I have been writing about aesthetic experience

and the specific kinds of sensory data and memory system meaning making that gets triggered by an aesthetic object. I do believe there are specific kinds of meanings that are formed in relation to objects and environment. I experience different meaning making constructs in an art gallery, compared to a classroom, compared to a conference presentation, compared to washing the dishes. What I want to do is understand how these meaning constructs are occurring, and make distinctions amongst them, amongst choosing which of those environments or objects I will design as learning experiences in my teaching. There is a difference, in my subjective experience of a comic book, a novel and a video documentary. They are all aesthetic objects, and I can expect some similarities because they fall into that category, I can also expect differences, because they all employ different visual, narrative, and textual strategies for me to decode. The process of decoding carries it’s own layer of meaning making, sensory data and memory system connections. The form the object takes means that it carries it’s own requirements for ‘language and fluency’ to be able to decode the object and ascribe meaning to it.

The way I view my experience is changing

The recent paper I re-wrote on cognition, curriculum and aesthetics is changing the way I perceive my experience and the mechanisms that both extract meaning and trigger emotional reactions. If I can write out this theory in my own words, it will help me understand how my conception of the formation of my own identity is operating. My brain is engaged in a constant process of analyzing, coding, and archiving sensory data, discerning what of that data is most relevant to my well being, and making decisions about “what is the next right thing to do?”. Concurrent with the processing of sensory data is a retrieval system that sifts through my memory systems, which have been indexed by value-category, to determine what previous experience the current experience can be linked to. It is this linking between sensory data and memory that makes it possible for me to construct meaning from my experience. My sense of self is the combination of my entire value-category memory system, as it is ‘awakened’ in relation to current experience. My ’self’ is that process, that mixing and matching of memory and experience, to determine what this current situation means, and what I am going to do about it. There are multiple environments that I have associated memory attachments with, and different environments will trigger characteristic clusters of memory. In addition, environments will also stimulate different neural clusters – for example, an echoing, busy bus terminal with departures being called out over a public address system is going to evoke a different sensory experience than sitting perched on a rock bluff over a spring swollen, rushing river.