Introduction for Art Style Magazine Special Issue on Atmosphere and Mood

Art Style | Art & Culture International Magazine

Atmosphere and Mood: Two Sides of the Same Phenomenon

In past decades, the subject atmosphere and mood has gone beyond the physio-meteorological and psychological scopes and become a new direction of aesthetics which concerns two sides of the same phenomenon. As the primary sensuous reality constructed by both the perceiving subject and the perceived object, atmosphere and mood are neither a purely subjective state nor an objective thing. Atmosphere is essentially a quasi-object pervaded by a specific affective quality and a ubiquitous phenomenon forming the foundation of our outer life experiences, while mood is a quasi-subject pervaded by specific objective quality and thus a ubiquitous phenomenon forming the foundation of our inner life experiences. A practical dimension is thereby, from the outset, embedded in consideration of both concepts. This is mainly characterized by actions and, correspondingly, ethical aspects, which concern the design and creation of atmosphere and, thus the triggering of mood through works of art. Here, on the one hand, the process of artistic formation, long neglected in the European tradition, is given prominence as an aesthetic practice, and on the other hand, an interactive dialogue is effectively established between the artist, the work and the viewer. Due to the fact that atmosphere and mood, both as in-between, emphasize the interaction of the perceiver and the perceived from two sides, here the decisive question is: in what kind of environment do we live or participate and in what way do we experience it? The focus of aesthetics is now not on the conventional issue whether the environment is beautiful or gives us a sense of beauty, but on how the environment influences our feeling of being there (Befinden) through our own sensuality. Such an approach would contribute to a critical transformation in aesthetic methodology, namely from the ontological and/or epistemological what to the phenomenological and anthropological how.

From this, it follows that within aesthetics, the interplay between atmosphere and mood occupies a key position. On the one hand, as a tuned space, atmosphere differs in its spatiality from inner mood it arouses and presents a certain independence. In this respect, mood can be seen as the inner pole of atmosphere. On the other hand, atmosphere and mood cannot be practically separated. Instead, they are intertwined in a complex relationship. Atmosphere radiates a prevailing, emotionally effective tone which affects and even formed inner mood while the perceiver, due to his or her own state of mind and feeling, may experience a certain atmosphere somewhat differently.