106 / The Japanese Society for Aesthetics

Aesthetics No.15 (2011)

Considering Aesthetic Communication Mediated by
Images: the Case of “Remoscope”
KANAME Mariko
Osaka University, Osaka

MAEDA Shigeru
Kyoto Seika University, Kyoto

Our purpose in this paper is to consider a training method for aesthetic communication,
which is necessary for living in a modern world with an overwhelming diversity of visual
images, through an examination of the significance of the visual workshop conducted by theJapanese NPO, “Remo.” Awareness of the rapid collapse of an aesthetic band among people
has prompted many public institutions, particularly art museums, and private associations toactively hold cultural events in an attempt to restore it. Most of these events, however, remain
experimental because they are oriented by hypotheses about human sensibilities. It is anurgent issue imposed on aesthetic study to propose theoretical grounds and direction to theseexperimental attempts.

1. What is “Remoscope”?
The word “Remoscope” was coined to denote images taken according to the ‘Lumière
Rules’ devised by the Japanese NPO, ‘Remo’ (Record, Expression and Medium Organization).
The Remo team has developed a filming method based on the work of the Lumière brothers
who were pioneering filmmakers at the end of 19th century. The method consists of thefollowing six rules: 1) Maximum 60 seconds; 2) Fixed angle (using a tripod); 3) No sound; 4) No
editing; 5) No effects; and 6) No zoom. In the Remoscope workshop, participants, as a group,
view each other’s everyday images taken according to these six rules (Fig. 1, 2). User-friendly
digital video cameras provide freedom from complicated technical problems. In other words,
there are no differences reflected in the quality of images taken by both skilled and amateur

Fig. 1 Children filming an “everyday image”
using a digital video camera (photo by Tetsu
Kubota)Fig. 2 Workshop’s participants watching
their video footage (photo by Tetsu
Kubota)Considering Aesthetic Communication Mediated by Images

107

participants. Therefore, Remo does not use the word “art” in regard to its workshop. All footage
is simply called “material.”
The Remo team is motivated by the critical feeling that in modern life, people are indanger of losing their sense of independence and initiative as a result of the overwhelming
diversity of visual media and its content. They organized the NPO and developed several
activities (i.e., Archive for Human Activities, video lounge, etc.) associated with visualmedia.[1] Among them, the Remoscope workshop is intended as a form of practical basic
media training for handling these visual media. Fortunately, while there is an overwhelming
diversity of visual media in the modern world, people are generally able to easily purchasevarious visual media for recording. For some time now, almost all mobile phones have comeequipped with a digital camera, and many are capable of capturing moving images. Since thistechnology has become less expensive each year, most adults today own at least one type ofvisual recording device. The workshop aims to make it as easy and familiar for people to deal
with these media as it was for them to use paper and pencil in the past.[2]How can we estimate and theoretically underpin the significance of the Remoscope
workshop? In the beginning, we had taken a skeptical attitude toward this workshop style. In
Japan at least, this kind of workshop that aims to teach personal sensibility and creativity
commonly exploits and gathers its participants’ creativity in exchange for the trivial satisfactionof feeling that they are involved in an artistic or creative endeavor. In the end, the organizer isviewed as the authentic “creator.” There, it is considered “creative” to invent a system for
exploiting and gathering anonymous creativities of the public. In corresponding with the Remoteam, however, we began to think that the workshop could potentially have some significancein regard to the public’s level of media literacy.

2. The significance of the Remoscope workshop and truly aesthetic communication
1) Comparison with modern filmmakers
On the Remo website, their workshop is compared to ‘Ku-kai.’[3] ‘Ku (句)’ means ‘Haiku’and ‘Kai (会)’ means ‘meeting’. Particularly during the Edo period, people from various social
classes gathered to take part in “Ku-Kai.” They composed Haikus about a particular scene orsome aspect of cultural heritage inserting a designated theme, and rated their Haikus together.
This was the formation of an aesthetic community that was independent of economic interestsand social distinctions.[4] The fact that the Remoscope workshop adheres to the “Lumière
Rules,” whereby its participants are urged to produce “banal,” but longer takes of footage,reminds us of Andrey Tarkovsky’s reference to Japanese Haiku. This Russian filmmaker, who
himself preferred to use long takes, explained his own film theory: “What attracts me in haiku
is its observation of life - pure, subtle, one with its subject... This is pure observation. Its
aptness and precision will make anyone, however crude his receptivity, feel the power of poetry
and recognize - forgive the banality - the living image which the author has caught.”[5] Does
this mean that the Remoscope workshop would be a kind of hi-tech Ku-Kai that becomes moreaccessible by its provision of user-friendly digital video cameras?
Moreover, one member of the Remo team, Tetsu Kubota, describes the Remoscope

