Video Review Module 2

1) Key concepts:
The concepts I learned from the video Aesthetics: Philosophy of the Arts were that there are many different philosophies about beauty and different definitions and thoughts on beauty in artwork. The video started with the 5th century Plato ("There is beauty by which all things are beautiful") and went as far as discussing the views of Kant (18th century) and Hegel. The main theme of this video was that beauty is a feeling that is brought on by a visual stimulation. The concepts I learned from the video CARTA: Neurobiology Neurology and Art and Aesthetics were all about the technical workings of our brains and visual pathways. It discussed and taught about all of the scientific ways that we perceive artwork and beauty in the arts and uncovered that our urge to create and observe art goes back to primitive man.
2) The philosopher whose theory I feel was most important to the aesthetic theory was 5th century Plato. Just something about what he said "what is beautiful in itself is not this object or that one, but that which conveys their own nature." I interpreted this to mean that beauty does not have a set rule, and you can not compare to things and ask which is more beautiful, rather beauty is something just being itself and not trying to mask it in something it shouldn't be in, not trying to take away its raw form. Plato  brought about the idea that everything can be seen in some light by some person as beautiful, nothing is unappealing. What a magnificent and lovely sentiment, and how elated I was to discover in the video that he inspired Aristotle to think of his very own ideas on beauty and aesthetics.
3) Changeux and Ramachandran
I felt that the views of these two speakers was only somewhat necessary and relevant to our lessons. While it may be interesting to some and it was most definitely relivant, I wasn't too intrigued by the scientific aspect of the videos. The most interesting fact from Changeux was that art is in constant evolution. This was a completely vailid and truthful statement. Art is ever changing and new artist generally bring new ideas, creations and perspectives to the world of art. The most interesting thing from Ramachandran was him saying that "artist create images that hyper stimulate each individual area of vision." I liked that he shed a light on this and it made me think and realize how much sense this makes. When he showed the audience the diagram of the head with the little man and explained that our visual interpretation is not simply that and made us aware of how vision works I was simply impressed.
4)The texts covered the areas of creativity, reasons why art is created, aesthetics, philosophy of these terms among many other things. The videos to me served as back up for the text, to reinforce the lessons of the chapters as well as to delve deeper and explain more thoroughly. The film Aesthetics: Philosophy of the Arts served its purpose by providing us more with the philosophies of what artwork and beauty could be. The film CARTA: Neurobiology, Neurology and Art and Aesthetics  was meant to illustrate to us what goes on in our brains when we experience artwork and beauty. This was a technical explanation of philosophical subject matter.