The transition from a suffering state of sensuality towards an intellectual activity, will not happen except through a middle state of aesthetic freedom. ... There is no other way to make the rational part of our mind sensible, without being illustrated in a previous state of aesthetic energy.
(Friedrich von Schiller, Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man, 1795).
The radical change in the outlook of modern art, the transition toward the temporal, the multiple, may be viewed as the reversal of the movement that brought Aristotle's heaven to earth. Nowadays we have started bringing earth to heaven. Art has become involved in our daily adventures in order to renew everything it touches. Digitalization encourages us to accept information and points of view that even challenge our preconceptions. A new and infinite world of 'cognitive dissonance' is available to help us to upset some carefully worked out structures of beliefs. That´s why digital photography should not be regarded as merely traditional photography with a digital camera – no: it has to be experienced as something completely new. The application of the imagination to the future requires an environment in which it is safe to err, in which novel juxtapositions of ideas can be freely expressed before being critically sifted.
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