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KANAME Mariko and MAEDA Shigeru

workshop footage in comparison with Gilles Deleuze’s concept of a “pure optical image” or“time-image.”[6] In fact, Deleuze wrote about Japanese filmmaker Yasujiro Ozu as follows:“The still life is time, for everything that changes is in time, but time does not itself change, it
could itself change only in another time, indefinitely... Ozu's still lifes endure, have a duration,over ten seconds of the vase... A bicycle may also endure; that is, represent the unchanging
form of that which moves, so long as it is rest, motionless, stood against the wall (A Story of
Floating Weeds). The bicycle, the vase and the still lifes are the pure and direct images oftime.”[7] According to Deleuze, Ozu’s empty shot has this potential because it can show pure
duration without being stained through organic context that prepares human action. We caneasily imagine that these images are similar in appearance to those taken according to the
Lumière Rules. Therefore, it seems that the Remoscope workshop encourages people to create
similar images to those of filmmakers that Deleuze described as “modern” and its significancelies in reliving the creativity experienced by these filmmakers.
However, by thinking in this way, we make the mistake of ignoring the Lumière Rules andtheir purpose. The rules more or less force the participants to not exercise their creativity
assuming that the progress of digital devices has made it easier to produce images. If we ignore
the purpose of the Lumière Rules, we have to identify the images of “modern filmmakers,”
which mark an elaborate deviation from Hollywood’s continuity editing, with Remoscope’s
simple non-professional footage. From this viewpoint, exclusive focus is placed on the footage
as an outcome of the workshop and leaves its very process overlooked in accordance with therestrictive rules. We should add that this viewpoint ignores its adopting a style of workshop
and misunderstands the aspect of participant appreciation. When watching “modern” films ona screen at the cinema or on a television set at home, several acquaintances may accompany theviewer and share the experience. As long as this is a contemporary film, the conversation
afterwards may take on a critical tone since one can estimate how much the others know about
film critique. On the other hand, since the participants of the workshop probably do not knoweach other very well, they cannot be expected to deepen their understanding about modern
films but rather to simply voice their subjective impressions. Again, we should remember the
Lumière Rules, which focus the workshop’s interest not on the quality of the footage taken but
on the shared experience of viewing it.
2) Comparison with appreciation education
Let us examine the significance of the Remoscope workshop through another comparison.
Since the 1990s, many Japanese art museums have adopted a method of appreciation
education developed by MoMA educator, Amelia Arenas, and have practiced it, beyond its
original purpose of making a social connection between the art museum and local schools, as if
it were a workshop that could improve students’ sensibilities.[8] The fact that Remo itself
assimilates its workshop with Kukai, as noted earlier, easily leads us to compare it with thiskind of educational practice. Just as in the Arenas workshop where students verbalize what ishappening in a representative level of a famous painting such as Rembrandt’s “Night Watch” or
Hokusai’s “Ukiyo-e,” Kukai participants put their shared vision of the same scene into words ofHaiku. Moreover, in both the Remo workshop and appreciation education, participants shareConsidering Aesthetic Communication Mediated by Images109

