Life Imagined Week 1 Introduction.docx

A cognitive perspective has to do with how we think about art Our schemes do not much reality Culture Is based on the difference between what we have previously experienced and what actually is being perceived at the moment Can be an instrument for change Has to do to the ways in which people dea...

A cognitive perspective has to do with how we think about art Our schemes do not much reality Culture Is based on the difference between what we have previously experienced and what actually is being perceived at the moment Can be an instrument for change Has to do to the ways in which people deal with this difference. Our individual as well as collective memories give form and meaning to a changing reality Is cumulative Is a continuous, dialectic process of adaptation through accommodation and assimilation Dialectic has to do with a process that has two sides (memory and actuality) Accommodation has to do with us adjusting our thinking to reality Assimilation has to do with us adjusting reality to our thinking Emerges when memory and perception do not entirely coincide We experience this difference as reality What makes it recursive is that fact the we remember what we experienced but also how you experienced it (how we have dealt with the present in the past) Memories Are the material of culture Are individual and collective Are how we experience reality, without them we cannot but we are not complied to them Individual culture implies a collective dimension because we are not isolated from society Sayre’s definition of culture: Culture encompasses a set of values, beliefs, and behavior, passed from one generation to the next Thinking is the recycling of memories Four cognitive perspectives with dealing with change: Perception of similarities: has to do with the body and the senses Imagination of possibilities: has to do with artefacts, making things to solve discrepancy between memory and actuality Conceptualization of meaning: has to do with language, we standardize reality Analysis of structures: we do this analysis using graphic symbols Four media through which culture exists Body Artefacts Language Graphic symbols Four cumulative dimensions of culture: Sensory, Motor, Concrete Memories and Abstract Memories Sensory(accommodation) Motor(assimilation) Perception Imagination Concrete Memories Analysis Conceptualization Abstract Memories Concrete memories are something that you can easily think in terms of its materiality Abstract memories are not connected to a particular moment in time Imagination is assimilative because we create something to make sense of the world Conceptualization is abstract and assimilative because we impose order in the world using language in a way Consciousness is given form and meaning through artefacts (in movement, sound, objects, language) Perceiving culture: the news, history Imagining culture: the arts, entertainment Conceptualizing culture: ideology, religion Analyzing culture: science Art Is a way of reflecting upon our life Is form of cultural (self-)consciousness, or imaginative reflection because it highlights the difference between memory and actuality which underlies consciousness Only exists in the perceiver, because the fact that something is created as an artwork doesn’t mean that it will function as an artwork Helps us to come to grips with experience and it allows us to reflect on experience, share experiences, and store and remember experiences Changes because art is always the same, which means that it always has the same identical function Evolution of graphic culture: images, stylized images, writing and models