Not Value Collisions, but an Invigorating Humanistic
and Democratic Value Dialogue 

Aesthetics: ‘Pure’ and ‘Absolute’ or ‘Obsolete’. 

If one were to take Kenneth Clark’s analysis of John Ruskin’s nineteenth century concepts about art and aesthetics and paraphrase them for the pragmatics of the twenty-first century, aesthetics still would not be just a matter of taste and quality, not just lie in the “eyes of the beholder.” Informed judgment still requires, from maker and interpreter alike, knowledge and understanding of the whole human social and cultural history, bringing to bear intuition and feeling, intellect and knowledge, historical fact and memory, and every and all other human capacities, all focused on the task to define epoch-specific and relevant sets of aesthetics. The task still demands openness with and immersing in physical, intellectual and social conditions; otherwise the new aesthetics would emerge just as another of false concepts in a line of predatory, dehumanizing, trendy and short-lived things. 

Even the most superior mind and the most powerful imagination must be logic-based – to understand the logic of the absurd even – and the narrowness, expanse or limitations must be clearly understood. Especially, since imagination will often recast truths in all kinds of ways that overwhelm banal, commonplace and trite minds in their understanding, but the superior mind and the most powerful imagination must test and ground its principles. The principles cannot just be based on theory, but on observation, experimentation and testing. 

If the greatest twenty-first century art/design schools still believe in their duty to impart vital truths, not only about facts of visual literacy and technical skills, but about the sociology of concepts and ideas, and the anthropology of philosophies and mythologies as well as the interdependent relationships and conduct between concepts and institutions of life, then great art/design will be the specific expression of a democratic epoch in which cultural groups are united in many beliefs of purpose and human destiny. 

Without doubt, investigating the discourse on aesthetics, past and present, is like opening Pandora’s Box, ideal when linked to a single sharply defined philosophy or worldview, a can of worms when the complexity of the subject matter must be unfolded, because the problematic of aesthetics encompasses the many values that not only surround the conception of two, three-dimensional or time-based-performance objects, but also the conceptual quality of involvement and attitude of maker, selection and application of his skills, the receptivity of audiences, the esoteric or pragmatic purpose (to inform, educate or entertain) of the object, the coarseness or sensitivity to social and cultural contexts, the measures of emotional intensity and challenge, and the growth of the culture which is either hurried on or slowed and impeded. 

Rationalists want to capture the notions of intuitive proportions of beauty and contain them in measurable empiricist frameworks. Perspectivists prefer to recognize the fact that all conceptual schemas are directed by particular individual or combinations of many intellectual perspectives to describe or envision the universe. Perspectivists, like Nietzsche and Einstein, would reject any notion that there exists either objective metaphysics or objective space and time. Hedonists, filter the world before them through the notion that humans are motivated only by their self-interest and therefore pleasurable sublimation is the only thing that a person demands from beauty. All represent just a fraction of the exhaustive wealth of philosophical investigations that attempt shedding of light on the human condition. If all criteria for an aesthetic ideal would be joined, it most likely would result in a most amazing cacophony of contradictions. It seems, like all democracies, which by design must be open to all expressions, it is the self-stimulating discourse that makes the subject of aesthetic so interesting and dynamic. Any clear definition would drain its lifeblood. The maker and the object start the dialogue and the interpreter comes to certain conclusions, some to be discarded, others as eye and mind openers which begin to change the culture and society. 

Few Answers in Complex Times 

Let’s face it, as hard as this message is, in today’s times of fame, notoriety and bottom-line commerce, most professionally educated or vocationally trained artists/designers lack the deep knowledge necessary for sustaining a culture beyond amusement and profit motives. They lack the stamina and interest as well as the commitment to sustain selflessly their own arduous, physically and intellectually complex discipline, which puts their ownership of aesthetics in doubt. The object making process requires the use of not just a convenient partial but a full understanding of principles in visual literacy for methodically and constructively framing a clear and “pure” or “absolute”, as well as culture-defining set or sets of relevant aesthetics. Few art/design schools offer deep course programs in the rigor of philosophy and aesthetics or about the psychological, social, and cultural ecology that must be sustained by artists and designers. 

This century-old goal of developing sets of aesthetics, like fractured fairytales, derived from early attempts to stem “against the soulless machine production” of objects during the Industrial Revolution, split into various schools. On one side, championed by the Arts and Crafts movement in the UK and the USA, saw mass production as threat to individual creativity and expression. It inspired the Art Nouveau credo and its concept of “Gesamtkunstwerk”, namely to merge all facets of human existence into one unified work of art, which was put to practice by the likes of architects Henri Van de Velde and Victor Horta and later by the community of architects, artisans, artists and designers of the Wiener Werkstätte. The other, although coming from the same roots that begat their foundations, the Bauhaus and later of the HfG Ulm, both in Germany, championed mass production, standardization, and affordable objects. Later in the fifties and sixties the styling efforts of the Basel Allgemeine Kunstgewerbeschule, Switzerland joined. 

Today, that goal is even further away from coming to fruition. Art/design education has become much more narrow and specialized and is unfortunately culturally vacuous. In today’s education, budgeted time is weighed against investments in cultural perception, aesthetics, and conceptual skills and craft, hand dexterity weighed against machine expedience, in a struggle against bottom-line financing. It is no longer about cultural musing. Axioms of “it is better to work ten days on one product than to manufacture ten products in one day” have been exchanged for “time is money”, “fifteen minutes of fame”, glitz and notoriety. In addition, design education lies still predominantly in the domain of physical crafts and continues to be about an efficient, but marginally creative investment of intelligence in following and copying the most leading and successful styles promoted by the professional media. The same maybe said about art. 

The fact is, the task of defining true cultural aesthetics is a philosophical matter, requiring serious time commitment, investment in critical thinking, accumulation of empirical knowledge and understanding of the construction, transfer, and interpretation of human values and that knowledge depends on all participants – maker and interpreter, critic and audience. 

