and Aesthteics

Notes on Performing Nature by John Andrew Fisher

The paper addresses whether we can appreciate nature through a performance model rather and takes inspiration from the arts as references.

Performing existing works

An orchestra performing a musical piece or an actor performing a scripted play. Here there is a existing material and there's a complete ending. Relating to nature, there is a existing material that is independent of us and that we should respect it, similar to how we should respect the original creation of a work when performing it.

Performing as improvisation

Muscians jamming or an actor playing the yes and game in improve. Still working within parameters because for music, you're playing within a musical range or scale and for actors, you're still doing improve under the circumstance for comdey and laugther and the absurd. For nature, this model is attractive because nature is an unbounding and unpredictable at times.

Performing as performance-art

The artist, the moment, the materials in-front of them and the uniqueness. "In performance-art either there are no obvious materials or the materials are said to be ideas." (Fisher 23). Critique here for using this model with nature is that artists use whatever they can to make their point, whetehr it's respecting or about nature.

Author tries to shift our perspective on land art as being a performance rather than scultpures. Fisher poses questions rather give answers and it's up the reader to make a conclusion. Or rather, are the questions rhetorical?

With performance, there must be an audience. When peforming nature though, who is the audience? It is us, the viewer. We are performing for ourselves. We take notice what we want from nature.

Andy Goldsworthy

Artworks that uses materials of the environment the artwork is situated. For example, fallen leaves on the ground, rearranged by colour to create a striking visual that contrasts what we normally see in nature yet, still be in nature. What kind of art is this?

Fisher does note that Goldsworthy artworks are not performace-art because the materials are used too freely. I guess he means, is the artist really examining what the leaf is a material and using it for it's capabilities? In the sense, no other than using the colour of the leaves.

To appreciate nature through a performance model, it is to respect nature and to apprecaite it as nature.

Ends with the problem of documentation and capturing a performance or artwork. This then aligns with the reproduction issue of artworks, but specifically about the point of appreciating nature as nature since we are actually not in front of the artwork which is situated in nature. So can we truly appreciate through a reproduction? In this sense, we would be appreciating the documentation, the moment, and the idea.

Notes on From Allen Carlson to Richard Long: The Art-Based Appreciation of Nature by Marta Tafalla

Allen Carlson and NEM (natural environment model)

Thought: if there's a relationship to the knowledge of art through theory and history, and making the connection to appreciating nature through a natural science perspective, then could we go back and use this logic of knowing about the science of colours and perception to have a true appreciation of art?

Criticism against NEM

"does landscape painting teach us to appreciate nature?" (Tafalla 499)

Land art developed in 60s and 70s at the same time with the new developments of philo of nature. Land art was an answer to landscsape painting, in the way that they were site specific, and forced people to view them in their location (or through documentation), which prompts people to wonder about the surrounding environment that the artwork is in rather than art that is framed and viewed in a gallery.

Land art is not mimesis which landscape painting is. Although, there could be an argument that it's not just representational (painting) because if it's expressive, then it's trying to capture somethingt that is abstract, like a feeling, a fleeting moment.

For land art to show us appreciation of nature, it shouldn't be destructive or altering the landscape that isn't aligned with nature itself. Example the author gives is Richard Long who walks as his medium. As he goes back and forth in a line, it eventually leaves a path. Similar to paths we see in urban environments where people cut through an area even though there's a designed path, but usually there's a shorter path people want and they will take it. While the urban environment is about efficency and speed and fighting against a designed environment, Richard Long, is using his walking path to demonstrate his time with nature. The path created is harmless and eventually with fade away.

What remains are photos of the work. It's giving a bit Nazca lines and crop circles vibes but in an art context.

