Just to clear up any confusion regarding this week’s assignment, I yanked these definitions from dictionary.com:
Formative: giving form or shape; forming; shaping; fashioning; molding
Aesthetic: pertaining to a sense of the beautiful or to the science of
aesthetics.
When we ask for a formative aesthetic experience, what we are looking for is any experience that has affected how you give form to, or define, the beauty or science of a medium. Learning to like something doesn’t count. The Hobbit made me realize that I love to read books, but it didn’t change how I thought about them. An experience that affects your views external to the medium also does not count. Killer Angels dramatically affected the way I view historic generals, but not the way I look at books.
Reading Emperor: The Gates of Rome, though, made me realize that there is a fine line between fiction and historical narrative–if there is even a line at all. The Pegasus episode of BSG made me realize that sometimes television can take advantage of its square shape to do things that widescreen movies can’t. These experiences changed the way I saw the media themselves, and thus were formative aesthetic experiences. That is what we are looking for. Clear as mud?
January 31, 2007 at 4:35 pm
Yeah, quite muddy!!! I still have no idea what to write about, but thanks for that stab at clarification. (Its bloody mud, due to the stabbing. That makes things even less clear!!)
February 8, 2007 at 6:51 pm
Author’s Note (this one is awkward by the nature of the post–look at previous ones for better examples):
This entry is discussing what a formative aesthetic experience is in order to contrast it against any formative experience in general. Understanding the difference is crucial to relating to media itself, not just for what it serves a vehicle.