The Widening Schism Between Aesthetics, Society and Culture 

Nowadays, design plays by the rules of market capitalism, which are a value-charade between popular and culture-building aesthetic values. When institutes predict the annual or even faster turnover of color schemes for all goods-producing industries and when marketers invent and then begin to define sets of aesthetics artificially and outside of any historical or cultural framework like, for example, inventing an artificial frameworks for “Generation X or Y or Z”, and waiting for the public to find and adopt these as new identities, then the question of design-aesthetics as culture-supporting has most likely become mute. Fashion and color forecasting is about standardization of materials and stabilization of an otherwise very dynamic and competitive market system, focusing on the production of a single item in much greater and extreme quantities rather than on many items of various volumes and aggregates. It is the collapse of democratic choice through a near corporate dictatorship. Marketing takes full advantage of a very beleaguered user/audience with very limited time and survival information, providing artificial sets of identities, requiring the public to adopt and not to organically grow their own. 

Aesthetics have always been part of a complex social game of status, hierarchical positioning and ranking, as well as identification – keeping some in and others out, some welcomed and others being ostracized – for privileged tribal chiefs, shamans and medicine men in original cultures, and aristocratic and religious leaders in traditional cultures, later aided by scholars, military, and industrial gatekeepers. In contemporary times, marketers have taken up the role to define the aesthetics for society but as tools for corporate captains and political opportunists. They take advantage of short-shrift trends and lifecycles. In a consumer-oriented world, in which each year more products must be marketed than in years before, long-lasting aesthetic requirement are considered unnecessary hurdles and barriers to corporate success. Long gone are the times during which people took part in a slow and methodical evolution of shared aesthetic values. 

The obstacles for truly understanding aesthetics are great. Most cultures are thoroughly handicapped in the topic. They have delegated aesthetics to the domain of the holy, like truth and mysticism, while gravitating to anything profane that seems to assure worldly survival. There is no comparison between the disparate investments in the literary-culture and visual-culture. The literary arts, at least in the western world, depend on formal education sustained over many years, starting in kindergarten and progressing through the next levels all the way through the university, where the discourse continues to be primarily verbal, depending on dialogue, the explication of written text for the bulk of argumentation and disciplinary discourse, with some visual material in form of charts, graphs, maps and diagrams to support it. Visual literacy is not taught in same depth to the same constituency or when it is, it is supporting the existing dogmas of art or design. The psychological and sociological issues about visual communication as well as aesthetics are rarely, or when, just cursorily addressed. Most likely, there are philosophers who are better educated in aesthetics at the university than artists and designers are at art schools. This leaves the public in darkness about the dynamic discourse that is raging between the different schools of thought, believing that artists/designers are experts in the field that claims aesthetics as its focus. Meanwhile sociologists have discovered that the greater portion of visual communication occurs outside awareness and in relationship to flight or fight, an animalistic behavior that is heightened especially through ambiguity, which requires alertness and vigilance from the observer towards the malignant and the beguine. 

The Utopian Myth of True Democratic Aesthetics 

The concept of freedom is a truly utopian dream. Ornithologists and sociologists alike have long debunked the exuberant human notion of “Man as free as a bird”, because humans and birds are bound to species-related life cycles and rhythms, social behaviors, and physical and ideological territories. If biological nature, environment and ecology do not curtail as much any longer as in former times, society, no matter how open and liberal, still imposes restrictions and impediments to any concept of freedom that is unfamiliar. In modern times, aboriginal taboos have morphed into social codes and etiquettes, which are enforced by the same religious, philosophical and ideological constituencies and their institutions. Only few citizens self-determine their goals of life with certain specificity and choose to restrict their conduct to characteristically defined behaviors that suit their values and preferences. Others, who also earnestly believe in living full lives, wait passively for society to guide them through the complexities of existence by duplicating the life styles of those they admire or envy. 

In the convolutions of an overpopulated world with diminishing resources and finite measures of time and space, little has changed. To be able to facilitate a cross-cultural discourse, conventions may not be just extremely necessary but the only way to provide ease to overwhelming complexity. That is why ancient prohibitions, enforcing the sacred and the mundane, continue to be placed on behaviors, ideas and expressions, objects and images. They help in safeguarding the underprivileged against the overanxious power and influence of more highly placed individuals. They provide means for communication that although confined to ancient traditions are garnered into social reservoirs of values and laws. 

In a comparison between lives in the 19th and today, it becomes evident, that the required conceptual breathing space around a person was controlled by the values injected by religion, education, social standing and the direct relationship with the community. Very few citizens dared to think independently or creatively beyond conventions. There was not enough affluence of time to step out and think differently from others. Few would allow themselves to impose on another’s life space. Interpretations of right or wrong were accorded by religious dogma and local conventions. Today, citizens are exploring the edges of the space around them, thereby trespassing very frequently and bumping into the life space of others. Now lawyers stand in for the integrity of citizens and their institutions. Life has changed from the idealistic to the pragmatic. The discussions have changed from the assessment of what is ethically and morally right to what is legal. This is also true of aesthetics. It is what it is. It is less about social and cultural value. It is about investment and financial value. The artist as shaman and seer, who instructs society, has stepped aside for the artist as commercial opportunist and entertainer, the pied piper of aesthetics making sometimes-shallow promises. 

In addition, over the years the process of critical thinking in relationship to works of art or design has been neglected. Most scientists give art a very broad birth, because nothing in the arts, not even the principles, when properly applied, may result in valuable aesthetic experiences. Artists and designers are taught as makers, not as intellectuals, and this shows in contemporary times when all rules are relaxed and all traditional borders and confinements are eliminated. Visual aesthetics, over the years, have slipped into the entertainment category. Museums are social entertainment centers, where persons, belonging usually to privileged classes, educated or affluent, come to meet each other, not necessarily for deep discussions on aesthetics, but to be seen at event and show openings, clinking glasses with the prominent, sometimes artists and sometimes others. Art critics do not encourage critical thinking. They are headline hounds in their own journalistic competition as kingmakers. Most critics function as agents for museum visitors as interpretation guides leading them safely through the ideological forest. They determine for many the work’s value. Visitors function as passive participants, usually adopting the critic’s viewpoint, but not necessarily understanding it. This way is easier. 

Territoriality and Identity 

As much as Man wants to escape his biological roots and his slow behavioral, social and cultural evolution, the world has not yet seen an overwhelming change from his expression of animalistic territoriality to something more gentle and accommodating like adjusting to the many needs and values of others. He aggressively applies his territoriality to all of life’s situations, while responding intuitively to ancient competitive survival traits and instincts. Humanity is still waiting for Man to attempt to emerge as a utopian benign creature of benevolence. There is nothing in human life that doesn’t thrive for a competitive edge or advantage from which to benefit, may it be religion, philosophy, sport, business or art. While “survival of the fittest” seems like a nasty evolutionary slogan, without competitive refinement in all aspects of human endeavor the world can only revert back to homeostatic entropy and just a few evolutionary steps away from stagnation and elimination. 

