Role of Aestheticization in Experience Society and Urban Space Development

Aestheticization of everyday life

Transformation of sensual sphere of a modern person leads to the change in his behavior and interaction with reality which is characterized by shifting the emphasis from result to process. Simultaneously, the significance of individual being grows. According to Schulze (2005), the fundamental transformation of modern society in the emotional sphere is conditioned by the fact that the modern person as a consumer changes the character of his orientation from “external” which means consuming utilitarian products and services to “internal” which means emotional sufferings obtained when using purchased products and services. According to Schulze (2005), “the person himself launches the processes that proceed in him”.

Aestheticization embraces practically all levels of human life beginning from daily life presented by aestheticized individual living environment and virtual reality life created by people in cyber space to participation in mass leisure activities such as mass performances and shows. Main aestheticization factors include globalization, urbanization, electronic media (informationalism), net societies. Modern scientific research works in cultural studies and philosophy exploit such term as “universal aestheticization” or “daily life aestheticization”. The terms refer to the specific form of attitude to the reality when exterior qualities of objects dominate interior ones in the process of evaluation. Such way of perception is the key feature of mass culture, “consumer society”, “experience economy” and “experience society”.

Experience society

The notion “experience society” was introduced by Schulze (2005), German sociologist, in his work “Die Erlebnisgesellschaft»”. He speaks about the society where the most significant value is the possibility to experience different emotions and feelings the most important of which are aesthetic ones. Polish aesthetician Bogdan Dzemidok enumerates spheres and modes of postmodern daily life which incorporates all possible indicators of the aesthetic in daily life. Beauty contests, bodybuilders shows, tourism, sport shows, rituals, forms of popular culture, plastic surgery along with accommodation and production of consumer goods refer to the aesthetic (Leleco, 2002).

In the late 1990s – early 2000s, German philosopher Böhme developed the theory of “atmospheres” which goes beyond cognitive perception. According to the researcher’s approach, the aesthetic is criticism of judgment and theory of sensual cognition in a broad sense that can not be constricted to works of art. Böhme speaks about “new aesthetics” based on initial atmospheric experience in relation to object experience. Not only works of art but also material things possess their own specific aura constituting primary spatiality within which things are perceived. This aura (atmospheric) spatiality is connected with material qualities of things considered by Böhme as “ecstasy”: sensually perceived material features of things. This is not what things possess but what makes them irradiate outwardly. Consequently, artistic activity is regarded by Böhme as a form of “aesthetic work” aimed at “atmosphere creation” or aura (Böhme, 2001). An individual experiences feelings and emotions within time flow and a sequence of events which makes him perceive objects as cultural but not as utilitarian. Judgments generated by such experience are to a great extent personal but not universal. The individual has the desire to share his feelings and thoughts with other people, which in their turn increase the importance of intersubjective communication and understanding (Lash, 1999). Therefore, relationship between individuals becomes community oriented and the fundamental scheme of “subject-object interaction” transforms into the relationship between things and objects, people and things located at the same level or scheme where people do not dominate and control material world but participate and plunge into the atmosphere of objects configuration, into the “material environment”, “material culture”.

Emergence of environmental approach is motivated by criticism of technicist paradigm characterized by "still life" view of the city (city as a thing) and connected with the processes of emotionalisation and aestheticization of the urban space. Emotional “disobjectification” of the city and its perception as real imaginary whole was promoted by the development of the cinema and photography. This means that emotionalisation and aestheticization of the urban environment are directly connected with citizens’ visual imagination, magazine image of the city and its style of life. “City and all its elements has at last been perceived as a stage box for long lasting “happening” – daily life adopted primarily through aesthetic perception” (Giddens, 1990). Visual experience transformation has resulted in the change of city perception style. Following Eve Ellows, it is possible to define this phenomenon as a “therapeutically-emotional style” expressed in concepts of creative city theorists. In addition, this style is defined by Schulze (2005) as common tendencies to repetition and schematization observed in “episodes of daily life aesthetics” (Glasichev, 2007).