Arte Povera - Perhaps using this art period because it originates from the 60s/70s and has a similar ethos by using unconventional materials of the time for art that could be considered hodge podge. More on arte povera: https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/a/arte-povera

The author makes note of the criticism from Carlson and that his medium and subject was the landscape painting and some other land art but disregards other artworks. Although this statement "Long’s is an art that consists of entering into nature, passing through it, experiencing it in three dimensions, with all five senses, getting to know it, exploring it and living it." (Tafalla 508) Is from the point of view of the artist. So its the act of making art, doing this performance as a solo person is what constitutes appreciation, but for only one person if we are to take into consideration this immersive experience as being the way for appreciating nature.

However, it's not about being immersive in nature is what produces knowledge about nature. By seeing remnants of a path, Long is showing us that walking is a simple act (for those able-bodies) to connect with nature. It's a path that you can take again, and someone else too since you forged it for them. Making you not only connect with nature, but also humanity. To align with performance-art, it is the body and the mind that is the central piece yet there's no literal depiction of human in the documentation.

Notes on Appreciation and the Natural Environment by Allen Carlson

To appreciate, we first are able to distinguish what is part of an artwork and what isn't. The word used is aspection, which is a way to actively look, in another word, observation.

"In creating a painting, we know that what we make is a painting. In knowing this we know that it ends at its frame, that its colors are aesthetically important, but where it hangs is not, and that we are to look at it rather than, say, listen to " (Carlson 267).

Paul Ziff - aspection also relates to recognizing art styles and how they inform how an artist or viewer sees the works.

While this paper is focused on the appreciating the natural environment, the above statemetns about art is used as an introduction to setup why these models do not work for aesthetic appreciation in nature.

Object Model

Landscape Model

Environmental Model

Notes on Environmental Aesthetics by Allen Carlson from The Routeledge Companion to Aesthetics

Disinterestedness

Expressionist Theory of Art

Ronald Hepburn

Chapter goes on to state Carlsons's position with the cognitive line of thought and NEM.

"Likewise, in appreciation of the world beyond the natural world, what is aesthetically relevant is knowledge of why it is, what it is, and what it is like, whether or not that knowledge is, strictly speaking, scientific." (Carlson 431). So understanding of something creates appreciation.

Chapter also notes challenges to this view. Cultural knowledge, history, poetry/literature, mythology, folklore, religion and metaphysics.

Notes on Contemporary Aesthetics and the Neglect of Natural Beauty by Ronald Hepburn

Shift in aesthetic taste - what are the aesthetic taste of today and how does influence how we appreciate nature? Before, aesthetics was only in the domain of the arts, but we can have aesthetic experiences not only with art.

Nature as "educator" - To teach us through its beauty. Nature as "stranger" - A mystery to it.

Science & Tech - changing how we view nature. Ex. small scale / large scale with micro- & tele-scopes.

Aesthetic excellence - does not reference or mimic nature. Framed / unframed objects. Framed = art. Unframed = nature.

Expression theory - talks about how this theory is related to art and not natural objects. Expressive theory goes beyond the formal qualities of the object and rather, it's about communicaiton. What is it connoting, what is it emoting? What is it saying? But could this be applied to natural objects? No, I don't think so because it requires someone making it with intention and existing within a cultural context. Although, could natural objects express something? If so, what is it? And if we perceive nature as expressing, then is it not just our mental model as humans putting this into nature (as Hepburn notes later on as "humanizing" nature).

Movement whether observed in nature or as the subject, is an important factor in an aesthetic experience with nature.

“Some sort of detachment there certainly is, in the sense that I am not using nature, manipulating it, or calculating how to manipulate it.” (“The aesthetics of natural environments”, 2004, p. 46) (pdf)

Natural beauty - usually talked about in isolation of an object (like the o ject model mentioned by Carlson).

""Unity"" in Nature

While Hepburn raises points about unity in nature, he also claims pluarity.

Poles

"Challenge to integrate"

  1. Context Expansion

Distinction between "knowledge" and the "aesthetic experience". Since there are always things to know and to learn, but what Hepburn is getting at is, how does this knowing affect our aesthetic experience.