As in sports or chess, in all play, it is nearly impossible to carry on a game without the challenging and distinctly curtailing rules for establishing a by-the-breadth-of-hair winner or a by-a-nose loser. Rules make the game interesting. Tougher rules make the game better. They not only foster the development of strategies, physical and mental skills, but because they can never completely address all game-related possibilities, there are always hidden loopholes, areas for the deviant mind to explore. If that were not true, in interdisciplinary communication all discourse would become stale – uneventful, without energy and cognitive stimulation, without potentials of dangerous and mind-altering metamorphoses. Even though every debate, in reality, is about refining, changing or nullifying opposing concepts and part of a civilized rhetorical process, which evolved over centuries in clans and tribes and refined by institutions, language and law, most debates are about territorial integrity in which logical but also overpowering rationales are presented to quiet the opposition. 

All rules represent values. Values divide, separate, but also unite and provide space for identity and belonging. Trappist monks would have to close their monasteries if they would remove their rules of silence. In the evolution from hunter-gatherer to modern member of society, Man has moved from physical to intellectual, emotional and ideological territoriality. Owning a house, a car or belonging to specific civic, cultural, religious or political groups signal outlines of specific identities and privileges. A very good example is the Carthusian Order, devoted to study and meditation since its founding by Saint Bruno of Cologne in 1084, which expanded the already very restrictive but simple rules of “pray” and “work”, established by St. Benedict, including the definitely challenging eremitical rules of “silence”. One would think that adding new and difficult rules would have stifled the growth of the order, but in retrospect it has over time grown into three-hundred monastic foundations, of which twenty-five are charterhouses for monks and nuns. 

Other living examples are the shriving Amish Mennonite communities in Pennsylvania, in which members in order not to be ostracized or shunned submit to very strict rules that limit behaviors and daily conduct, restrict the use of any contemporary technology (cars, tractors, electricity, telecommunication, etc.) that has potentials to disrupt family relationships and the community. Prohibitions regulate clothing, restrict music and allow no dance. The Amish do not sanction insurance or acceptance of public assistance. They practice nonresistance and resist military service. Despite the lifestyle that outsiders consider very confining, to their surprise, the communities continue to steadily grow. 

Aesthetics in Homeostatic Cultures 

(from the beginning of human history to the early Middle Ages) 

Homeostasis imposes a quality of constancy, consistency and dependability on traditional social/cultural systems, which to a certain extent tend to shrive not on principles of invention or drives for discovery but on self-preservation by attempts to repeat past successes, making only adjustments to maintain the safe equilibrium between inside and exterior through regulations, conventions or directives and dogma. Homeostatic cultures seem satisfied when the milieu de l’intérieur, the environment within, maintains stable and constant conditions without being greatly influenced by ideologies stemming from the exterior. Only when conditions in the external environment cannot be instantaneously compensated and equilibrated by self-similar adjustments of the interior or the influences from the exterior are perceived as seriously threatening will there be an attempt to adapt to the overwhelming conditions. 

The systems of aesthetics in homeostatic cultures, which seem to be mostly either ancient (original cultures) and antique (small, isolated cultures deliberately shielded by dogma, taboo and specific social rules like the Australian Bushmen or Amish societies), show only very slow and nearly imperceptible change over long periods of time. There are few or no generational gaps and the perceptions and anticipations of futures are in exact synchronization with replications of the past. They display tendencies of maintaining internal as well as external stability and there seem to be coordinated response capabilities of its members to any stimulus tending to disturb the normal condition, as described by anthropologist Margaret Mead about grandparents, holding newborn grandchildren in their arms, who cannot conceive of any other future for them than the mirror of their own past lives. The past of the adult is the future of each new generation – son like father, daughter like mother. 

Aesthetics of Adaptation and Assimilation 

(from the Middle Ages to the times of Enlightenment and the Modern) 

In cultures, which are able to sanction the relaxation of borders, yielding to formerly unknown influences coming from the outside, both old and young generations begin to assume that it is quite natural for the behavior of each new generation to differ from that of the preceding one. Even though directives and dogmas still persist and elders are still dominant in setting and defining the social and cultural rules and limits, there is a new open space for intellectual discourse, which allows new ideas to mingle with traditional concepts. While adaptation and assimilation are considered slow and limited in their creativity and individuals and their social activities are usually unconsciously modified by out-of-awareness adjustments of traditions to new cultural surroundings, formerly unknown environmental conditions, and to a level of intensity of stimulation and quality that cannot be measured in its initial stages. Margaret Mead claims that the main causes for substantial change in adaptive cultures are due to unforeseen events, namely wars, ideological changes due to new insight, technological inventions and discoveries, causing the experiences of the young to be very different from those of the old. Unlike homeostatic cultures, adaptive cultures are better equipped for survival. Even if there are no drives for invention or discovery, adaptation becomes better fitted for survival in a changed environment. An adaptive culture is no longer trying to duplicate the achievements of the ancestors. Adaptive cultures present a prevailing model for members to follow that looks at the behavior of contemporaries and presents a willingness to accept concepts from other cultures into their reservoirs of language, customs, and lore. 

Aesthetics of Continuous Metamorphosis 

(contemporary and near-future times) 

In contemporary cultures all information and values are in flux, under construction or in the process of refinement and revision is nearly incomprehensible. Margaret Mead predicted forty years earlier, that in contemporary times, nowhere in the world are there elders who know what their children know, no matter how remote and simple the societies are, in which the children live. In the past there were always some elders who knew more than any of their children, in terms of their experience of having grown up within a stabile cultural system. Today there are none. The culture will depend on the existence of a continuing dialogue, in which the young, free to act on their own initiative, can lead their elders in the direction of the unknown. Then the older generation will have access to new experiential knowledge, without which no meaningful plans for futures can be made. 

The Hermeneutic Circle of Language 

In the early sixties, György Kepes, one of Moholy Nagy’s protégées, working at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, USA, suggested in one of his lectures that in contemporary times the artistic image/icon would displace the word in efficiency, which has turned out to be just partially true. It may be true that here and there, an image is able to stand in for thousands of words but when it is uniquely unprecedented, then, to describe it, the whole sophistication of a language vocabulary will have to be pressed into service. Nothing exists outside of communication, and anything that wants to enter social and cultural communication must enter a discourse, which can only be facilitated through the metaphor-wealth of a language to construct the conceptual outline, framing the Gestalt of the new. 