Over the past fifteen years, the theory of urban studies has come a long way towards recognizing the diversity and pluralism of urban life. Most prominent contemporary urbanists, including Manuel Castells, David Harvey, Saskia Sassen, Richard Sennett, Mike Davis, recognize the inadequacy of the one-dimensional representation of the city. They point out to the imposition of productive activities on the new types of competent activities, also, to the co-presence of different classes, social groups, nations and cultures, to the stark contrast between wealth and luxury on the one hand and extreme poverty on the other, to the multiplicity of temporal and spatial parameters of different ways to the acquisition of livelihood in the city. Many industrial centers have been building a new image on a fundamentally different basis that is the development of creative industries. There are enough examples of this, such as UK cities like Sheffield, Manchester and Liverpool, also Bilbao in Spain, the Ruhr region in Germany. Business recognizes that today much depends on creativity in its various manifestations. This encourages corporations to invest considerable amounts of money in culture. Cultural component is gaining more weight in the economy, determining the competitiveness of products, services and brands. Strategically, in modern post-information society, culture is becoming a priority because it has turned into a powerful industry in the sphere of culture. According to British experts, in the XX century, the income related to export of music in the UK exceeded the total revenue of the companies exporting mechanical engineering products and the automotive industry. The experience economy by leveraging cultural resources could develop successfully under such conditions where there are optimized resources, investment capital, and all these contribute to meeting of the demand of customers. Adequate technologies could appear in the space of "leisure civilization".

Culture-led urban regeneration

As it has been already mentioned, leisure civilization as a phenomenon became the matter of research only in the last quarter of XX century. It should also be noted that this stage in the development of civilization brings into people's minds the idea of choosing free time that radically changes our understanding of the essence of social time as a whole. It’s no doubt that there is a vital role for culture and leisure to play in improving the health and wellbeing of local communities. Proactively responding to this agenda provides an opportunity for the urban sector to position itself as a key part of the solution; helping to tackle unhealthy lifestyles, address the social determinants of health, offer cost effective approaches, bring creative solutions and engage communities, families and individuals in managing their wellbeing. The economies of most Western countries had the ability to develop actively similar types of industry. They made the transition to the post-labour type of society and managed to change the appearance of cities, get rid of industrial buildings that were disfiguring the face of the city, create new objects with new cultural infrastructure. This could happened due to many factors such as the migration of industry and employment, displacement of the middle class to the outskirts of cities, change in the working schedule, the emergence of large trading centers in the suburbs or on the outskirts of cities, growth in the number of vehicles per capita and as a result, the dependence on car travel.

The negative impact of these changes can also be traced to the less popular sparsely populated urban areas, which are usually abandoned by the authorities and are not paid much attention, and, as a consequence, the situation is usually aggravated by such social problems as unemployment, rising crime and poverty among the inhabitants of these areas. Research by Wilkinson (1996) shows that an increase in socio-economic inequalities in developed countries is associated with health inequality, which is likely to be detrimental to the well-being of individuals and communities. Cultural resource using by creative industries has increased dramatically. To cope with this economic, social and environmental decline, urban authorities promote cultural policies with an initiative to upgrade the urban space, but mostly an economic discourse is implied. Authorities are seeking for the new development models, which would appeal to the market forces, i.e. businessmen and entrepreneurs, whose financial investments could help to refurbish urban centers that are undergoing recession in terms of the working time of residents and the rise in customer spending on entertainment.

Cultural heritage has also become an integral part of the creative industries and has been organically included in the new style of life. Ethnographic marketing and sociology of everyday life make it possible to study the needs of the people in the context of their daily lives, everyday social and cultural practices. Consumer personality is mainly studied in order to understand in what way individuals and their needs are related to social groups, communities in which they live and act. "Co-creation of the experience" forces manufacturers and tourism organizers to focus their research attention not on functionality and technology, but on everyday life, on the existence in the tourism network. The space of experience, in which an individual (consumer, tourist) occupies a central position, is of a great interest for the researchers of modern experience economy. This space is an event. The event happens in the context of space and time; it demonstrates the participation of the triggers of co-creation in the generation of experience. The new formula of co-creation has appeared: «Consumer to Consumer» (C2C). For many people in the developed world, the time spent in leisure and tourism has become an important part of their lives. In particular, people's free time is dedicated to finding new unique emotions and impressions (experiences) reflecting their own personal stories (Binkhorst, 2002).