To the point of context expansion and unity, he notes that "unity" is a "regulative" role. When I think of the word regulative, I'm thinking to regulate, meaning that nature is making us regular? It's shaping our behaviour? Or is it that it's making us perceive nature as just part of us, in the sense that it is regular to us. To expand on the regulative function, he goes on to say, "a symbol of the unattainable complete transmutation of brute external nature into a mirror of the mind". This is in relation to humanizing nature. I'm thinking he means that we are projecting what we have in our mind onto nature, which is why we humanize nature (side question, why is it that we can humanize nature or even technology but not other humans?).

He goes on to say "Nature is not a "given whole"". This I understand a bit more, because nature is incomplete. It's always changing, we're always changing. We're moving through it. We're impacting nature, etc. But this "given whole" means we complete it? There's this link between the two.

  1. "Humanizing" / "Spiritualizing" Nature

“And Hegel, that the aim of art is “to strip the outer world of its stubborn foreignness.”” (“The aesthetics of natural environments”, 2004, p. 50) (pdf) The outer world being something that is outside of us, beyond us? Something outside of our minds, outside of our world view, to make it visible and familiar.

Projecting what's in our mind onto nature.

  1. Continuation of humanizing nature and unity, but Hepburn using it as a third point. To me it's a sub-point but that's besides the point. Here he's describing how we have emotional experiences with nature when nature in no way has emotions because it is not human, yet we are able to project our emotions onto nature.

If we take nature for face value, it's simply shapes and colours. Yet, we will describe beyond just formal qualities. A wasteland giving desolation, a lush landscape giving joy, etc. Of ocourse there are ranges of emotions we feel and not just one.

“And this is not to have nature’s “foreignness” or otherness overcome, but in contrast, to allow that otherness free play in the modifying of one’s everyday sense of one’s own being.” (“The aesthetics of natural environments”, 2004, p. 51) (pdf) Meaning that we are not letting nature's mystery remain as this separate entity but instead, we are trying to see how we fit within this mystery. Through this mediation, we are unifying ourselves with nature.

“we have ourselves become foreign to our everyday” (“The aesthetics of natural environments”, 2004, p. 51) (pdf) Really like this poetic way of saying that we've become distanced with nature and ourselves even though we are in nature, and we are with ourself 24/7, yet we live in this strange world that is unfamiliar. This statement was in the context of recognizing shapes and patterns in nature and relating them to something else that reminds us of us. Ex. seeing webbed feet on sea turtles and noticing our own hands and perhaps making the connection that we came from water. Rather "humanizing" nature, we are instead "naturizing" ourselves. Which, goes both ways when being unified with nature.

  1. The background. “In their case the background is a sense of reconciliation, suspension of conflict, and of being in that sense at one with the aesthetic object.” (“The aesthetics of natural environments”, 2004, p. 51) (pdf) Reconciliation - in that we are mediating between us and nature. Suspension of conflict - Not fighitng with nature. Not overcoming it. But maybe to also not have the negativity of nature inform our aesthetic experience. For example, tsnumais are disastrous but we still enjoy the ocean and coastlines.

“A cease-fire has been negotiated in our struggle with nature.” (“The aesthetics of natural environments”, 2004, p. 51) (pdf) Pushing nature into the background as if it's noise and not interferring with us.

Realizing

Reading a series of words could be a statement, or a poem. Two readings, but two different experiences when told that it's a poem.

Hepburn uses this to make a comparison between two objects. One artifact and one a natural object. However, both look exactly the same. Except they have different materials. When we know one is an artifact and one is a natural object, we will read them differently. It's this realizing, this knowing is what guides our aesthetic experience.

In addition, to realize is to also go beyond just seeing. We are projecting ourselves into a situation, we are building upon what we are seeing and internalizing it. ““I had long known that the earth was not flat, but I had never before realized its curvature till I watched that ship disappear on the horizon.”” (“The aesthetics of natural environments”, 2004, p. 55) (pdf) In similar vain, I knew Earth was big but I didn't realize its size until seeing a photo of it in space. This is me trying to make sense of the scale of Earth, triyng to relate it to the immense, vast space of the universe. Also realzing how small I am.

