Traditionally, aesthetics has to do with ‘the beautiful’, which may be found in fine art, applied art, and nature. Traditionally, aesthetics also has to do with the enjoyment that not only art works but also actions and nature can give. The beautiful promotes life, as Kant puts it,1 while Aristotle many years earlier claimed that ‘[p]leasure completes the activity not as the inherent state does, but as an end which supervenes as the bloom of youth does on those in the flower of their age’.2 Later came ‘the ugly’. In the following, we shall limit ourselves to looking at the relationship between aesthetics and communication. This requires some explanation.
In the Renaissance, in Machiavelli and Shakespeare, the problem of the orchestrated surface moved to the centre. Machiavelli recommends that the prince learn how to orchestrate illusions, and Shakespeare plays with the metaphor of the world as a theatre — a mirror that shows reality but only ‘as in a glass darkly’ and thus as a riddle. In the Renaissance, a huge disruption begins in which Europe shakes itself loose from its feudal bonds and begins the road toward the world society in which everything fixed is dissolved into the market’s impersonal and fateful relationship between people. In the interaction of strangers, the surface is not just something that is but something that is diligently arranged. Organizations also know the strength of a beautiful appearance when they orchestrate an image and thus conjure up an ideal from a claim that, if everyone acts as if a picture is real, then it is — or becomes — real. If aesthetics has to do with constructions connecting sensation and meaning, the attempt to orchestrate an image has a foot in the camp of aesthetics.
An image is a picture, and a picture is a picture ‘of’. But a picture can be many things. It can be realistic, impressionistic or symbolist. Which it is depends on the sender’s purpose. For an organization, there is always an intent to draw a picture and, therefore, it is not enough without more that the picture looks like something, gives an impression, or symbolizes. The picture’s success depends on its effect on the receiver and, therefore, the sender must be familiar with his receiver and his desire. Here, we encounter the pragmatics of communication, which since Antiquity has been explored within the rhetorical tradition. Its aim is not just to decide what is true or false but to influence an audience from an interest. Beyond the question of truth, it encounters the question of who the audience is, what topics are up for debate, and whether an appeal is to be made to reason, feelings or senses.
Communication can be developed around a theme in which the sender interweaves a filigreed pattern of signs that works physically (sounds), musically (tone structures), and linguistically (bearers of meaning). To present a pattern requires time, so every new element in the pattern relates to previous elements and is open to later elements. But the theme of the communication can itself be developed as a sequence of time. Then, we are not talking about an argument or a discursive presentation but about a narrative, and then we are in the domain of aesthetics. In this chapter, we shall look at the close connection between organization and narrative.
You can talk about design in two very different ways. On one hand, design can comprehend anything that has form, so the concept broadens and does not only deal with human works but also natural forms. On the other hand, design can be limited to the design of everyday utility items, particularly those with which you surround yourself and your home. Before we choose sides, we shall look at the background of the concept.
To reclamare or advertise is not just to shout and protest but to do it again, so you become obstinate and, perhaps, even cantankerous. But it is normally not by complaining that organizations advertise themselves and their products. The current meaning of the word ‘reclamare’ should not be traced back to its Latin roots but only to the American word ‘reclaim,’ which means to claim something for gain, that is, to recommend and lure for an ulterior purpose. In the following, we shall look at the particular segment of the world known as the ‘world of advertising’, which is a segment of the communication between the organization and users of its products — with the extra flourish that advertising also has a hidden address to other receivers — for example, the organization’s employees, investors and non-users.
Even though organizations consist of communication, it would be perverse to claim that they did not also include things — everything from paper clips to telephones to cars and buildings. To say that these things are only communication is also oddly misleading, since we communicate ‘about’ a telephone on the condition that it exists as a physical object for both sender and receiver. In this section, we shall look at how architecture enters into organizations’ use of aesthetic tools and how it is possible to view buildings as communication.
After so many words, it seems superfluous to add even more. But the old principle of essay writing says that you start by saying what you are going to say, then you say it, and finally you say what you have just said.
