Taste (sociology)

In sociology, taste is an individual's personal and cultural patterns of choice and preference. Taste is drawing distinctions between things such as styles, manners, consumer goods and works of art and relating to these. Social inquiry of taste is about the human ability to judge what is beautiful, good and proper.

Social and cultural phenomena concerning taste are closely associated to social relations and dynamics between people. The concept of social taste is therefore rarely separated from its accompanying sociological concepts. An understanding of taste as something that is expressed in actions between people helps to perceive many social phenomena that would otherwise be inconceivable.

Aesthetic preferences and attendance to various cultural events are associated with education and social origin. Different socioeconomic groups are likely to have different tastes. Social class is one of the prominent factors structuring taste.

Taste and aesthetics

The concept of aesthetics has been the interest of philosophers such as Plato, Hume and Kant, who understood aesthetics as something pure and searched the essence of beauty, or, the ontology of aesthetics. But it was not before the beginning of the cultural sociology of early 19th century that the question was problematized in its social context, which took the differences and changes in historical view as an important process of aesthetical thought. Although Immanuel Kant's Critique of Judgement (1790) did formulate a non-relativistic idea of aesthetical universality, where both personal pleasure and pure beauty coexisted, it was concepts such as class taste that began the attempt to find essentially sociological answers to the problem of taste and aesthetics. Metaphysical or spiritual interpretations of common aesthetical values have shifted towards locating social groups that form the contemporary artistic taste or fashion.

Aesthetics

Aesthetics, or the philosophy of art, is the study of beauty and taste. It is about interpreting works of art and art movements or theories. The term aesthetic is also used to designate a particular style, for example the "chess aesthetics", or the "Japanese aesthetic".

As well as being applied to art, aesthetics can also be applied to cultural objects. Aesthetic design principles include ornamentation, edge delineation, texture, flow, solemnity, symmetry, color, granularity, the interaction of sunlight and shadows, transcendence, and harmony.

The word aesthetic is also an adjective and adverb relating to cosmetology and medicine, as in aesthetic medicine.

Also spelt æsthetics and esthetics, the word is derived from the Ancient Greek αἰσθητικός (aisthetikos, meaning "esthetic, sensitive, sentient, pertaining to sense perception"), which in turn was derived from αἰσθάνομαι (aisthanomai, meaning "I perceive, feel, sense").

History of aesthetics in western philosophy

The idea of the aesthetic developed from the idea of taste and beauty. Before the early 1700s, thinkers developed general theories of proportion and harmony, detailed most specifically in architecture and music. An extended, philosophical reflection on aesthetics emerged with the widening of leisure activities in the eighteenth century.

Taste

Taste, gustatory perception, or gustation is the sensory impression of food or other substances on the tongue and is one of the five traditional senses.

Taste is the sensation produced when a substance in the mouth reacts chemically with taste receptor cells located on taste buds. Taste, along with smell (olfaction) and trigeminal nerve stimulation (registering texture, pain, and temperature), determines flavors of food or other substances. Humans have taste receptors on taste buds (gustatory calyculi) and other areas including the upper surface of the tongue and the epiglottis.

The tongue is covered with thousands of small bumps called papillae, which are visible to the naked eye. Within each papilla are hundreds of taste buds. The exception to this is the filiform papillae that do not contain taste buds. There are between 2000 and 5000 taste buds that are located on the back and front of the tongue. Others are located on the roof, sides and back of the mouth, and in the throat. Each taste bud contains 50 to 100 taste receptor cells.

High Places

High Places is a band originating from Brooklyn, NY, recently relocated to Los Angeles, CA. The band is a duo comprising multi-instrumentalist Rob Barber and vocalist Mary Pearson.

History

Pearson and Barber met while Mary was completing a music degree in bassoon performance at Western Michigan University and Rob was working in visual art, teaching lithography and etching in New York. Both were performing as solo musicians at the time, Mary as Transformation Surprise, and Rob as the Urxed. The two began collaborating under the name High Places in May 2006, after Mary relocated to New York.

Performance

High Places, has performed at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Whitney Museum of American Art the New Museum and the Kitchen in New York City. They have performed at the Smithsonian Institution's Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden as part of Doug Aitken's SONG 1 (2012) in Washington DC. In Berlin they have performed via Volksbühne and Berghain's main room. With Lucky Dragons they have performed collaboratively in the group's 2008 Whitney Biennial performance, as well as at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, and REDCAT. Rob has played drums in the Boredoms' 88 Boadrum Los Angeles LACMA performance, and performed as part of the Doug Aitken-curated Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles 2010 benefit.

Nosaj Thing

Nosaj Thing (born Jason Chung) is an American electronic musician based in Los Angeles, California.

He has produced tracks for artists such as Kendrick Lamar,Kid Cudi,Busdriver,Nocando, and most recently, Chance the Rapper.

History

Nosaj Thing was involved in music at a young age and hip hop has had a profound influence on his music. At the age of 12, he learned the basics of turntables and began to produce on the computer shortly after. Nosaj Thing has since played at various shows and festivals including Sónar Festival and Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival in Indio, California.

He self-released the debut EP, Views/Octopus, in 2006.

His first album, Drift, was released on Alpha Pup Records in 2009. The remix album, Drift Remixed, was released in 2010. The full-length second album "Home" has been released on January 22, 2013.

Nosaj Thing has founded a label titled Timetable to which he has signed a handful of artists.

Nosaj Thing was on the radio show DVDASA on January 15, 2014.