Like in the construction of language components to define and describe any discovery or conceptual innovation, the hermeneutic circle in the construction of meaningful visual objects starts with the choice of words and metaphors in recognition that there is something out there in the universe that behaves differently from any formerly known phenomenon. The process begins with thorough contemplation, investigation and questioning of every aspect that surrounds the perception, usually in solitude and in a conversation with oneself and in comparison with what one knows. In the next phase the phenomenon is tentatively named and metaphorically described. Framed by single or by as many descriptive metaphors as is needed, it is now able to enter the discourse with the professional world – a cauldron of queries, proofs and counterarguments – until it emerges strong enough to withstand all major criticism. Only then is it able to be picked up by the concept-socializing media, culture feuitons, dictionaries and encyclopedias, and distributed on the various levels of complexity and sophistication to the public, from ridicule and trivialization to insightful and constructive explications, until it becomes a household concept or word and is entered into the encyclopedic knowledge of an epoch. With that it is becoming part of the socializing process of knowledge through which all value systems are being challenged, altered or further refined. 

Coping with a Biased Universe 

None of the perceptions of the ideal universe come without bias, generated by class, race, gender, abilities to think, translate, and explore. There are always insiders and outsiders, some who stay close to the intended interpretation and those who see opportunities in expanding the concepts way beyond the intentions of the originator. All meaning-systems are independent and open-ended, able to adjust to the philosophical constraints of the interpreter. This gets further complicated by the fact that the aesthetics of an object cannot be fully understood without cognition of the maker‘s intentions, the framework and context in which it is used or presented and the level of intellectual vigor, knowledge and scope of social and cultural experience that the viewer/interpreter brings or should bring to the event. The interpreter’s ability to critically think is democracy’s requirement for probing the relevance of the object’s aesthetics against the collective knowledge evolved in a culture that shaped ideology, values, and social goals. 

The pressure on the contemporary interpreter is to abandon self-reference situated in personal, cultural and social and frozen prejudices, and to enter a discourse which allows the widest variety of specific knowledge domains to begin linguistically mediate, coming to a consensus in which the agreement is no longer frozen but able to admit new interpretations and revelations. This may differ from the task of the maker, who as an author of an ideologically framed narrative and context, must present the aesthetic argument so clearly and succinctly, that it is not a trivial repeat of what is known but a platform leading to greater cultural growth and understanding. It is rare to find a strong concept/image/object to be open to all kinds of interpretations. 

Language: The Social and Cultural Depository of Value 

Language plays the most important role. It incorporates everything. In its holdings and constantly refurbishing reservoir are the fundamental ingredients that shape a culture’s perception and metaphorical descriptions of the universe, the environment, the human condition, and the abstract philosophical and religious values, which instruct all human institutions for social relations, interdependency as well as independence. It would be very hard to interpret any symbol, any image, signal, without a process in which critical thinking turns thoughts into a vigorous dialogue. The tools for the critic are equal to those of the maker as well as the interpreter. Only in an agreement between terms and definitions will yield a specific understanding. All must use the rhetorical conventions with which to explore the challenges that anything new brings to the table. If visual diagrams would be better tools than verbal language, society would have long ago invested significantly in the evolution of a critical system of diagrams. The personal perceptions of a complex universe can only be described to some one else through either the commonly used metaphorical mind images turned into maps, diagrams, and images or through coining new metaphor or creating amalgams to provide the conceptual clarity to describe the phenomena. 

A critic is never independent from a chosen set of principles that ground their evaluations. The principles position and differentiate, but do not limit any interpreter from adding or expanding the knowledge. No concept can therefore have an ultimate meaning disallowing doubts or misinterpretation. In fact, misinterpretation is a right and a creative gift, which only the interpreter posses, as all systems of meaning making are open-ended systems of signs in which concepts of aesthetics are as varied as the myriad of perceptions, ideologies allow. 

Words define certain worlds, an efficient conveyance of mostly shared experience among humans. Some generic descriptions may join others in a universal language, the roundness of the wheel or the fact that water is a symbol standing in for concepts of transition, energy, power, continuity, and cyclical metrological metamorphosis, adjusting to all forms, adapting to all vessels and basins. It is always moving, in trickles, in torrents, from plateaus to the sea, it knows no obstacles. It will find its way, around, through, and over. It has the ability to part and to reunite. 

Metaphor: The Bridge between Language and Visual Aesthetics 

A visual work of art/design cannot function without reference to a metaphor. Even if the content is about “nothingness,” it is about something that can be described verbally and pictorially through instructive and guiding metaphors. The ancients looked to nature, to the mythologies and parables transmitted over epochs, to frame the metaphors that described their world, emotions and values. Miyamoto Musashi, a 17th century samurai, master swordsman, hermit and poet described his successful battle strategies, using very simple and easily understood metaphors, like void, ground, water, wind and fire. 

The Void 

The spirit of the void, a spiritual space of nothingness exists where there is literally an undefined emptiness of obligations, of purpose or reasons for existence. It is an undefined imaginary expanse, without borders. Its bounderies are lacking definite form, without markers signaling beginnings or ends. There is no permanent topology unless it is imagined or imposed. There is no content, no purpose, no specific goals or function. It exists. It is. It is without limitations and therefore difficult for Man to include in his reservoir of provable knowledge. Musashi instructed that by acknowledging things that exist, one could imagine that which does not exist or might exist in the future. The void is Man’s most creative space, open to all ideas, inventions, and discoveries. 

The Ground 

By knowing the smallest as well as the biggest, the shallowest and the deepest of physical configurations, one can establish the outline of Place – a map that affords one to take a distinct position, a stance toward a specific goal. Without the map it would be difficult to find identity and belonging or the concepts of a better place. 

The Water 

Water is always in transition. It has its own timing and flow. It is influenced by its surroundings. It can be calm or full of energy. It is powerful, full of continuity and cyclical meteorological metamorphosis. Water adapts to all landscapes, vessels and basins. It is always moving, from a melting trickle in the mountains to the rush to the sea. Water has no obstacles. It will find its way, either around or through or over. It has the ability to part and to reunite. 