the results of verbalization derived from their visual impression generally without having any
previous knowledge of art history or film theory.
The difference between them, however, should not be overlooked. The aim of the Arenas
workshop is to ensure that all participants are capable of describing what is happening in thepainting with respect to its representation, using language that is intelligible for others and, ofcourse, themselves.[9] In fact, as the Smithsonian magazine reports, the NYPD introduced thisworkshop for its police officers and found that it was very effective in helping officers
objectively describe to their colleagues the scene of a crime or the appearance of a suspect.[10]On the contrary, since Haiku uses poetic language, the aim of Kukai is to share the sensibility
expressed through the poetic words of a Haiku rather than the objective correlations between
ordinary language and visual impressions. What pleases people in Kukai is that the same
scenery or theme results in different Haikus through the different sensibilities of participants
and, through the words of the Haikus, one can become aware of the being and mode of thedifferent sensibilities of others.[11]As in Kukai, the participants of the Remoscope workshop are also not forced to objectively
describe the footage but instead simply talk to each other about their subjective impressions
after viewing the footage as a group. But, against Remo’s self-definition, the difference from
Kukai is also obvious. In contrast with the Kukai participants who not only share their
sensibilities but also write their own Haikus with poetic creativity based on knowledge about“Kigo (季語= season word),” formula and classic Haikus,[12] the workshop participants simply
choose an object and point a digital video camera in its direction. In short, there is no creativity
necessary for this except the ability to share sensibilities. In this regard, we tried to examine theworkshop in reference to ‘sensus communis’ as the subjective principle for universal validity of
the judgement of taste in Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Judgement. In fact, it suggests that it is
not irrelevant to suppose the ability for sharing sensibilities among the participants of the
Remoscope workshop and there is surely a subjective principle for this sharing distinct fromthe objective common sense or language demanded in the Arenas workshop.
3) What is aesthetic communication?
Our comparative examination above reveals not only the significance of the Remoscope
workshop but also the meaning of truly aesthetic communication. Participants of so-called“artistic” workshops regard the experience as an opportunity to exercise their creativity. This ispossible when the word “art” no longer means skills for creating beautiful things, which had
counted in the classic era, and consequently, the expression of one’s personality comes to begenerally regarded as “creative” without any acquisition of such skills. And, since the progressof digital devices has actually exempted us from this acquisition, all we need for the slightest
satisfying feeling of being an “artist” is a personality to the extent of “many men, manyminds“ and authorization by the workshop host who qualifies the expression of this personality
as “art.” Max Weber critically pointed out this personality craze at the beginning of the lastcentury: “… the tendency of many people (especially young people) to worship certain idols, thecult of which we today find firmly established on every street corner and in every periodical.
These idols are “personality” and “experience.” They are closely linked. The idea is prevalent

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KANAME Mariko and MAEDA Shigeru

that the latter constitutes the former and is a part of it. One puts oneself through agonies inorder to have “experience” - as this is thought to be part of the appropriate way of living for a
personality - and if one fails, one at least has to act as if one had this gift of grace.”[13] Here,the “artistic” workshop brings a kind of circulation. Participants bring their own personality
into the workshop, which transforms it into an “artistic” experience, and then this experience
becomes a new part of the personality. They may realize a gradual growth in personality by
going from one workshop to another, but we should remark that it is the host of each workshop
who authorizes it as “artistic” at each cycle of this circulation.[14] Therefore, we do not thinkthat this kind of workshop develops aesthetic communication among people with different
personalities as long as it depends on the authorization of the workshop host.
We also do not think that appreciation education develops aesthetic communication
among its participants. As we have seen, its participants express their sensibilities in words andlearn about the other participants’ verbalized sensibilities to realize a multiplicity of sensibilities.
What we question is that this process consistently depends on objective language ability and issupervised by a “navigator.” Therefore, we can imagine an extreme case where the navigator
esteems a participant who says something appropriate to the context of the dialogue, without
referring to the painting in question, by reading the navigator’s intent to direct the workshop.
On the other hand, we detect the possibility of aesthetic communication in the Remoscope
workshop because it daringly established the Lumière Rules to repress the participants’creativity and, when they watch the banal images derived from these rules, they are not forced
to talk about what is happening in the image (this would be useless since they are the very
participants who filmed images) but only about their subjective impressions. While the“artistic” workshop still values the quality of the act of production and its secondary product,
and appreciation education, the quality of linguistic communication in relation to the artwork,
the Remoscope workshop demands from its participants only the exertion of sensibilities andprovides an occasion where they exclusively realize that their sensibilities are, or are not, in
accord. On this kind of accordance among sensibilities, Kant remarked in his Critique ofJudgement: “Hence they must have a subjective principle which determines what pleases ordispleases only by feeling and not by concepts, but yet with universal validity. But such a
principle could only be regarded as a common sense, which is essentially different from
common Understanding which people sometimes call common Sense (sensus communis); forthe latter does not judge by feeling but always by concepts, although ordinarily only as by
obscurely represented principles.”[15] Based on this remark, we can consider that theparticipants of the Remoscope workshop, simply by talking to each other about whether theyfind their own footage agreeable or not, become convinced that there is surely a kind of
subjective principle of judgement claiming universal validity beneath the objective common
sense and that this claim also belongs to the other participants’ judgement.

