The Theme for 2020
“The Education of the Senses: Aesthetics of Food and Drink“

‘Pleasure that knows, knowledge that enjoys’ – Giorgio Agamben

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Sensory taste can be considered as a type of knowledge. Historical, socio-cultural and aesthetic conditions determine and influence the development of taste… at different times and in different places.

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How ‘sense’ is produced in different contexts thus provides a lens through which human aesthetic experience (from aesthesis, the ancient Greek word for ‘sensory sensitivity’ ) can be (re)conceived, theorised, reimagined or reconfigured. 

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With the purpose of creating an opportunity to ‘make sense’ of how we have come this far and where education might lead us in the future, a gastronomic education of the senses implies tackling multiple layers of psychosocial influence, different forms of media, as well as the phenomenological, multi-sensory, and of course gastronomic aspects of aesthetic experience.

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We invite Symposiasts, in the formal presentations and casual  discussions, to consider ...  

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• Aesthetics of food in art, literature, film and video (from naturalistic to pornographic)

• The ‘aestheticization of everyday life’ (the appeal made to each and all the senses via marketing, packaging, ‘experiences,’ narratives, discourse, images, words)

• The aesthetic implications of the creative turn (‘creative industries’) in culinary arts: multisensory dining, gastrophysics and techno-emotive cuisine

• Environmental aesthetics: e.g., Slow Food approaches, community well-being, education, the ethical connection of paddock to plate to palate

• Culture-critical approaches to aesthetic experience as it pertains to food, wine and other drinks

• Pleasure and its Discontents: moral/ethical histories of food (and drink) aesthetics

• Relating Art and Science: from neuroscience to the arts

• Judging wine: personal preferences vs objective qualities

• Aesthetics as a tool: the power of aesthetics to influence perception and change

• The ‘aesthetics of deliciousness’ (citing Daniel Harris [2001] Cute, Quaint, Hungry and Romantic: The Aesthetics of Consumerism)

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