The Wind 

Embedded in its concepts are flexibility, constant shifts, being never at rest, constantly dispersing and reassembling from smallest breath to most stormy gust, balmy breeze to sea churning typhoons and tornados. Wind comes from and goes into all directions, touching and having touched past history, present day and allowing visions of future. 

The Fire 

Its concepts engender drastic change abilities, from small nearly coy beginnings – a spark, a glint – to the nearly uncontrollable spirit of a single flame – a flare, a blaze. Small flames burn with the same intensity, as does a firestorm. Its unpredictable agility, and ability to jump across spaces make it dangerous and capricious under some conditions, warming and nourishing under others. 

Aesthetic Value: A System of Integrity 

Integrity is a proper term with which to describe the search for high value or wholeness of relationships and interactions between philosophies and worldviews, artistic/design schemes and concepts within the other human machinations of the social and cultural universe. Integrity is implemented through processes of melding craft, tool and materials into presentations of concept, image, object or performance, while the experience is eliciting memorable reactions of extraordinary, special or ideal qualities in the viewer/user/audience. It will attach itself to any frameworks of high or low value and quality like harmony or chaos, logic or confusion. However, as soon as the maker defines requirements, goals and directives for the object, the outline of a framework to reach a very specific level of integrity will be revealing the necessity for specific ingredients for the concept’s implementation. In this way, a disharmonious composition or a cacophonous color palette, required by the conceptual framework, contributes to the aesthetic integrity of the work. 

But integrity is not democratic. Democracy assures access but not quality. It either exists or it does not. Doing one’s best according to one’s aptitude, capabilities and stamina make aesthetics just quantifiable. Quantity of time spent, number of projects completed, miles of canvas produced, maybe commendable but are not culture-constructive. In the long run, aesthetics refer to the revelations of ideals of a culture to itself.

 For instance, although typographers talk about aesthetic rules, which on the surface sound like principles taken from the visual arts, in truth there is only one applicable rule, namely contrast. When applied to spatial arrangements and clustering of lines of type, paragraphs and columns, readability is about the discernable contrast between fonts, sizes, line spacing, line lengths and difference between the programmed templates of each typeface (italic, light, regular, medium, bold, extra-bold, extended, condensed). The rest relies on adhesion to or breaking traditional editorial hierarchies and rules. Because of centuries of guidance by rhetorical theory, most documents in Law, Medicine and Science follow the efficient traditional editorial hierarchies. When type is to be read then the designer must deal with the Ergonomics of seeing and reading. When it comes to typographic self-expression or typographic styling all rules are off. The conceptual framework declares the extent of integral rules. Although designers and art directors use and direct typography, it is clear that they deal mostly with the most obvious form, rarely with the explication of contents. They do headlines well but ignore the rest. 

Emancipative Values Create Unforeseen Aesthetics 

It is clear, determining an over-arching meaning and function of “aesthetics” is like herding chickens, not just a few but several hundred flocks of them, without achieving any ultimate or clear certainty. The ancient search for social and cultural equality will continue. Individuals within cultural groups and peoples between states and countries will want to escape any dogmatic political or religious control in which obedience to singular ruling ideologies is strongly enforced by censorship and punishment or shunning – although, most likely, never coming to conclusion – the slow transition from authoritarian societies, controlled by restrictive dogmatic regimes and religions to true emancipation and independence is taking place. It is energized by principles of humanism, which encourage all peoples in modern times, especially since World War II, to actively participate in the spurred exponential development and momentum of democratization. In the world’s democratization, the emerging result from this positive but very sluggish humanistic emancipation process, many of citizens have been inspired and most, if not all, have become interested in determining their own life-paths. They either have taken or have received access or possession to the intellectual and social resources, even if begrudgingly granted, to be able now or in the foreseeable future to participate in the range of ultimate opportunities for further refining the values of freedoms of expression, movement and equality. Emancipative values empower and entitle citizens to practice their freedoms and to engage in collective actions that challenge any elite, may they see themselves as gatekeepers to institutions like education, health, science or art. The sources for emancipation are unpredictable. 

One of the best examples of emancipation has been the Internet – form, text, image and performance – which most traditional and powerful institutions see as anarchistic and only reluctantly give dues. With the gatekeepers removed, the surfers and browsers are never sure and have to determine themselves the value of the messages, its source, its quality and correctness. As one dog whispered to the other, sitting in front of an electronic word-processor: “On the Net, nobody knows that we are dogs.” This gives all minority viewpoints access to communicate about worlds unimagined. The process has thrown the traditional controllers, universities and their writing and authoring programs and publishers and their traditional standards, into serious turmoil. But then in art/design as in all human endeavors the charlatan always stands next to the scholar, taking advantage of the novice. The democratization of knowledge is the spread of knowledge among common people, in contrast to knowledge being controlled by elite groups. Democracy is supposed to empower citizens to think critically. 

As the universe has been perceived as simultaneously shrinking and expanding by millions of lightyears, which boggles anybody’s mind, the ingenuity of Man will constantly discover and invent conceptual things for which artists and designers will have to find the proper metaphors to inform the culture and bring society along. There will always be full engagement for those that are open-minded.

Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer, authors. 1944. The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception.

Christopher Alexander. 2003-04. The Nature of Order: Volume 1: The Phenomenon of Life; Volume 2: The Process of Creating Life; Volume 3: A Vision of a Living World; Volume 4: The Luminous Ground. The Center For Environmental Structure, Berkeley, CA. 

Rudolf Arnheim, Visual Thinking. 1969. University of California Press, Berkeley, CA.

Franz Boaz, author; Aldona Jonaitis, editor. 1995. A Wealth of Thought: Franz Boas on Native American Art, University of Washington Press, Seattle, WA.

Ernst Cassirer, author; S.G. Lofts, translator; Donald P. Verne, introduction. 2000. The Logic of the Cultural Sciences: Five Studies (Cassirer Lectures Series), Yale University Press, New Haven, CT. 

Ernst Cassirer. 2004. Substance and Function and Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, Dover Publications, Mineola, NY. 

Deniz Coskun, 2007. Law as Symbolic Form: Ernst Cassirer and the Anthropocentric View of Law (Law and Philosophy Library), Springer, New York, NY.

Lewis Mumford, author; Hendrik Willem van Loon, introduction. 2009. The Story of Utopias, Dodo Press, Bel Air, CA.

