TY - CHAP

T1 - Aesthetics of the past and the future

T2 - Human life within changing environments

AU - Förster, Yvonne

PY - 2020/7/6

Y1 - 2020/7/6

N2 - This chapter analyses the aesthetics of technological life-worlds in science-fiction in analogy to historical Asian landscape paintings. Science-fiction movies and landscape painting would appear to have very little in common. There is nevertheless a connection between the aesthetics of landscape painting and imagining future technology: both stage environments in their own way. They are environments in which the human being seldom occupies a central position. Both also play with the image of the human being and her bodiliness. From an aesthetic perspective, the main difference between the old landscape paintings and the recent science-fiction-scapes is the position of human life within them. Traditional Asian landscape paintings do not center on the human figure. Human life is embedded within the larger scope of the mesocosmos. In this regard, landscape painting is closer to post-anthropocene criticism of the humanistic subject than is contemporary popular culture. A decentralized and yet embedded and entangled human existence is in certain regards a very modern image. It is compatible with philosophical positions in critical posthumanism (Rosi Braidotti) and ecological theories (Luciana Parisi and Erich Hörl). The environments depicted in science-fiction on the other hand are dominated by human and technological agency. Human life is central to these images. And, as with the landscape paintings, the beholder is affected in a bodily way - but differently. While the paintings evoke a bodily knowledge and situatedness that dates back to early evolutionary stages of human life and culture, science fiction evokes pain and suffering. The recurrent loss of the body seems to be directly linked to a future that has been lost to accelerated technological development. The chapter explores the aesthetic characteristics of utopian life-worlds and their implications for embodied cognition and human situatedness.

AB - This chapter analyses the aesthetics of technological life-worlds in science-fiction in analogy to historical Asian landscape paintings. Science-fiction movies and landscape painting would appear to have very little in common. There is nevertheless a connection between the aesthetics of landscape painting and imagining future technology: both stage environments in their own way. They are environments in which the human being seldom occupies a central position. Both also play with the image of the human being and her bodiliness. From an aesthetic perspective, the main difference between the old landscape paintings and the recent science-fiction-scapes is the position of human life within them. Traditional Asian landscape paintings do not center on the human figure. Human life is embedded within the larger scope of the mesocosmos. In this regard, landscape painting is closer to post-anthropocene criticism of the humanistic subject than is contemporary popular culture. A decentralized and yet embedded and entangled human existence is in certain regards a very modern image. It is compatible with philosophical positions in critical posthumanism (Rosi Braidotti) and ecological theories (Luciana Parisi and Erich Hörl). The environments depicted in science-fiction on the other hand are dominated by human and technological agency. Human life is central to these images. And, as with the landscape paintings, the beholder is affected in a bodily way - but differently. While the paintings evoke a bodily knowledge and situatedness that dates back to early evolutionary stages of human life and culture, science fiction evokes pain and suffering. The recurrent loss of the body seems to be directly linked to a future that has been lost to accelerated technological development. The chapter explores the aesthetic characteristics of utopian life-worlds and their implications for embodied cognition and human situatedness.

KW - Aesthetics of technology

KW - Anthropocene

KW - Embodiment

KW - Landscape painting

KW - Posthumanism

KW - Science-fiction

KW - Cultural studies

KW - Philosophy

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85114091726&partnerID=8YFLogxK

UR - http://d-nb.info/1215347243/04

U2 - 10.3726/b16690

DO - 10.3726/b16690

M3 - Chapter

AN - SCOPUS:85114091726

SN - 978-3-631-79218-6

SP - 237

EP - 250

BT - Aesthetics in Dialogue

A2 - Somhegyi, Zoltán

A2 - Ryynänen, Max

PB - Peter Lang Verlag

ER -