2. Kant’s ‘sensus communis’ and aesthetic communication
1) Some reservations
We believe that it is possible to theoretically define the Remoscope workshop practice andConsidering Aesthetic Communication Mediated by Images

111

its significance by referring to ‘sensus communis’ as the subjective principle that Kant claimed
for universal validity of the judgement of taste. In fact, the Remoscope workshop footage
provides a typical example that illustrates the judgement of taste. The banal image taken with avideo camera is abstracted from our practical interests because it is not only cut into a certain
frame but is also cut from the images that could be next in the real context or the chain ofcontinuity editing.[16] As Kant imagined, in Critique of Judgement, that he was asked if hefound the palace that he saw in front of him beautiful, the Remoscope participant is also asked:“If this mere representation of the object is accompanied in me with satisfaction, however
indifferent I may be as regards the existence of the object of this representation.”[17] Thus,
should we take the Remoscope workshop as part of the aesthetic education of man envisaged
by Friedrich Schiller? Nevertheless, this comparison is obviously improbable. Since the use of avideo camera with the Lumière Rules in the workshop does not place importance on thecreation of images, but rather the appreciation of them, we can hardly think that theparticipants realize a communion between ‘formal impulse’ and ‘material impulse’ throughtheir ‘play instinct’.
Hans-Georg Gadamer, who referred to the pre-Kantian concept of ‘taste’ in his Truth andMethod, criticized Kant and Schiller.[18] In his view, Kant considered this concept as the
harmony between cognitive powers within individuals and was able to bridge natural concepts
and the concept of freedom through this subjectivation of the concept. Schiller substantialized
this harmony to develop his concept of aesthetical education of man. Gadamer says: “In his
aesthetic writings, Schiller took the radical subjectivation through which Kant had justified
transcendentally the judgment of taste and its claim to universal validity, and changed it from amethodological presupposition to one of content.”[19] In Gadamer’s historical perspective,
Schiller’s substantialization for the Ideal of aesthetic cultivation was followed by the RomanticIdealistic concept of “genius,” which was the unconscious production of nature, and then theconcept of “experience (Erlebnis),” which was derived from the generalization of thisunconscious production within the concept of life. We already saw Max Weber’s criticism
against the craze of this concept of “experience” at the beginning of the last century. And, wecannot think in this historical perspective that the fascism of the last century has nothing to dowith the method of “artistic” workshop where the “navigator” shows concretely how theharmony should be between the cognitive powers and leads people toward its fulfillment.[20]At least our consideration on the Remoscope workshop should place importance not on
the quality of the banal images or the mental state of the participants viewing them, but on thesituation itself where the participants as a group can appreciate the images. Therefore, we do
not adopt Gadamer’s conclusion that the artwork itself makes people recognize “the proper
being” through its expression, even though he referred to the artistic usage of photography.[21]Rather, we would like to refer to Thierry de Duve’s discussion that developed around the“banal” object of a urinal.
2) Remoscope as readymade
In his Au nom de l’art, Thierry de Duve also tries to re-read the Kantian doctrine ofaesthetic judgement referring to the pre-Kantian concept of ‘taste’ in a similar vein to Gadamer,

