My research is exploring how design can support the expression of everyday personal aesthetic preferences in dementia:
Much is said about the beauty inherent in nature. Having lived in an inner city environment for decades – a chance to live next to fields and gardens brings a constantly changing visual feast of growth and freshly blooming flowers. Although fleeting – the colour, the variety, the growth are qualities that are part of the pleasurable experience. As Neutra (Survival Through Design ) has observed, nature may often be a source of inspiration for designers, but in nature the appearance, its ‘beauty’ is indivisible from its structure and function rather than an additional surface level decoration. The form and appearance develop simultaneously as the plant grows.
Arakawa and Gins challenge the value environments that are easily accessible by asserting that health and wellbeing is maintained by living in more challenging environments. They collaborated to create a variety of environments that use features including vibrant colour, obstacles and uneven floors to create barriers in the environment as a deliberate means to challenge the user. Their thesis : Reversible Destinies, asks Could Architecture Help You Live Forever? proposes that by stimulating our senses to a conscious experience, architecture can be a means to extend life indefinitely.
A number of studies suggest that there are some universally agreed human aesthetic responses to natural environments. A study by Kakehashi (et al) has found certain colour combinations in Papilionade butterflies preferred by humans. Supported by findings from the field of neuroaesthetics, that colour harmony is aesthetically pleasing to humans , and in experimental psychology “that human perception of colour combinations in nature are perceived as harmonious” Her study using human preferences of butterflies has found:
and that : “We believe that the cognitive effects of processing fluency in these colour combination rules influence human aesthetic responses.”
Can the power of images such as these that draw the viewer, and challenge our perception give us some insight into altered perceptions in dementia, and offer perhaps a captivating rather than a disturbing experience ? It is often said that some people living with dementia experience pattern as 3-dimensional or moving, and therefore potentially disturbing. In Realistic Magic: Objects, Ontology and Causality, Andrew Morton describes the:” aesthetic dimension as a the causal dimension.. you are working directly with people’s optic nerve and field of vision..” He describes his experience of viewing the paintings of aboriginal painter Yukultji Nanpangati :” The gaze emanates from the force field of a Napangati painting. It gathers me into it’s disturbing, phantasmal unfolding of zigzagging lines and oscillating patches.”.. ” At a distance it looks like a woven mat of reeds or slender stalks, yellowed, sun baked, resting on top of some darker, warmer depth. A generous, relaxed, precise, careful yet giving, caring lineation made of some blobby dots. The warmth reminds me of Klee. The lines remind you of Bridget Riley. As you come close and begin to face the image it begins to play, to scintillate, to disturb the field of vision. It oscillates and ripples,..”
In The Analysis 0f Beauty (1753) Hogarth presents his view of the principles : fitness, variety, uniformity, simplicity, intricacy and quantity, is that in compositions of :”nature and art.. seem most to please and entertain the eye, and give that grace and beauty..”.
In the analysis of line, used in the description of shapes he asserts that the “waving line is a line more productive of beauty than any of the former, as in flowers, and other forms of the ornamental kind: for which reason we shall call it the line of beauty.” – And that ” though all sorts of waving lines are ornamental there is but one precise line properly to be called the line of beauty which … is number 4. “
I have moved from my home 200 miles a way. I chose the colour scheme when I refurbished the kitchen (left). I am now housesitting, living amongst the owners posessions, a tasteful neutral pallete. An old friend visiting, was prompted to buy me this mug that somehow encapsulates my personal preferences into one everyday object.
I know what I like