Thursday, February 21, 2013

Huggers Intel TV and # 59 Aesthetics

Intel Web TV

Erik Huggers Intel's Media division boss was one of the figures behind BBC's iPlayer  and is now out and about promoting the new Intel TV service.
Intel are known as a product company rather than a service offering but the talk is that as well as producing the Over The Top (OTT) Set Top Box (STB) hardware Intel'll have some kind of fancy Catch-up and cable competing TV service.
Is there room for another 'big boy' offering with players like Google's YouTube and Apple already slugging it out?

Tomato and Cucumber

Have planted seeds for Tomatoes (Alicante) and Cucumbers (Socrates F1) today these will start in propagating trays indoors.

Big Idea number 59

Aesthetics defined as the branch of philosophy dealing with the nature of art, beauty, and taste, with the creation and appreciation of beauty.

Aesthetic cover?
(as a side note I did a quick Google image search to find a suitable picture and felt frustrasted with the returns - have selected 'The Beatles' an example of  minimal album art  but I felt an  Aesthetic example of it.)
Art often strives to represent beauty.
Visual art particularly since the birth of photography has been somewhat problematic and with conceptual art and the rise of artists like Marcel Duchamp who famously labelled and displayed  a manufactured urinal 'fountain'. Some philosophers take it that Art becomes art when considered as such have a listen to some thoughts around what art is here.
Plato didn't believe beauty could be really represented and that works of art would be inferior imitations unlike Aristotle who thought that art had a positive social value.
Aristotle like others before and after  believed that Art was the preserve of the rich and good and although this view is still held in some measure today particularly in the areas of high culture there has been a move to a more widespread appreciation of the 'arts'.
I'm not sure that this is correctly described as a 'philosophical' video but it is splendidly over the top and has some interesting selections of 'art' within it. (I feel that it is shame  the font that selected is rather gothic).