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and in turn, to make a positive step forward from the antinomy between “judgement without
the aesthetics, or aesthetics without the judgement” into which our contemporary art criticism
falls.[22] We believe this antinomy represents a misunderstanding of the Remoscope workshop
as we have seen before. Let us follow his re-reading for a while. According to de Duve, theantinomy is derived from a misunderstanding of Kantian restrictions on ‘Ideas.’[23]‘Judgement without the aesthetics’ designates the tradition of those thinkers, from Hegel toHabermas, who believed that art could demonstrate a rational Idea through a certain intuition.
Although Kant insisted that a rational Idea was not cognitive because it did not give any
intuition, they think that art could be an appearance of the rational idea, or some kind of truth
and therefore has a virtual power to inform people of this truth. Consequently, they are
disappointed by art that eventually fails to do that. On the other hand, ‘aesthetics without thejudgement’ indicates the tradition of thinkers, from Nietzsche to Deleuze, who believed that theharmony (or unharmonized harmony) of cognitive powers in the aesthetic Idea could be
expounded upon by the concept of the “will to power” or “intensity.” Although Kant argued that
this aesthetic Idea was not cognitive because it was connected to intuition without any
mediation of concepts, they think that these concepts could replace themselves with arestrictive concept of “art,” and consequently that the concept or the term ‘art’ is alreadyuseless. Indeed, the term is not important, but truly important is their proposal of anotherrestrictive concept as an alternative without any consciousness.
To resolve this antinomy, we must rethink art rather than taste, strictly along the lines of
the Kantian doctrine of aesthetic judgement. Of course, as de Duve remarks, when Kant
distinguished ‘taste’ as a need for judging the beautiful and ‘genius’ as a need for producing it,
the judgements of ‘this is beautiful’ and ‘this is art’ were definitively different.[24] Duchamp’s
readymade, however, erased this difference between the production of artwork and its
recognition by condensing the two into a single artistic practice.[25] In this regard, we canpresume that the digital video camera used in the Remoscope workshop with its Lumière Rules
would be a mechanical tool for this erasing as well. Today, as long as various mechanical tools
have banished the distinction between “taste” and “genius” with the help of post-modern art
theories, de Duve argues that the judgement of “this is art” is an extension of the aesthetic
judgement of “this is beautiful” and claims universal validity as the latter did in Kant’s doctrine.
Furthermore, we can presume that the subjective judgement exerted by the participants of the
Remoscope workshop on images that they had taken can also claim universal validity.[26]However, de Duve’s resolution imposes an order on us. The judgement of taste, which wasconsidered as a “je-ne-sais-quoi” judgement power shared by everyone and superior to that ofconnoisseurs even before Kant,[27] could claim universal validity in Kant because it was based
exclusively on the subjective principle of harmony between cognitive powers (sensus
communis) without referring to any objective prejudement. According to de Duve, thejudgement of taste, which became inseparable from the artistic practice, imposes on each of us
an order similar to Kant’s categorical imperative prohibiting us from referring to an establishedcondition or sense of purpose in relation to art. That is to say: “make anything-whatever insuch a way that it would be called art. And also make it in such a way that, through what you
would have made, an object or result from your maxim, you would have felt that this anything-Considering Aesthetic Communication Mediated by Images

113

whatever would have been imposed on you by an Idea which is its rule.”[28] While de Duve
expressed this imperative as it was for artists, we would like to rewrite it simply in relation to
Kant’s original expression and the Remoscope workshop as follows: “Judge that banal image as
art (or not art) only according to that criterion whereby you can at the same time will it tobecome a universal canon.” In considering this kind of imperative, we can see how it would be
irrelevant to think of the Remoscope workshop as an opportunity for people to become modern
filmmakers under the supervision of its coordinator. By thinking in this way, we fail tounderstand this workshop on two counts. On one hand, we misunderstand it by presuming thatevery participant can produce images that demonstrate some kind of truth as modern
filmmakers do. On the other hand, we misunderstand it by presuming that the images
produced according to a given procedure can be considered as art and that every participant
can understand what art is. On the contrary, the Remoscope workshop encourages its
participants to realize that there surely is an aesthetic principle that is exclusively subjective
but also sharable beneath the objective common sense, and to judge aesthetically according tothis principle on their own responsibility.

