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I visited The New School for Social Research to talk in a symposium on aesthetics of the so-called third places. The event was organized by Zed Adams from the Philosophy Department and included talks also from Zed and Aaron Meskin from University of Georgia.
August denotes the a start of yet another new academic year and for me it meant one big change in particular: I started my new job as an Aalto Research Fellow at the Transdisciplinary Arts Studies unit (TAS, prev. YoYo) at the Aalto University's School of Arts, Design and Architecture (Aalto ARTS). Looking forward to working with the great team led by Prof. Christopher Bratton and teaching aesthetics as well as continuing my work on environmental and urban aesthetics.
My second joint article with Vesa Vihanninjoki, "Moving in the Metropolis: Smart City Solutions and the Urban Everyday Experience" has been published in the edited volume Architecture and the Smart City (eds. Sergio M. Figueiredo, Sukanya Krishnamurthy, Torsten Schroeder, Routledge 2019).
Abstract of the article: "The omnipresence of technology in cities has had an undeniable effect on the urban everyday experience. This experience is increasingly structured by technological objects or constellations of converged technologies. Activities in a city affect how and what technologies are developed but these new and emerging technologies also have an inevitable effect on what is perceived to be the possible sphere of action. The aim of this article is to interpret and understand some of the ways in which new technologies are changing – and have already changed – the way we experience the city. The focus is on those elements of everyday experience that have a clear relation to how the c...
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Paths from the Philosophy of Art to Everyday Aesthetics which I co-edited with Oiva Kuisma and Harri Mäcklin has been published by the Finnish Society for Aesthetics. You can access and download the open access publication through HELDA repository.
"During the past few decades, everyday aesthetics has established itself as a new branch of philosophical aesthetics alongside the more traditional philosophy of art. The Paths from Philosophy of Art to Everyday Aesthetics explores the intimate relations between these two branches of contemporary aesthetics. The essays collected in this volume discuss a wide range of topics from aesthetic intimacy to the nature of modernity and the essence of everydayness, which play important roles both in the philosophy of art and everyday aesthetics. With these essays, the writers and editors of this volume wish to commemorate professor Arto Haapala on his 60th birthday.
This collection of articles is intended for scholars and students working in t...
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My new open access article "New Public Monuments: Urban Art and Everyday Aesthetic Experience" has been published as part of the Topical Issue "Does Public Art Have to be Bad Art" in Open Philosophy, 2(1).
The abstract of the article:
"The role and function of public art is currently undergoing some large-scale changes. Many new artworks which are situated within the already existing urban sphere, seem to be changing the definition of public art, each in their own way. Simultaneously, there exists a trend that endorses more traditional forms of public art. Juxtaposing and comparing the aesthetic implications of different types of artworks, it is possible to see how they contribute to the contemporary understanding of the urban sphere. In this paper, I take a look at the explicit and implicit aesthetic values that these simultaneously existing contemporary forms of public art are based on. The cases selected for closer look are examples of prominent and recent works of public art f...
