Publication
2025
Games
Aesthetic Practices in the Transformation of Self and World
Aesthetic Practices in the Transformation of Self and World is a research project funded by Kone foundation, which investigates leisurely activities and hobbies as aesthetic practices, that mold our identities and relations to the world and other people. Aesthetic practice is a novel and emerging concept, which focuses on the meaning and effect of action in human life.
Table of contents
Project duration
-
Core fields of research
Languages, culture and society
Research areas
Department of Music, Art and Culture Studies - Research areas
Department
Department of Music, Art and Culture Studies
Faculty
Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences
Funding
Kone Foundation
Project description
Aesthetic Practices in the Transformation of Self and World is a research project funded by Kone foundation, which investigates leisurely activities and hobbies as aesthetic practices, that mold our identities and relations to the world and other people. Aesthetic practice is a novel and emerging concept, which focuses on the meaning and effect of action in human life. It emphasizes the significance of aesthetic activities as long-term and shared practices, which emerge and evolve as a part of culture and often form subcultures. The temporal aspect of aesthetic experience is a novel perspective within the international research field. Aesthetic practices emphasize interactivity (creation, reception, modulation), development of skill and style, and the will to share and reflect experiences and achievements with others (often through digital media). We engage in them primarily because of an intrinsic value instead of instrumental agenda. Aesthetic practices hold great significance in the formation of selfhood and lifeworld – these transformations can have either positive or negative effects. The research combines theoretical and conceptual analysis to empirical material, which stems from three different perspectives to aesthetic practices: digital gaming, drawing, and everyday aesthetic practices of Finnish emigrants as means of displaying cultural belonging. The project aims to introduce a new concept to the fields of aesthetics and cultural studies, develop tools for investigating leisurely activities, and provide information of how aesthetic practices transform identities, communities, and cultures. The project is scheduled from 2022 to 2025.
Follow the project blog (posts alternate between Finnish and English) in .
Publications
Publication
2024
Available through Open Access
Games and Culture: A Journal of Interactive Media
Publication
2024
European Journal of Cultural Studies
Publication
2023
Available through Open Access
Contemporary Aesthetics
Prof. Pauline von Bonsdorff, PhD
Pauline von Bonsdorff is Professor of Art Education at the Ä¢¹½Ö±²¥ since 2002. Her research interests include art as self- and world-formation; the role of aesthetics in childhood (aesthetic agency, embodiment, imagination, intersubjectivity); and most recently the practice approach to arts and aesthetic life. She has also published extensively on environmental and urban aesthetics, e.g. her PhD thesis, The Human Habitat. Aesthetic and Axiological Perspectives (University of Helsinki, 1998). Her scholarly output includes 9 books (as author or editor) and around 90 articles.
Pauline practices mending and horseback riding. She also enjoys walking, small-scale farm labour, fishing, wildflowers, the arts, snow, etc.
Anu Besson, PhD
Anu Besson is a researcher of everyday and environmental aesthetics and likes to examine hidden, underlying connections. Besson's (JYU 2020) focused on gaps in current environmental preference studies, embodied in the narrow definition of restorative environments as visually pleasant or relaxing. According to Besson, restorativeness should rather be understood as something holistically unifying. In this project Besson specialises in everyday aesthetic experiences of expatriate Finns in their destination countries. Besson herself has lived in Hungary, Canada and France in addition to Finland, now being permanently based in Australia. In her spare time she likes to wander in cities and nature, read and blog about cultural differences, and enthuse about minimalism as a lifestyle.
Johan Kalmanlehto, PhD
Johan Kalmanlehto focuses in his research to the connections between the self, community and aesthetics. In his dissertation (JYU 2019) he investigated the formation of the self by combining readings of Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe's texts on mimesis, representation, and the subject with game studies. He is interested especially in the tacit, habitual and rhythmic aspects of gameplay and the relation between technology and human existence. In this project, Kalmanlehto will apply his philosophical insights on temporal, embodied and intersubjective dimensions of gaming practices. Besides playing games, Kalmanlehto enjoys literature, trail running and cross-country skiing.
Kaisa Mäki-Petäjä, PhD
Kaisa Mäki-Petäjä's research interests are being-in-the-world, encounters, and aesthetic experience. In her PhD thesis (JYU 2014) she studied museum exhibitions as embodied encounters between the visitor and the worlds represented in the exhibitions. In her research, she combines phenomenological and aesthetic approaches with anthropology, cognitive science, and ecology. In this project, Mäki-Petäjä's research expands towards a new subject area, practices of drawing. She is an avid drawer and sketcher thinking drawing is the best kind of meditation. She has been practicing horse riding since she was eight years old, and tai chi since 2000. She thinks she might be finally getting somewhere in both practices.