Conclusion
We can conclude that the Remoscope workshop turns each of its participants into
someone who can independently evaluate images. Since the 1950s when TV broadcasting began
to spread without video-recording devices, an image was evaluated for qualities other than its
formalistic or representative ones. Today, its value depends on how it is arranged with otherimages reflecting the coordinator’s intentions. Regardless of the medium or object, this totally
distinct way of evaluating images will not disappear. On the other hand, the popularization ofuser-friendly video cameras has produced many banal images some of which are posted to TV
stations. By selecting and sorting them into programs, TV stations translate them into worth.
Certain types of news shows in which the newscaster appropriately combines announcements,
video footage and comments from experts give a helping hand to this trend. It is considered
there that the latent “creativity” of the general public is authenticated under the supervision of
the coordinator, similar to the “artistic” workshop. In this regard, part of the significance of the
Remoscope workshop is to create a clear consciousness about this situation among its
participants.
This trend forms an aesthetic regime as Jacques Lancière has remarked, and prolongs a
political one by distributing the visible and the invisible.[29] In 2008, the “Obama girls” becamefamous by posting their own images accompanied by tags on YouTube without receiving any
reward. The images became as valuable as those of movie stars and celebrities who had
declared their support for presidential candidate Barak Obama. In addition, the Obama
campaign in turn succeeded in gathering these anonymous “creativities” into support for itself,
by making full use of the Internet. This means that a new imaginary system on the Internet,
like YouTube, is far from demolishing this regime but rather is intensifying it by generalizing
the possibility of being a coordinator. We are not sure if the “Obama girls” were completely
aware of this regime or not, but if the Remoscope workshop develops its method reflecting this

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regime of images, it can bring a clear consciousness about it among its participants.

Notes[1] Archive for Human Activities, commonly known as the AHA Project, aims to promote making aprocess: collecting and keeping private 8mm films or videos, and allowing public access to them.
As for Alternative Media Gathering, Remo is thinking about how people who are involved in many
activities send and use information, while changing the cultural and social information flow
backed by the penetration of information-communication technology at the present. Remo tries tocreate some area of exchange information among participants and guests. See Remo’s website inJapanese (http://www.remo.or.jp/ja/project/aha/). “Video lounge” is the type of project that
Remo seeks for the possible application of projected images as interiors…music clip, screen saver,contemporary art, and so on. Remo rethinks the grammar of images through the position that partof the projected images will be consumed as part of the architecture, as “moving wallpaper,” andtries to reconstruct the appropriate way and grammar for the output of such images. Cf. Remo’s
website in Japanese (http://www.remo.or.jp/ja/).
[2] We suppose that Remo’s aim reflects the concept of “la camera stylo” of Alexandre Astruc. Cf.
“Naissance d’une nouvelle avant-garde - la camera stylo” in L’ecran française, Vol. 144, 1948, p. 325.
[3] See Remo’s website: “Special skill is not necessary in this workshop. Any participants can make awork among a beginner and experienced, and they enjoy viewing it with others. It is a workshop
like a “Ku-kai” that participants enjoy a serene amazement, when an ordinary scene is seen invarious perspective and dissimilated.”[4] Cf. Kyoji Kobayashi, 俳句という遊び―句会の空間 (Play of Haiku: Kukai’s space), Iwanami
Shoten, 1991.
[5] Andrey Tarkovsky, Sculpting in Time; Tarkovsky The Great Russian Filmmaker Discusses His
Art, translated by Kitty Hunter-Blair, Austin: University of Texas Press, 2006, p. 66.
[6] Naoki Honma, Tetsu Kubota, “Otherwise Than Recording on Image-Communication,” Communication-Design 2008, Center for the Study of Communication-Design, Osaka University, 2009, p.140.
[7] Gilles Deleuze, Cinema 2: The Time-Image, translated by Hugh Tomlinson & Robert Galeta,
London: Athlone Press, 1989, p. 17.
[8] The “Is This Art?” exhibition was held at Art Tower Mito, Kawamura Memorial Museum of Art,and Toyota Municipal Museum of Art from December 19. 1998 to March 22. 1999. This was basedon Arenas’s methodology of one-on-one viewing education. On the site of Art Tower Mito, it isemphasized that each participant can ensure the flow of one’s thoughts as well as one’s feelings.
[9] We previously discussed this point in Mariko Kaname, “Considering Aesthetic Communication:
directions in art appreciation,” Communication-Design 2006, Center for the Study ofCommunication-Design, Osaka University, 2007, p. 103-120.
[10] “Teaching Cops to See” in the Smithsonian magazine, October 2009.
[11] According to Kyoji Kobayashi, originally Ku-kai as well as Cha-kai (tea ceremony) or Uta-awase
was the common medium of communication. “Although participants praise or dispraise other's
Haiku, they don't argue about this matter in white or black, they confirm a relationship between
their words and themselves, or express it. In doing so, the participants gauge the difference or
distance between themselves and others.” See Kobayashi, op.cit., p. 249. The author makes a distinction between two cases: first, the confirmation of a correspondence relation between aesthetic
impression and language; and second, the comparison to others’ sensibilities through language.
[12] Ibid., p. 253: “How to bring back the ku-kai is a very difficult issue. First, it is not easy tocommunicate through Haiku. This would require that all participants have a minimal level ofcommon culture and take pride in language. Moreover, it is necessary to have some interest in
creating verses in order not to be stereotypical, and to have some knowledge of Haiku in all ages.”