"episodic" - in the sense that the experience happens in the moment and that the realization has happened. What happens following will not alter the realization. Hepburn brings up an example of a tree trunk and its strength. We may realize this strength by feeling it, trying to take it down, running into it, etc. But what happens when it starts to rot? We realize that it may not be so strong that its also has weaknesses. This doesn't change our first realization, it's just updating what we know and integrating into our knowledge.

Realizing can be enriching, but Hepburn also notes that it can also be disruptive or destructive. Example he gives is seeing a full moon behind silhouteted branches on a winter night. We can have observe the natural beauty and this would constitute an aesthetic experience. Now, would realizing that the moon has this light is because of the reflection from the sun's light add anything to the experience? It might actually disrupt from the moment and the beauty you are observing. Or to realize the size of the moon and the distance etc.

Notes on What the Hills Are Alive with: In Defense of the Sounds of Nature by John Andrew Fisher

Soundscapes coined by R. Murray Schafer in 1970s, "sonic enivronment". This means all sounds within an envionrment whether human made or naturally occuring.

Sounds in nature vary. The sound of wind depends on strength, and what they are blowing but also where we are in relation to the wind.

Soundscape - defined by boundaries of the physical environment that contains the sounds. THis is interesting to note because it contradicts the unframeless aspect of nature noted by Hepburn.

We can focus on sounds in nature while also ignoring what should belong to the soundscape. For example, a stranger's cell phone ringing in the middle of a hike up a mountain.

Sounds being harder for us to pay attention to. Hiking up a mountain we encounter many sounds but we may be focused on our breath, our safety, the view, the journey etc. Rarely do we pay attention to the sounds.

Not true for everyone. Fisher mentions the Kaluli of New Guinea and how they listen to nature sounds with intention and model their music after the sounds they hear.

“Sounds also play a role in our conception of wilderness.” (Fisher, 1998, p. 169) (pdf) What do we consider wild? Apparently having solitude, that is removing ourselves from our busy modern urban lives to escape to the wilderness to be in solitude (or one with nature, unity). Looking for silence in nature. Fisher notes that there's always sounds being made so this idea of silence isn't attainable, at least not in nature. THe silence we are looking for is perhaps silence from other humans and acknlowedlgement of other humans.

"absence of human-made sounds"

Robin Maconie defines music as sounds that is pleasurable and everything else as noise. This means that we can't find pleasure in sounds from nature.

Concept of music according to Schafer - Moving indoors has given us high art of music and noise polllution, that is, sounds that were kept away from us, shielded by our homes.

Music = good. Environmental sounds = bad because it interfers with our listening experience of music.

Quite reductive but it illustrates the point on how we view musical sounds versus natural sounds.

“Accordingly,sound cannot contributeto an aesthetics of naturecapable of supportingpreservationof nature.The objectsof environmentalistaesthetics,20it might be urged, shouldbe large units of land, such as a mountainrange, a swamp, a coast, a river,a plateau,in general,anecosystem. It migh tbe argued that it makes no sense to talk about the sounds of these things, e.g., the sound of the GrandCanyon,any more thanwe can speak of the soundof a painting.” (Fisher, 1998, p. 170) (pdf) Why not, can the sound of a large environmental object like a river be used for supporting preservation?

Gardens as an example by Fisher to show that it's a piece of land that has been designed to include sounds from fountains.

Objectivity in natural sounds. Fisher references Carlsons and his cognitivist view but also notes that there's a problem here because someone can hear the same two natural sounds and one find it beautiful while another find it annoying.

Aesthetic Appreciation

Artworks that are critiqued are guided by the art itself but the appreication may not be universal.

Monroe Beardsle and Aesthetic Gratification. Unity and seeing the complex whole. Noticing different parts of the whole.

The issue of framing in sounds. Sounds can come from all directions. We can also direct our attention to particular sounds.

