Aesthetics of Weather by Diaconu, Madalina;

Short description:

Original and impressively broad in it scope, this is the first book to fully explore the aesthetics of weather in a detailed and nuanced manner.

Long description:

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In an age of rife consumption and increasing need for consideration of sustainable social practices, an exploration of the aesthetics of weather from various angles becomes vital in shedding light on its importance to our experience of the changing world.

In response, offering the first in-depth and nuanced examination of the aesthetics of weather, this book underlines the relevance the concept has for scientific communication, for fostering sustainable patterns of behaviour and for rejecting the environmentally-damaging ""consumption"" of landscapes and fine weather. In addition, it provides examples taken from global, contemporary popular culture whilst calling attention to the socioeconomic and political dimensions of individual experience, demonstrating and analysing our fascination with, and cultural interpretations of, weather phenomena in our everyday lives.

Within its three sections, the volume reinvents traditional phenomenological methods to create socially, politically and historically embedded 'phenomenographies' and explore the importance of aesthetic practices in shaping our experience of weather and climate. It also provides a deeper engagement with general topics, such as the relationship between perception, emotion, imagination, and cognition in our aesthetic experience of the weather, combining these with aesthetic analyses of the so-called ""fine weather"".

With its broad scope of inquiry ranging from Aristotle to eco-phenomenology, from the pioneers of scientific meteorology to contemporary art, and from everyday aesthetics to geoengineering, this book argues that an aesthetics of weather inflected by greater knowledge and the taking of a critical stance towards aestheticism can become a valuable ally to climate ethics in the Anthropocene.

Table of Contents:

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgements

Introduction: The Many Faces of the Sky

Part I: The Phenomenology of the Atmosphere
1. Rescaling the Weather Experience: From an Object of Aesthetics to a Matter of Concern
2. Landmarks for an Engaged Phenomenology of Atmosphere
3. Hotness and Coldness: A Phenomenological Approach
4. Tornadoes as Aesthetic Happenings and Figurations of the Invisible

Part II: Phenomenographies
5. On Baking Fairies and Bowling Angels: The Implicit Aesthetics of Weather Sayings
6. Longing for Clouds: Does Beautiful Weather have to be Fine?
7. Grasping the Wind? Aesthetic Participation, between Cognition and Immersion
8. Thermic Aesthetics: Conservation, Comfort and Contingency in Art

Part III: Collective Practices
9. Sensescapes in Early Meteorology: John Tyndall's Travel Reports about the Alps
10. Remembering the Air or Breathing Landscapes
11. The Weather-Worlds of Urban Bodies: Summer in the City
12. Para-aesthetic Environmental Practices: Revisiting the Kantian Sublime in the Age of Mass Tourism
13. Leave No Traces - Towards a Paradigm Change in the Anthropocene?

References