In my own work, using aesthetics to explore management and organisation I considered various approaches including constructivism, and found most limiting. I came up with an approach I called Socially Negotiated Alternativism.

That sounds interesting, Sir. May I have the opportunity to know how this Socially Negotiated Alternativism is relevant to aesthetics? Thank you, Sir.

all the education in the Bauhaus could be called 'constructivist' (a lot has been published about that!

- https://moholy-nagy.org/teaching/ or Paul Klee, Kandinsky, Oskar Schlemmer,...

- the lessons of Josef Albers in Black Mountain College (1933) Asheville, North Carolina.

Or you should limit the construstctivism to Tatlin's?

Jastin Oniot, I have just uploaded the Chapter (7) from my PhD thesis which discusses SNA. My focus is on aesthetics as a route to judgement which may operate at the pre-ontic state; that is the emergence and interpretation of the (art) object. In this sense artworks, are simply one ontological class. The issue of how an Artwork emerges from a selection of competing objects of similar characteristics is a process of subjective socialisation of the object, dependent on its aesthetic qualities. Power pays a great part: the power of the art institution, or the power of the Patron, or (in these days) the power in promoting influencers. But ultimately, I see this as a process of social negotiation over alternative interpretations. Elsewhere (Chapter 4) I discuss my theory of art.

Thesis PhD Thesis (2006) Chapter 7 - Critical Method: A Negotiated Existence

Thank you Sir for that insightful idea. My concern is about the term Aesthetic Constructivism. Based on my readings so far, I found no theory about this. Thanks for the reference.

Jastin Oniot I am happy to have been able to contribute. Thank you.

Hi, you have raised a very exciting question.

Basically, one has to distinguish and determine which 'Constructivism' is being discussed. Typologically, one can distinguish among others: Social Constructivism, Operative Constructivism, Methodological Constructivism, Radical Constructivism, Cognitive Constructivism or Constructionism.

'Art' is an object designated by people as art, which is experienced aesthetically and/or imaginarily. If one follows a main argument of constructivist concepts, 'art' is a distinction made by an observer on the basis of observational directives (forms) on the work of art. The unity of the work of art, however, would not be situated in the 'essence' of the work of art, as it was postulated in the older history of art and culture, but it would consist in the distinction of forms that belong to the work of art and those that do not. The distinctions of forms are the precondition of art experience in general and serve the imagination by the observer in the system of art.

"Art is created in the eye of the observer." With this deliberately provocative credo, we want to point out the particular challenge we must accept when we ask about the possibility of art. Moreover, modeling art in this way makes it clear that high demands must be placed on the work of art because it is oriented toward both perception (consciousness) and communication (social system).

But what does the change of perspective from artwork to art communication suggested here mean for the observation of art? Isn't the artwork conventionally at the center of description and theorizing? But how do we have to describe art if it is not the work of art but the observer who stands at the beginning, be it in the concrete experience of art or in the description of art? That radical observer point of view of George Spencer-Brown leads to a fundamental change of perspective from the work to the observer. We do not ask: "What is art?", rather: "How is art possible?".

Art must be experienced and perceived; it operates, according to Niklas Luhmann, in the "medium of the perceptible and the vivid." But how can art communicate if it must be perceived? Perception is not communicable. At this point we encounter a peculiar tension between perception and communication, which is at the center of today's debates on the transformation of the information and media society and at the same time evokes fundamental epistemological questions. Against this background, it seems necessary to us to discuss the relationship between perception and communication and the closely related concepts of media and sensory experience, cognition and knowledge, and to subject them to a differentiated analysis in a transdisciplinary dialogue.

In a first step, it can be stated in the sense of the outlined change of perspective that the experience of art, i.e. art experience itself, always stands at the beginning. In the experience of art the constitutive decisions are already made, whether what is perceived remains a noise or an impression, or whether we understand it as 'art'. Every engagement with 'art' - be it producing, receiving or affi- cating - cannot avoid art experience. And its place is always the observer of art.

Art experience' has its prominent place in an observer. Art does not 'exist' outside an observer. It is imagined reality of an observer through reception of a work of art. The work of art offers the observer occasions to construct another, an imagined reality. That imagined reality is fundamentally different from the assumed, socially consented reality. The realities can contradict or complement each other. It is always the observer who decides for a view by changing the observer's point of view and thus is able to include or exclude different realities.

This essential connection applies to any experience of art, be it visual, dramatic, narrative, tactile, or musical. This brings us to a second step. A broad spectrum of artistic formations and configurations comes into the focus of our consideration: from architecture, visual arts, sculpture and painting to design and crafts, music and dance, theater, literature (poetry) and digital media.

The statement "Art only arises in the eye of the observer" is a venture, a provocation. But only at second glance. For it has never been doubted that every experience of art requires the reception of an observer; on the contrary, this is evident. And in the conceptual triad artist - artwork - recipient, on which almost all methods of art studies are based, i.e. from literary studies to musicology and art history to theater/film/TV studies, the recipient is also theoretically integrated as a fixed component. Moreover, the observer-dependent standpoint12 of art experience usually coincides with our own empirical findings. Prima vista, therefore, this coincidence seems to us neither particularly striking nor particularly provocative.

I think that an existing theory of aesthetic construction is the theory of art education based on cognitive domains (DBAE) because it includes the component of aesthetics.

Prof, your ideas have enlightened my mind. Thank you so much. So, Aesthetic Constructivism is applied to all art forms. However, the outcomes differ according to how it is applied in a particular discipline. In my practice, I use Arts in developing a person's level of self-actualization through psycho-spiritual activities. The effects are yet to be studied.

Hi Jastin! In a constructivist-systemic modeling of 'art' and 'aesthetics', what in traditional concepts is mainly fixed on the concept of work, is in the last consequence changed to communication. This involves a radical departure from traditional approaches to art and aesthetics as depiction, mimesis, correspondence, etc. The concept of 'art' and 'aesthetics' is not only a concept but also a concept of 'communication'. These perspectives are highly compatible with the idea of self-actualization.

To my mind, the use of the theory of perception can help you conduct your work. But you need to read the following books :

1. Ronald S. Burt, Toward a Structural Theory of Action Network Models of Social Structure, Perception, and Action (1982)

2. Ian E. Gordon, Theories of Visual Perception(2004).

3. Simo Knuuttila and Pekka Karkkainen, Theories of Perception In Medieval and Early Modern Philosophy (2008)

This is my e-mail : [email protected]

Provide me with yours so that I could send the soft versions to you.

Chapter Constructivist Aesthetics: From Theory to Practice

https://criticism.illinois.edu/publication/gans-constructivism-aesthetic-theory-embedded-modernism