“Nature does not dictate an intrinsically correct way to frame its sounds in the way thata composer does.” (Fisher, 1998, p. 173) (pdf) Meaning that the sounds in nature are not ordered in a certain way for us to listen to it. What's in background and foreground is up to us (and also spatially).

What about recordings of a nature soundscape? Is this not framing the sounds? In some way yes, because it's a framing a moment, but we created that frame not nature. As Fisher relates, it's similar to when taking a photo of nature.

Temporal Framing. Signficant sound events, how do we determine when it starts and ends? The duration?

Fisher describes an aesthetic experience of listening to the sounds on a rual hill side and how silence in an interlude before hearing sounds of the animals helped shaped his experience. He asks though, the long wind sounds before, how long did he need to listen to then appreicate the silence? And how long should the silence lasted in order to appreciate the previous and preceding sounds.

What he's getting at and questioning, is whether we have conventions for determining what is appropriate appreciation with natural sounds, in the context of framing.

Repetition is important in music. Repeting sounds but also the fact that we can repteadly perform a musical score or listen to your favourite song on repeat. In contrast, natural sounds are unique. And perhaps this uniqueness is what adds value to our aesthetic appreciation of natural sounds because we are witnessing something of the moment that we will not ever experience again.

What about imrpovised music? These are unique instances of music. However, we still are in the framework of listening to music becasue of a tempo, because of repetition of notes, playing within a scale, musical instruments, etc.

Murray Schafer notes that there are people with "certain ears" which refers to different cultures and how they listen to sounds. I would also relate this to how there are "trained ears" in the way that musicians, composers, producers, the musically inclined are able to hear sounds with a sharper precision. But for Schafer he notes that there are people who listen peripherally while there are people who rank sounds from strong to weak, those that are desirable to not. This reminds me of a paper about how different cultures look at an image, some looking at background and everyhing framing the subject while there are people who focus on the subject. So background vs foreground.

Associtional / Representational Listening Japanese word, ongaku - "enjoyment of sounds" Ex. cackling sounds of camp fire.

Soundscape - no hiearchy of sounds in comparison to music, no focus (other than the focus we put on what sounds to focus on, rather than composer selecting the emphasis through contrast, crescendos etc)

Kaluli way of listening - dulugu ganalan - "lift-up-over sounding". Meaning that there's not one sound that leads or overpowers another. No start or end either because all the sounds belong to one soundscape.

Listening to a sequence of sounds in nature is not the same as a sequence of sounds in music. One is deliberate while the other is not. But is the deliberate intention enough to consider a differentiator?

Nature sounds not "composed, performed, notated, studied, or taught". We have a music culture but no nature-sound culture.

“We can, however,grant that our appreciation ought to be constrained to this extent, that it would be wrong to hear nature sounds in just the same way as we hear music.” (Fisher, 1998, p. 176) (pdf) A statement that's been said over and over, that nature is not art and therefore we should not be approaching nature in the same way. What I'm realizing is that maybe we need to state the obvious because sometimes it is obvious, and that means it's easy to overlook these statements. Of course, nature is not art, because they are two different things. Wouldn't it be something like, an apple is not an orange and therefore we must not eat it the same way or view it the same way...Is this too simplistic, or am I missing something? That's what philosophy is about, it's about answering (or perhaps not answering, discussing, having a dialogue) seemingly obvious and sometimes difficult questions.

Music -> symbolic ideas, expressing emotions.

Notes on Natural Sounds and Musical Sounds: A Dual Distinction by John Dyck

Paper is about the difference condition of musical and natural sounds. That is, what exactly is this difference.

Ontological difference - While both are sounds, are they two separate types of sounds, and what are the characteristics that make up these two type of sounds that creates their object?

Perceptual difference - Could they be the same ontological object, but we perceive them differently because of other factors, such as our trained, or lack of trained ear? What causes the perception difference?

Interaction Condition - How can musical and natural sounds come together to form one aesthetic experience.

Referencing Fisher (see notes above for more), Dyck reiterates what Fisher laid out what makes soundscapes indeterminate.

