IIAA Summer Conference Lahti 2011

The International Institute of Applied Aesthetics (IIAA) arranged
the IXth IIAA International Summer
Conference on Environmental Aesthetics in Lahti, Finland, past
June from 17.6. to 19.6.2011. The theme of the conference was “Aesthetics of Human Spaces: Between Urban and
Nature.”

I presented my paper which abstract is this.

María de la O del Santo Mora: From Kinesthai to Hybrid

A primary approach to the concept of space
related with the senses and the experience of human being is exactly connected
with the term of Human Spaces since could space be without
the intervention of human being? Is the space another thing that a human creation?
Does the space exist outside the human realm? Space in all its sense is human
and its experience includes all senses, in spite of tradition it’s is
undoubtely that our experience of space is a synergy, something kinesthetic.
Another question is how human
being does feel space. How are the sensations provoked by space or, in the
other side, how human sensations are able to modify space. In other words, how
is the dialogue between space and human being. This dialogue is what signs the existence
of aesthetic between human and space/s and of course what allows the
possibility of talking about the condition of this relationship: applied
aesthetics vinculated to human space.
One step forward, when
relationship appears, we can talk about the qualification of that relationship.
Natural or Urban. Private or Public. Nowadays this ‘black and white’ classification
results impossible to sustain. Rather we must talk about the ‘gray scale’ associated
in this case to the space
in‐between, this that takes hybrid as
the field of research. But what is first? The human spaces are because we created them in this way or, in the reverse,
as we feel them in a specific way, that experience state the kind of space. We
could talk about hybrid categories of space as premises to create space, if
this is possible, or also we could say that the experience of a space gives
place to the possibility of creating hybrid categories of space…

Maria de la O del Santo