Response to Nick

I am commenting on Nicks questions, “Where is my aesthetic experience? In each individual taking of a photograph? In the leaving and returning of a photo-excursion? In the printing and pasting of the photos themselves?”
Because this was posted at the time we were discussing Dewey, I will respond in the context of Dewey.
I would say that the aesthetic experience is in each individual taking of the photograph. This is the time when you are exercising your conscious intention and adding “regulation, power of selection, and redisposition” (Wartenberg 142). It is at the moment you are taking the pictures that you are experiencing so completely that your experience can be an experience, which is what makes your pictures art.
The leaving and returning of the photo-excursion certainly is not the point of your aesthetic experience—you may be conscious, but you are not intervening with your consciousness.
Although I hold that the actual taking of the picture is the moment of aesthetic experience, some difficulty arises with the printing and pasting of the photos themselves. Printing a photo still requires artisanship, and without the conscious intent required by Dewey it most certainly would not end as art. Perhaps photography requires two separate aesthetic experiences—the first where you are intervening in nature (taking the photo), and the second when you are intervening with the photograph (printing).
QUESTION: As discussed at the beginning of the semester, there are many works of art which were created without the intent of the artist (ex. John Lennon’s doodles). Do these prove Dewey’s theory wrong? And if not, then how can they be included under his theory?

Walking and Breathing

A major criticism of Dewey's account of art seems to be it's openness; one could take his definition of a art and apply it to almost anything done in life, perhaps even living itself. This recieve so much criticism because it seems ridiculous to consider wuch things as walking or sitting or breathing as 'art' merely because they were done with conscious intent. However, it has also been noted previously that people have a tendency to dismiss a peice of artwork because we feel that "even I could do that." Perhaps the idea of breathing or walking as art seems so ridiculous because we all do it, and so we degrade it. But really, what if we did include conscious intention into those activities? When do we ever become conscious of how we walk or breathe? Walking, though it seems to simple because "we can all do it" is actually an incredibly complex activity. To quote an article in National Geographic, "These biometrichal windows on walking and running illuminate just how astonishing a feat of balance, coordination, and efficiency is upright locomotion. The legs on a walking human body act not unlike inverted pendulums. Using a stiff leg as a point of support, the body swings up and over it in an arc, so that the potential energy gained in the rise roughly equals the kinetic energy gnerated in the descent. By this trick the body stores and recovers so much of the energy used with each stride that it reduces it's own workload by as much as 65 percent" (Ackerman, J. "The Downside of Upright." National Geographic July 2006: 126-145). True, complexity does not give something art-status, but it seems that we could view walking differently if we walked with conscious intent.

I have no specifc question for this entry. Instead I am interested in a response to the validity of these thoughts.