## Experiential Artefacts Project: Comprehensive Overview ### 1. Project Concept and Methodology #### Core Ideas - Analyse artworks as experiential artefacts - Connect [[philosophy of technology]], aesthetics, and philosophy of mind - Reconceptualise art through the lens of artefacts and experience - Broaden the scope to include other cultural objects beyond traditional artworks #### Methodological Approach - Interdisciplinary within philosophy - Combines: - [[Philosophy of technology]] - Aesthetics - Philosophy of mind - Metaphysics - Aims to create a general model applicable to various phenomena - Utilises tools from philosophical technology to shed new light on artworks - Seeks to make art less isolated from other human phenomena, especially technology #### Project Hypothesis Experiential artefacts encompass: 1. Artworks 2. Other cultural objects (e.g., design, mass culture, digital culture) The project posits that artworks are special as artefacts due to their function of generating experiences. #### Alternative Possibilities 1. Some artworks may not be experiential artefacts (e.g., [[conceptual art]]) 2. Experiential artefacts may be limited to artworks 3. Experiential artefacts may exist but be unrelated to artworks #### [[Key Concepts]] - Structure-function relationship in artefacts - Creation intentions and norms in political artefacts - Art as a technology for designing, generating, and combining experiences ### 2. Research Areas and Ongoing Work #### Philosophy of Mind and Aesthetics - Sensory imagination in literature - Project: "Putting Imagery Back in Literature" - Argues for the crucial role of sensory imagination in appreciating sensory descriptions - Cognitive absorption and captured attention in [[aesthetic experience]] - Collaboration with cognitive science - Explains cognitive absorption in terms of sustained captured attention - Self-writing and personal diaries as experiential artefacts - Exploring autobiographies, confessions, and diaries - Hypothesis: Personal diaries function to record mental evidence of a subject #### [[Contemporary Art]] - Ontological structure of [[contemporary art]] - Challenge: Identifying [[the structure]] when artists use diverse media - Conservation challenges in [[contemporary art]] - Paper: "[[Contemporary Art]] and [[the Challenge]] of Conservation" - Explores theories by Sherri Irvin (sanction theory) and [[Elisabeth Schellekens]] ([[conceptual art]] theory) - [[Cognitive phenomenology]] in [[conceptual art]] - Investigating the shift from traditional perceptual experience to more cognitive engagement - Role of interaction in contemporary art appreciation - Exploring how artists prompt active engagement from viewers #### Photography and Visual Arts - Boundaries of photography - Exploring cases where categorization as a singular experiential artefact is not evident - Cross-categorical works - Example: Hyperrealist paintings challenging the division between photography and painting - Multiple exposure photographs - Investigating how they challenge the concept of indexicality in photography - Architectural photography - Examining the relationship between photography and architecture - AI-generated images (deepfakes) - Exploring the conflict between photography and artificial intelligence #### Language and Literature - Language as an experiential artefact - Viewing language as having a logical discursive structure designed to elicit experiences - Poetry and the phenomenology of reading - Paper on the experience of reading poetry - Identifies cognitive and auditory components of the experience - Form-content unity in poetry - Explains the intimate relationship between form and content through inner speech phenomenology - Theatre and other language-based arts - Expanding research beyond literature to include comics, theatre, and conceptual art #### Maps and Cartographic Representations - Experience of map reading - Collaboration between Francesco and Luca - Investigating the unique experience elicited by cartographic representations - Comparison with pictorial experience - Arguing that map experiences are closer to picture experiences than previously thought - Challenges views that maps are not like pictures due to their relation to perception #### Art History and Epistemology - Contribution of art historical knowledge to art experience - Epistemology of art history - Hypothesis: Art history is not simply philosophy of art plus philosophy of history - Investigating the unique aspects of art historians' work ### 3. Project Structure and Timeline #### Three Phases 1. Analysis and reinforcement of the experiential artefacts concept - Analyse and understand the notion of experiential artefacts - Focus on artefact and experience components - Develop taxonomy of experiential artefacts based on varieties of experiences and structures 2. Application to specific art forms and non-art experiential artefacts - Apply conceptual framework to specific art forms - Investigate objects considered experiential artefacts but not traditionally understood as art 3. Development of an account of experiential artefact appreciation - Offer an account of how to appreciate experiential artefacts - Revisit and reconsider traditional theories of art appreciation and criticism - Explore potential generalisation