E. H. Gombrich. 1994. The Sense of Order: A Study in the Psychology of Decorative Art (The Wrightsman Lectures) Phaidon Press, London, UK.

E. H. Gombrich. 1994. Ideals and Idols: Essays on Values in History and in Art , Phaidon Press, London, UK.

Nelson Goodman. 1978. Ways of Worldmaking, Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., Indianapolis, IN.

Abigail C. Housen, Aesthetic Thought, Critical Thinking and Transfer. 1999. Visual Understanding in Education, New York, NY.

John Ruskin, author; Kenneth Clark, editor. 1983. A Note on Ruskin’s Writings on Art and Architecture, in Ruskin Today, Penguin, London, UK.

Edward Sapir, author; David G. Mandelbaum, editor. 1963. Selected Writings of Edward Sapir in Language, Culture and Personality, University of California Press, Berkeley, CA

R. H. Stacy. 1977. Defamiliarization in Language and Literature, Syracuse University Press, Syracuse, NY. 

Benjamin Lee Whorf, author; John B. Carroll, editor. 1969. Language, Thought, and Reality: Selected Writings of Benjamin Lee Whorf, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.

For the information on value flow and terminology many authors were consulted, including Michael Benedikt, John Dewey, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Jürgen Habermas, Lewis Edwin Hahn, Immanuel Kant Friedrich Nietzsche, Sharon H. Poggenpohl, Gerald J. Skibbins, and others.

Aesthetic Value:  Creation, Transference and Interpretation 

Definitions and Flow

The Qualia of Aesthetics
In the process of analysis of a conscious experience of an object, qualia describe through visual, verbal, aural and kinetic means the subjective qualities of objects (intellectual, physical, emotional and social and cultural) and place them into cultural and social value hierarchies. For analytical dialogue and cultural discourse they provide the bases for inductive and deductive reasoning as well as conclusions. Qualia explicate the factual and illusory sense data of characteristics, relationships and values that provide the metaphoric descriptions of the exemplified ideals embedded in the experience engendered by the object. 

The Society 
It is the total aggregate of social relationships, in history and in current conduct, among individuals and groups that shape the quality and character of a community bound together by shared interests, similar customs, traditions and homogeneous institutions, nationality or ethnicity.

The Culture
It is the sum of sophistication, knowledge, and engrained folk wisdom, accrued through observation, education, exposure, and tradition, over time, that provides the foundation for specific religious beliefs and world views, customs, and practices, and is expressed through art, music, literature, and through the research and verification of disciplines.

The Objects

In this context an object is any conceptual or physical entity, which is subject to critical evaluation (valuation). It relates to the multitude of outcomes of human creative endeavors: concepts, ideas, literature, objects, images, processes, performances, etc. 

Objects do not exist by themselves. They are part of, relate to and interact with other objects in various contexts, of which each is different and specific. 

Objects cannot be evaluated separated from their total ecological context (function/purpose). Therefore they must be viewed in their totality of social and cultural contexts. 

In a symbiotic interaction, both culture and object shape each other: the culture guides the maker in the conception and construction of the object; the object instructs the culture. 

There are few limits to the perception of an object, but aesthetic qualities can only come from human experience. They may be perceived to be embedded in the object, but they exist only as intellectual constructs.

The Makers 

Concepts: Thinkers, Philosophers, Writers, Intellectuals of all disciplines

Objects: Artists, Designers, Artisans, Craftsmen

Performances: Actors, Dancers, etc.

The Object in its Culture Contexts 

a
Physical (in macro/micro environments, ecology of the relationships between humans and the natural and physical environment)
b
Behavioral (framed by the individual psychology of makers and interpreters and their rational and irrational likes and dislikes)
c
Social (within the hierarchical structure of status and territory, through privilege, tradition, education, ideology, etc.)
d
Cultural (embedded in human institutions of philosophy, law, art and morals, ethics)
e
Religious (the ethical and moral restrictions)
f
Philosophy/Worldview
• 
Aesthetics: the branch of philosophy deals with the study of values embedded in the beautiful and the sublime, as well as the illusive rules and principles for reading the universe, creating concepts about it, and shaping objects, performances and experience through it. 
•
Epistemology, another branch of philosophy, investigates the nature of knowledge, the validity of its roots and foundations, its encompassing range, defining its boundaries and power, weight and separating integral binding laws from duplicity.
•
Ethics or moral philosophy is a branch of philosophy which addresses concepts of good and evil, right and wrong, justice and injustice, while studying the moral standards and how they affect individual human behavior and the conduct of groups.
•
Logic deals with deductive and inductive reason-ing as part of most intellectual activities and is the most important point of etiquette in any disciplined intellectual discourse. The function of logic is to form the strategies for critical thought on which the discursive argument rests in an attempt to distinguish valid from faulty reasoning relevant to an object. It explores the object’s hinterland, namely the relationships between events and situations to foreshadow the inevitable consequences of their interaction.
•
Metaphysics concerns itself with the study of causality in nature and existence in time and space.
•
Political philosophy is a study of individual and common rights and freedoms, in relationship to all human institutions that are guided by laws, policies and procedures to organize a social and cultural system to assure a certain quality of life for citizens. 
•
Social philosophy studies the social behavior between individual and groups, the variety of life styles and taboos emanating from different ethnic groups and speech communities.

The Interpreters

are critics, audiences, users, participants of all walks of life (educated, experts, novices, and learners, the devout and the banal). They and the objects are intimately engaged in a negotiation process, searching for the best fit between stabil cultural and social perception and valuation, and looking for symbolic meaning or functional significance and more. 