  1. Frame Problem / ""attentional framing indeterminacy" - music has structure, while natural sounds do not. How to structure our attention. Nature does not have a right or wrong way of composing or arranging its sounds. Frame problem also applies to visuals.
  2. "temporal framing indeterminacy" - no sense of time. music has a start and finish and when we listen to a musical score, we know the duration of ther performance or song. In contrast to soundscapes, we determine how long we want to focus on a sound and for how long. But at the same time, the sounds in nature may stop on their own and we won't know when.
  3. Unique/repeatablility - Soundscapes are unique while music can be repeated through plays or performances.

Dyck uses sound art as a way to illustrate his points against these claims. For Dyck, sound art is not music or natural sounds, but could be both.

Sound art

Dyck goes on to say sound art goes against both Temporal Framing Indeterminacy and Attentional Framing Indeterminacy. Sound art does not have a temporal framing like natural sounds, but we can still evaluate it because it's human made. Dyck says it doesn't support the indeterminacy claim but I don't get it. Sound art, the way he's describing and using a quote by Alan Licht, makes it seem like sound art can be experienced in a short or long period of time, it can be re-experienced. I suppose it's also up to the listening or viewer to decide on when to end. The different here with soundscapes is, if the viewer decides to not listen, the sounds are still playing, which can be true for sound art as performance or installation. Viwerer can leave the artwork but it can still be playing.

“If Attentional Framing Indeterminacy were correct, sound artists could never reliably use natural sounds in music, since there would be significant disparities in the way intentional sounds are perceived and the way unintentional sounds are perceived” (Dyck, 2016, p. 294) (pdf) Saying that if the claim is true, artists can't use these type of sounds in the same piece because of the way people perceive them.

“If Attentional Framing Indeterminacy were correct, the effects of these natural sounds would be totally unpredictable; artists would have no idea how audiences might respond” (Dyck, 2016, p. 294) (pdf).

Question, going back to the object model mentioned by Carlson, when we isolate a natural sound, what is it expressing? And what qualities are lost when not in the environment.

The difference with sound art versus soundscapes in nature is that the recorded sounds are recorded with intention and included into an artwork with intention. Therefore, they are determinate like music. This is of course only true if the artist decides on when to play the natural sounds, but not true if sounds are randomly played through code or activated by viewers through an interaction. There needs to be an intentional placement.

The effects of natural sounds in sound art or in a musical piece is only reliable because of the way they are perceived in nature. And because of this reliability, Dyck is arguing that natural sounds can be determinate.

Unification between music and natural sounds in sound art is only successful because that natural sounds have a reliable effect.

Just as I was about to say, well isn't this different because there's intention and there's someone involved in placing the natural sounds? Taking the sound from its soundscape environment is no longer a soundscape.

Roger Scruton - distinction between musical and nonmusical sounds. NS are casually heard in the way that we recognize the sound and where its coming from where musical sounds are acousmastically. According to Scruton we are separating the musical sound and where its coming from and how they are made. I would argue that this isn't true since you can train your ear to recognize instruments even if they are placed within an orchestra of other instruments.

Sounds are not purely audio. In their objective form they are sound waves and there are physical properties, but as Andy Hamilton notes, music is just not heard, it's also felt. Oh ok, so Hamiton mentions what I said about the hearing instruments.

A question posed by Fisher in a 1999 paper "Why do we prefer naturally produced sounds to aurally indiscernible humanly produced sounds?" An interesting question. Some things. Nature has a calming effect, perhaps a primordial effect on us. It's ingrained in us since this is where we came from. Evolutionary, nature sounds are familiar which can create a sense of safety where sounds that we can't make out might sound foreign and mysterious. What we don't know can be a threat.

Although, Fisher goes in the opposite direction saying that natural sounds have an otherness to them and that's why we prefer it.

Completeness requirement for soundscape - that the entire soundscape must belond to the land and inevitability. That is, the sounds come from not humans and that we can't avoid them.

