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Themesicon: navigation pathAesthetics of the Digitalicon: navigation pathCybernetic Aesthetics
 
 
 
 
 

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led not only to the confirmation of certain weaknesses in information aesthetics, but also to the insight that the application of a theory that explains aesthetic and artistic values solely on the basis of quantifiable and rational criteria comes up against its own methodological borders. «In the meantime it became increasingly evident that art is an intellectual as opposed to material (and thus materially explainable) process; it is a matter of what goes on in the brains of the artist and viewer, and in this respect primarily of perceptual, thought, and behavioral processes.» [29] Although Franke’s research was itself a product of information aesthetics, his skepticism prefigured the clearer knowledge we have today: the scientific goals of information aesthetics have proved to be a utopian program or model.

Reception aesthetics

Helmar Frank, like Herbert W. Franke, was seeking a negotiable path toward a theory of cybernetic aesthetics. Frank discerned the need for a renewal through elements of information psychology that would be relevant not just to the pedagogic aspect of the

 

theory, but to its content, as well. This approach took him into the proximity of anthropo-cybernetics.

Frank propagated an aesthetics closely linked with the process of perceiving art. Aesthetic processes, according to Frank, are bound to everyday procedures in a number of ways, and difficult to separate from these procedures. [30] Just as Franke developed a multi-plane model, Frank too drew up a model of the successive evaluation of a work that allows a progressive discovery of its complex structure. Going beyond the aforementioned perceptual theory, this model processes insights from cognitive theory as well as from behavioral research, which is used to evaluate the role played by emotions in the aesthetic process.

The analysis of information paths constituted a foundation of an aesthetics based on perceptual theory. As described by Frank/Franke, [31] this physiological and cognitive process begins with information processing in the sensory organs. However, a considerable difference exists between the initial absorption of information and its subsequent processing in the consciousness, which only selected and variously codified data reach. Of the information

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