Perceptual Filters:
a
Physiological Filters are activated by the senses (hearing, sight, smell, taste and touch).
b
Psychological Filters funnel the stimuli through personal and individual intuitive or cognitive processes that affect the experience.
c
Social Filters 
Channel the stimuli through the value depository of acceptable criteria for appropriate behavior and interaction to determine the worth of the experience by ranking it.
d
Cultural Filters screen the stimuli in relationship to beliefs, customs, and practices 

Evolutionary Stages in the Formation of Culture

a
Homeostatic Cultures (lowest emancipation): encompass a variety from orthodox, self-restricting dogma to oppressive and repressive dictatorships: What must/ought be done; what must and ought not be done! The common characteristics are that once the initial creative act is completed, orthodoxy, autocracy or dictatorship takes over. Even though the world is made up of diverse viewpoints, one dogma or one concept is chosen to control everything. All values, embedded in language, traditions, customs, and law are completely programmed either by orthodox and self-restricting dogmas or oppressive and repressive world-views or ideologies in service of autocracy. The individual is required to live in complete synchrony with the collective and is usually in a state of unaware-ness of other possibilities, leaving the exterior world and ideas unchallenged. There is some energy in the creative act of refinement and reiteration but serious metamorphosis cannot be expected. The energies are conservative and very close to a standstill (i.e., anthropologists claim that Australian Bush-men, over centuries, coined very few words, and that all of the rather small vocabulary is totally functional today.)
b
Adaptive Cultures (medium emancipation): In relationship to homeostatic cultures, adaptive cultures are predatory and opportunistic. The only creativity exists in the observation of convenient, profitable or advantageous behaviors in a competing culture, which takes it and adapts it. They behave as timid or passive democracies. Although individuals are culturally empowered to act, create and invent, they are reluctant to make decisions on their own. There is a limited sense of individualism and greater reliance on guidance from experts and institutions. Individuals are able to deal with tensions of change if they perceive the new to be in complete synchronisms with the collective and that it will not change their individual status in the social and cultural hierarchy. Their own value systems are semi-stable. Change is introduced only through the adaptation of values conceived by other competitive cultures (i.e., the guilds during the Renaissance). The traditional uniform and homogenous values must meld with the new in a process that is not always productive and sometimes warps both the new and the tradition. The process may also be gradual, often unconscious, absorbing knowledge and ideas through continual exposure rather than deliberate learning.
c
Democratic Cultures: Independent individuals pursue their vision of “happiness” as long as they do not impinge on others. The drive for ultimate democracy is pressing all individuals to make use of their freedoms and potentials. Values are in continuous flux and subject to unforeseen challenges, modification and change. They create great opportunities for metamorphoses and revolution. Their dynamic characteristics stand against homeostasis, especially against singular control by institutions, church and state, and invite continuous and conscious intellectual challenge. In the stage of sophistication, objects shift from specific cultural meaning to dynamic possible interpretations from “practical/pragmatic” to “symbolic/semantic” to “syntactic/unstructured”, in all combinations and configurations, that may or may not relate to existing hierarchies and may even cross territorial boundaries of other disciplines. Individuals are forced to deal with the results of change. They are no longer passive bystanders. As values may traverse all traditions, may stay separate or aggressively mingle, may have little relationship to the past, critics and audiences will be left behind. The newly formed values require creative responses from all, to be resilient in dealing with a flood of incongruent concepts and ideological collisions, in direct experience for the development of knowledge, in trial and error mode, for the sake of understanding the emotional, intellectual, social, and physical experience

Personal Interpretation (worldview) The construction of a set of value filters to interpret the physical, intellectual, spiritual, and social worlds (based on family and ethnic traditions, religion, political view, education, sense of social justice, individualism, interdependence, independence, and responsibility) 

Change in Perception and Related Valuation: 
Perceptional Feedback > Acceptance/Rejection, Clarity/Distortion, Creative Expansion of Phenomenon > Valuation 
• 
There is no proportional correspondence between what exists out there in the universe and what is perceived by the interpreter. The worldview provides the scope of accepted perceptions (fact + fiction = values) accumulated in an individual’s life experience. 
• 
Acceptance or rejection of environmental stimuli is filtering information through the mindmap of 
a worldview is out-of-awareness. 
• 
Only in retrospect and during a cognitive analysis will the contour of the worldview or scope emerge. 
• 
The constant dynamic process of perceiving and evaluating phenomena results in change of values as well as perception. 

Values: 

Abundance and Rarity
Scarcity increases value. When there is more demand than availability value rises, when abundant it decreases. 

Undetermined Values 
are ambiguous, flexible and their value has still to be determined. 

Conceived Values 
form and develop the configuration of the individual’s value scope. Even though these values may be intuitively apprehended and function out of consciousness, they construct the belief system in which critical opinions reside.
a
Independently conceived values are the result of revelation, epiphanies or discovery during the value discourse between interpreter and object, image, idea, performance. Independently conceived values are idiosyncratic. They are the orderly or chaotic response that relate to the behavioral characteristics and quality and sophistication of the skills of observation, induction, and deduction, peculiar to individual and independent interpreters, based on education, knowledge, ability to speculate, adumbrate and explicate. 
b
Adopted values (generated by authority: experts, disciplines, institutions) are framed outside of the interpreter. The lack of personal freedom in accepting the packaged criteria for the evaluation of the object prevents the interpreter from full involvement and an unbiased experience. Value rationales, based on expertise and credibility of specialists, provide very efficient, but passive ways in the socialization of ideas. In the process of adaptation, culturally sanctioned value-rationales from expert sources are used in comparison to the new. However, if the new is of such an extreme that the expert value vocabulary is incapable to grasp the underlying rationales, the chance is that the new will be put aside as nonsense (i.e., Marcel Duchamp’s introduction of the 1917 “Fountain”; the difference between Determinism and Relativity. Values supplied by external sources short-circuit the value transaction. Values adopted from external sources are often contradictory to related values which are independently conceived. 
•
Actively Functioning Value
are those that are in force and in effect are guid-ing decisions and actions. 
•
Objective Value
are actual and real (not influenced by emotion or personal bias or prejudice). They are based on observable phenomena, presented factually and can be tested by others. 
•
Subjective Value
override objective values to express and bring to bear the individual’s worldview. 

The Interpreter and Valuation Strategies
must be active involved in the valuation process, responsible for or abdicating the responsibility for valuation

Valuation Strategies:
All valuation criteria is related to human proxemic needs: prestige, status, rank, hierarchy, entitlements perceived through education, privilege, pedigree, etc. Individual idiosyncratic criteria or peculiarity or expert opinion reflect collective human needs.
•
Cognitive Valuation 
Is based on the limits or expanse of personal knowledge. The interpreter has the option of just using the knowledge presently held or by appropriating all necessary resources. Because of unpredictable dynamics of the new, constant vigilance and re-valuation is required.
•
Cognitive Valuation Process: 
Individual priorities > Perceivable properties >Foreshadowing the status of the object and the contexts in which it will be able to perform without detriment to the present worldview and the new one that emerges from the knowledge.
•
Gut-emotional Valuation 
This process can only rely on the accumulated knowledge (“Beauty in the eyes of the behol-der”) of the interpreter. It is an uninformed, spontaneous liking or disliking of an object. Without criteria gleaned from an expanded knowledge base it most likely will not be able to respond favorably to the new or anything rooted in the unknown. That is the reason why new concepts and ideas are often characterized by common short shrift as crazy and their inventors as crackpots. 

