Header ©Houcine Ncib / Unsplash
Header ©Houcine Ncib / Unsplash
Polyaesthetics is the culture of perception. Perceiving an object (the world) is a multi-sensory act with all of the senses being involved. Multi-sensorial awareness leads to in-depth-perception ("Mehrsinnen Gewahrsein" or "Mehrwahrnehmung") and has direct influence on the quality of moulding, shaping and performing
The Polyaesthetic theory and method was developed by Prof. Wolfgang Roscher (1927-2002), a German educator, musician and theatre director. Roscher was fascinated by the concept of the Bauhaus School and the holistic view of the Bauhaus teachers crossing arts and craft
Roscher's work (theory, practice and philosophy of polyasesthetics) is the foundation for an interdisciplinary training model being taught in various European schools, colleges and conservatories, mainly in Austria, Switzerland and Germany
Roscher found out that all art disciplines engage with all the sensory and communicative modalites to some extent. This is to be found both in art perception (receptive arts engagement) and in producing art (active arts engagement)
Polyaesthetics go along with experiential receptive-active arts engagement (the doing of low-skilled-high-sensitivity arts activities from the body sense)
Doing polyasthetic activities experientially, the quality of polyaesthetics is expanding (concerning quality of sensory perception, quality of artistic outcome and quality of in-depth-meaning to be found)
This kind of expansion is happening at the edge of bodily knowing. Processing at the edge of sensual awareness is bringing the More of (Eugene Gendlin) to the arts, opening up to the Experiential Third
The Experiential Third is a space offering unpredictable shifts in body, arts and meaning. Those shifts are actualized through the interaction of situation, aesthetics and the living body