Tag: aesthetics
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Aesthetics vs. Microsociology
The problems of perception, assessment, category, association, prestige… What we are coming to call generalized reading.
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Re-engineering “taste”
One way I’ve found helpful to think about “culture,” at a more manageable scale, is through the metaphor of an unending variety show, with many theaters and stages (think music festivals—GovBall, Coachella). This neverending show presents a class of problems to any audience member attempting to grok an act, or to any act attempting to…
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Mental Imagery 1
Disclaimer: Most of the insights in this post have already been addressed by semiotics, and won’t strike anyone familiar with that discipline as novel. This is more just an attempt to reframe and re-analogize a process than to advance actual arguments. Delving into the world of machine learning has me interested in encoding as an…
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Seventies Interior Design
In the seventies, carpets were a way to signal a certain level of middle and upper-middle-class affluence. As such, they could be found almost everywhere. Today, stained wood stands as a similar socioeconomic indicator, at least in coastal American culture. There is the angle by which this is purely contrarian signaling — the upper-class picks a style (e.g. carpeting);…
Suspended Reason 