Transference

A perceived social contract evolves in the dynamic value transferal process between object and interpreter. It brings into alignment the interpreters’ values (position and standing in social space, self-image) with the values that the object exudes. The object’s author significantly reassures the interpreters in the value discussion in terms of meaningfulness, usefulness, and aesthetics. The interpreters through their criteria try to bring into harmony the highest cultural values they know and the ideal characteristics that the object seems to represent. In a democratic world, many interpretations of highest cultural value or ideal characteristics may exist. 
•
The Interpreters’ Cultural Orientation 
is the attitude toward social approval, self-gratification, power, control, change, ownership, ecology, market, meaning, and quality. 
•
Experiential Worldview (fact/fiction):
Style:
•
Italian Design: High Style/Flare/Comfort/Sensuousness
•
Japanese Design: Affordability/Quality/Dependability
• 
German Design: Precision/Pragmatism/Clarity

Cuisine: Fact/Fiction
•
Italian Cuisine: Healthy/natural/homey/heavy
•
French Cuisine: Elegant/aristocratic/light
•
English Cuisine: Limited/limited imagination

Meaning

 Meaning is a relationship between a message embedded in an object and the recipient. It is context dependent, which influences the interpreter’s behavior. Evolves in the transaction between interpreter and object, in which the interpreter assigns significance to the communication conveyed by the object and the cultural and social baggage he brings to the task. The high, medium, low quality (structure, organizational clarity) of information in relationship to contents/context and his wishes to be informed, educated, entertained or cultured and the major disciplinary domains of the humanities and sciences is scanned to engender meaning according to the interpreter’s worldview. The interpreter, not the maker, creates meaning. The object maker may be aware of the many communication obstacles and able to facilitate understanding. However, he cannot guarantee meaning or even meaningfulness. 

Meaning is relative to the interpreter’s world-view, religious belief, expanse or limits of personal vision and scope or ability to perceive or change perceptions, to anticipate, and let go of old and outdated constructs, etc. 

Criteria

•
Pragmatic criteria
assess the quality, precision and appropriateness of skills, craft, materials, methods of fabrication, time, and space in the making process of the object.
•
Syntactic criteria
construct logical rules that follow those of the maker or emerge independently in the interpretation of the object’s contents in relationship to the context and circumstances.
•
Semantic criteria
measure the quality and appropriateness of metaphors and symbolic representation.

Context + Contents + Metaphor = Interpretation

•
Context + realistic content = Realistic metaphor 
•
Context + non-realistic content = Realistic metaphor 
•
Context + realistic content = Non-realistic metaphor 
•
Context + non-realistic content = Non-realistic metaphor 

Dynamic Filters (some samples)

The list of possible metaphoric filters is unlimited. However, in modern times the ways that make the stone stonier are prevailing. 
•
Excessive Familiarity
can be perceived as intrusive, invasive, improper and presumptuous, but also as common, vulgar, domesticated, tame, safe, secure.
•
Defacilitation
removes the metaphor far from any known reality. It couches the contents in a metaphor that defies any ordinary or logical sense.
•
Defamiliarization (making-it-strange)
Familiar elements have been omitted and distorted to heighten the sense of ambiguity and the range of interpretive possibilities of the relationships between object and context to increase the interpreter’s choices of what the object “maybe“ or “is”.
•
Substitutions 
The object or experience is hostile, unsympathetic or indifferent with the purpose of alienating and removing the interpreter from accustomed interpretations. It is used to place new associations by challenging the interpreter by estranging, disaffecting, disrupting and replacing the bonds of trust and safety in traditional beliefs and loyalties.
•
Disaffection 
Ambiguous, puzzling, or inexplicable usually implies discontent, ill will, and disloyalty within the membership of a group.

Devices

•
The use of unnecessarily detailed and involved metaphors to create cognitive chaos, confusion 
•
Evasive metaphors to present the contents in roundabout expressions
•
Inversing or reversing normally rational organization, order, structure
•
Introducing abrupt changes in composition by insertion of one or more inconsistent and structural irritants (styles, colors, materials, etc.) 

Style

communicates meaning relative to a culture’s value orientation (mostly hierarchy, privilege, affluence):
•
In Ghana, Africa, the ornament actively transfers meaningful symbolic messages, totally apprehendable by members of the culture.
• 
In the Netherlands, Europe, ornamentation is without specific message other than formal decoration and style (Art Nouveau, Art Deco, De Stijl, etc.) 

Value Strategies

•
Semiotic Strategies
The object’s existence is reviewed within the orderly semiotic framework (pragmatic, symbolic, syntactic) to address all perceivable physical and conceptual properties to locate the object in a value hierarchy.
•
Deconstructive Strategies 
reveal particularly noticeable characteristics and relevant features by dividing the critical tasks into pragmatic, symbolic and syntactic categories, from several points of worldview and through several senses, in addition to semiotic strategies. 
•
Critical Strategies 
are attempts to explore the object beneath its surface and establish its position in a value hierarchy (as cliché, reiteration or refinement of convention, invention or enigma).
•
Comparative Strategies
compare the new object to others of the culture or the customary way in which objects were made (pragmatic, symbolic, syntactic) and evaluated.

Value Match/Mismatch 

Fit/Misfit
In the comparison of critical components in the valuation gauge of the total context of an object (including the maker’s and interpreter’s world views, cultural orientation, specific ideological configuration, and value source, application of positive/negative value strategy, the finalized object will either fit the interpreter’s worldview or not.

Valuation is specific and relative only within the contexts in which it occurs. By design, all critiques come from biased viewpoints. Therefore, any critique is able to yield a true valuation only in respect to its authority, because it cannot include all possible viewpoints.

Value results from the correspondence/disparity between the interpreter’s expectations concerning the match and the perceived characteristics of the object. The match can be straight-forward or warped.

Most often the acceptance/rejection response to environmental stimuli or filtering information through the specific mind map of a worldview is out-of-awareness. Only in retrospect and during a cognitive analysis will the contour of the worldview emerge. 

The constant dynamic process of perceiving/evaluating results in change of values as well as Perception.

PDF of complete article along with Exhibit 1-4