Tonino Griffero

Aesthetics of Emotional Spaces

Atmospheres

Originally published in Italian in 2010, this book is the first to address the theory of atmospheres in a thorough and systematic way. It examines the role of atmospheres in daily life, and defines their main characteristics. Outlining the typical phenomenological situations in which we experience atmospheres, it assesses their impact on contemporary aesthetics. It puts forward a philosophical approach which systematises a constellation of affects and climates, finds patterns in the emotional tones of different spaces (affordances) and assesses their impact on the felt body. It also critically discusses the spatial turn invoked by several of the social sciences, and argues that there is a need for a non-psychologistic rethinking of the philosophy of emotions. It provides a history of the term 'atmosphere' and of the concepts anticipating its meaning (genius loci, aura, Stimmung, numinous, emotional design and ambiance), and examines the main ontological characteristics of atmospheres and their principal phenomenological characteristics. It concludes by showing how atmospheres affect our emotions, our bodies' reactions, our state of mind and, as a result, our behaviour and judgments. Griffero assesses how atmospheres are more effective than we have been rationally willing to admit, and to what extent traditional aesthetics, unilaterally oriented towards art, has underestimated this truth.

Atmospheres: Aesthetics of Emotional Spaces

An aesthetic and phenomenological account of feelings. In this book, Tonino Griffero introduces and analyzes an ontological category he terms “quasi-things.” These do not exist fully in the traditional sense as substances or events, yet they powerfully act on us and on our states of mind. He offers an original approach to the study of emotions, regarding them not as inner states of the subject, but as atmospheres, that is as powers poured out into the lived space we inhabit. Griffero first outlines the general and atmospheric characters of quasi-things, and then considers examples such as pain, shame, the gaze, and twilight—which he argues is responsible for penetrating and suggestive moods precisely because of its vagueness. With frequent examples from literature and everyday life, Quasi-Things provides an accessible aesthetic and phenomenological account of feelings based on the paradigm of atmospheres. “The task of modern phenomenology is to dissolve, with the help of corrections and additions, the contrasts solidified in the bath of involuntary vital experience, thus opening up new horizons of questioning and understanding. Tonino Griffero accomplishes this task by carefully ploughing the field of quasi-things, which I inaugurated. This is why the book is worthy of great attention.” — Hermann Schmitz, University of Kiel “This volume is a significant contribution to the expanding literature on atmospheres. Most importantly, the book lays the groundwork for … the study of quasi-things.” — David Seamon, editor of Environmental and Architectural Phenomenology “Griffero has written a phenomenological exploration of the pre-reflective dimensions of experience in the form of a pathetic aesthetics … This book, rich in originality and insight, illuminates an important new direction in the study of pre-reflective experience.” — Arnold Berleant, founding editor of Contemporary Aesthetics

The Paradigm of Atmospheres

Quasi-Things

Gianni Francesetti

Feeling sad during a funeral and being relaxed while having dinner with friends are atmospheric feelings. However, the notion of “atmosphere”, meaning not only a subjective mood, but a sensorial and affective quality that is widespread in space and determines the way one experiences it, has intensified only recently in scientific debate. The discussion today covers a wide range of theoretical and applied issues, involving all disciplines, paying attention more to qualitative aspects of reality than to objective ones. These disciplines include the psy- approaches, whose focus on an affective experience that is emerging neither inside nor outside the person can contribute to the development of a new paradigm in psychopathology and in clinical work: a field-based clinical practice. This collection of essays is the first book specifically addressing the link between atmospheres and psychopathology. It challenges a reductionist and largely unsatisfactory approach based on a technical, pharmaceutical, symptomatic, individualistic perspective, and thus promotes the exchange of ideas between psy- disciplines, humanistic approaches and new trends in sciences.

Neither Inside nor Outside

Psychopathology and Atmospheres

Marco Tedeschini

This book provides a presentation of the concept of “atmosphere” in the realm of aesthetics. An “atmosphere” is meant to be an emotional space. Such idea of “atmosphere” has been more and more subsumed by human and social sciences in the last twenty years, thereby becoming a technical notion. In many fields of the Humanities, affective life has been reassessed as a proper tool to understand the human being, and is now considered crucial. In this context, the link between atmospheres and aesthetics becomes decisive. Nowadays, aesthetics is no longer only a theory of art, but has recovered its original vocation: to be a general theory of perception conceived of as an ordinary experience of pre-logical character. In its four parts (Atmospheric turn?, Senses and Spaces, Subjects and Communities, Aesthetics and Art Theory), this volume discusses whether atmospheres could take the prominent and paradigmatic position previously held by art in order to make sense of such sensible experience of the world.

A Plural Perspective

Atmosphere and Aesthetics

What is an “Atmosphere”? As part of the book series “Atmospheric Spaces”, this volume analyses a new phenomenological and aesthetic paradigm based on the notion of the “Atmosphere”, conceived as a feeling spread out into the external space rather than as a private mood. The idea of “Atmosphere” is here explored from different perspectives and disciplines, in the context of a full valorization of the so-called “affective turn” in Humanities.

Testing a new paradigm

Atmosphere/Atmospheres

Juhani Pallasmaa

Philip Tidwell

Jean-Paul Thibaud

Gernot Böhme

The Architecture and Atmosphere seminar was held in June 2014 as part of the centennial celebration of the Tapio Wirkkala - Rut Bryk Foundation. This book, the second volume of the Design Reader series, presents the proceedings of the event with contributions from leading thinkers in architecture and aesthetic theory.

Tonino Griffero

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