Considering Aesthetic Communication Mediated by Images

[13]

[14]

[15]
[16]

[17]
[18]
[19]
[20]

[21]

[22]
[23]
[24]
[25]
[26]
[27]

[28]
[29]

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Max Weber, ‘Science as a vocation’ in Max Weber’s Complete Writings on Academic and Political
Vocations, ed. and with an introduction by John Dreijmanis, trans. by Gordon C. Wells, New York:
Algora Publishing, 2008, p. 33.
It seems that the same topic is problematic also in art appreciation education. See Tomoki Hirano,“みることによる学び―視聴覚教育理論と批判的メディアリテラシーの視点から (Learning
through seeing: from the viewpoint of a theory of audio-visual education and a critical medialiteracy)” in ACOP Report 2009 (Art-Communication Kenkyu Center, Kyoto University of Art and
Design). The essay includes the ex-post questionnaires for participants in appreciation educationthat show how the consciousness of many viewers is directed to the “navigator.”
Immanuel Kant, Kant’s Critique of Judgement, translated with introduction and notes by J. H.
Bernard, London: Macmillan, 1914, §20.
Deleuze insisted repeatedly that the chain of images according to Hollywood’s continuity editing
was a copy of the organic scheme that practically connects our perception to adequate action. Cf.
Deleuze, op.cit., p. 26: “So-called classical narration derives directly from the organic compositionof movement-images [montage], or from their specification as perception-images, affectionimages and action-images, according to the laws of a sensory-motor schema.”Kant, op.cit., §2.
Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method, translation revised by Joel Weinsheimer & Donald G.
Marshall, New York & London: Continuum, 2nd revised edition, 1989.
Ibid., p. 82.
About the relation between fascism and the substantialization of an aesthetic Ideal considering it
as a goal, see Thierry de Duve, Au nom de l’art - pour une archeologie de la modernite, Paris:
Minuit, 1989, p. 139.
Cf. Gadamer, op.cit., p. 140: “Even today’s mechanical techniques can be used in an artistic way,
when they bring out something that is not to be found simply by looking. This kind of picture is nota copy, for it presents something which, without it, would not present itself in this way. It says
something about the original [e.g., a good photo portrait].”de Duve, op.cit., p.76.
Cf. ibid., p. 84.
Kant, op.cit., §48: “For judging of beautiful objects as such, taste is requisite; but for beautiful art,i.e. for the production of such objects, genius is requisite.”Cf. de Duve, op.cit., p. 82: “And yet, with the readymade, ‘taste’ and ‘genius’ become one thing
while to judge and to produce are condensed into a same and single act.”
Ibid., p. 85: “The move of readymade gives to anyone the right to produce the artistic judgements
aesthetically, it grants to ordinary people the genius in addition to the taste.”For example, cf. Jean-Baptiste Dubos, Réflexions critiques sur la poésie et sur la peinture, vol. 2,§26: “It is necessary that the professional people often make a mistake because their judgements
are usually shattered by those of public whose voice will make the destiny of works. It is always the
feeling of public that wins when the connoisseurs (les Maitres de l'art) and the public havedifferent opinions about a new product...”de Duve, op.cit., p. 141.
Jacques Lancière, The politics of aesthetics: the distribution of the sensible, trans. with an
introduction by Gabriel Rockhill, London/New York: Continuum, 2004.

This is a revised version of a paper that was originally presented at the 18th International Congress of
Aesthetics, Beijing, August 2010. We owe a great debt of gratitude to Professor Thierry de Duve andProfessor T. O. for their supportive advice and encouragement.