Practical Aesthetics

Bernd Herzogenrath is Professor of American Studies at the University of Frankfurt, Germany.

Tracing the matter of artworks and technical artifacts from within its own inherent qualities, Practical Aestheticsproposes an operational approach to its objects of research. These paradigmatic case studies re-interpret the aesthetics of multi-media artworks and artifacts as an encounter between human cognition and the physically real.With its focus on moving images, sound art, and other artistic and media-cultural practice, Practical Aesthetics is the academic companion to practice-based artistic research.

• 1. Towards a practical aesthetics: thinking with, Bernd Herzogenrath2. The experiment: between art and life, Christoph Menke3. On the practice of theory: The technological turn of media theory and aesthetic practice of media philosophy, Katerina Krtilova4. Episode zero: How empirical science discounts aesthetic experience, and a practical way to bring it back, Tim Ingold5. Practical aesthetics: the case of bioart, Jan Jagodzinski6. Colors without bodies: Wes Anderson’s drab ethics, Eugenie Brinkema 7. In lag of knowledge: the video essay as parapraxis, Johannes Binotto 8. Thinking with images: a word & photo essay, Bill Morrison9. Lapses, affects, supplement: Hiro Murai’s audiovisual anachronism, Tomáš Jirsa 10. Some notes on sound thinking, Bernd Herzogenrath11. Thinking with sound: preliminary thoughts, François Bonnet12. In search of sacred space, John Luther Adams13. Feeling in the bones, Craig Shepard14. Music as sonic praxis: On the work of Catherine Christer Hennix, Marcus Boon15. The audio paper as affective attunements: Thinking, producing and listening, Sanne Krogh Groth & Kristine Samson16. Genealogies of immersive media and virtual reality (vr) as practical aesthetic machines, Michael N. Goddard17. As duo: thinking with dance, Elizabeth Waterhouse18. The heart and other organs of darkness in the year 2019, Allen C. Shelton19. Essayistic imagination: Max Bense’s theory of essayistic writing as practical aesthetics, Christoph Ernst20. Radioactivity and the typewriter’s breath: Practical aesthetics in Pound and Olson, Julius Greve21. Can practical aesthetics change lives? Jill Bennett22. Contaminations: towards an empathic museology, Mieke Bal23. Transforming the temporality of trauma into the temporality of memory: The practical aesthetics of Marjan Teeuwen’s destroyed houses, Ernst Van Alphen