Microtones, more microtones make a piece sound natural according to John Cage.

West - 12 tone scale. There are microtones in this scale, such as flat / sharp.

Music -> Macrotones | Nature -> Microtones + Microrhythms + Microtimbres

Instruments can only play within a specified range and tones. While nature is infinite.

Casual impressions - hearing water drops in a music piece, gives us the impression of perhaps rain hitting a tin roof.

“This explains an important aspect of sound art: it contains varying degrees of alterity in it, mixed with varying degrees of familiari” (Dyck, 2016, p. 299) (pdf) This mixed, melange, makes sense because sound art is neither natural sounds nor music.

As Dyck points out though, not all natural sounds have pitch so the microtonal thesis doesn't really make sense because there's rarely tones in nature. Rather, what we are recognizing is the microtimbers and microrhythms.

Notes on Aesthetic Appreciation And The Many Stories About Nature by Thomas Heyd

A paper to argue against Carlson's cognitivist view. The view where he claims to have aesthetic appreication, knowledge of the object is required. Talks about art history is knowledge to understand contemporary art. If this is true for aesthetic appreication, then is art history required for modern art, or art from the renaissance? Or is this a condition of our time where we are distanced from the objects that are produced and made?

Aeitology - the study of causes and origins.

Three areas to question:

"Sizing up" artworks

As Heyd mentions, knowing the history is knowing the context because you will understand the reasoning for contemporary art versus modern art, or being able to place a renaissance painting versus one from romanticism.

He makes an analogy to reading labels on packaging. While the label gives us information about the products origins and its materials, we can still appreciate the product without the label. The label becomes secondary. We are still experiencing the product without the label. We may however, consume the packaged good, and wonder more about it, but the initial appreciation is the taste. What is the equivalent of taste as an experience with seeing?

Bibliography

CARLSON, Allen, 1979. Appreciation and the Natural Environment. The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism. Vol. 37, no. 3, p. 267. DOI 10.2307/430781.

CARLSON, Allen. Environmental aesthetics. In: LOPES, Dominic McIver and GAUT, Berys, eds. The Routledge companion to aesthetics. Hoboken: Taylor & Francis Ltd, 2002. p. 541–553. ISBN 978-0-203-99192-3.

DYCK, John, 2016. Natural Sounds and Musical Sounds: A Dual Distinction. The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism. Vol. 74, no. 3, pp. 291–302. DOI 10.1111/jaac.12286.

FISHER, John Andrew, 1998. What the Hills Are Alive with: In Defense of the Sounds of Nature. The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism. Vol. 56, no. 2, p. 167. DOI 10.2307/432255.

FISHER, John Andrew and INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATION FOR ENVIRNMENTAL PHILOSOPHY, 2007. Performing Nature. Environmental Philosophy. Vol. 4, no. 1, pp. 15–28. DOI 10.5840/envirophil200741/23.

HEPBURN, Ronald, 2004. Contemporary Aesthetics and the Neglect of Natural Beauty. In: CARLSON, Allen and BERLEANT, Arnold, eds. The aesthetics of natural environments. Peterborough, Ont.; Orchard Park, NY: Broadview Press, pp. 49–66. ISBN 978-1-55111-470-5.

HEYD, T., 2001. Aesthetic Appreciation And The Many Stories About Nature. The British Journal of Aesthetics. Vol. 41, no. 2, pp. 125–137. DOI 10.1093/bjaesthetics/41.2.125.

PARSONS, Glenn and CARLSON, Allen, 2024. Environmental Aesthetics. In : ZALTA, Edward N. and NODELMAN, Uri (eds.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy [online]. Fall 2024. Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University. Retrieved from : https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2024/entries/environmental-aesthetics/ [accessed 15 June 2025].

TAFALLA, Marta, 2010. From Allen Carlson to Richard Long: The Art-Based Appreciation of Nature. . Vol. 2.

To Read Possibly

https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/digital-vision-and-the-ecological-aesthetic-1968--2018-9781350051836/

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