aesthetic information

English

Alternative forms

• esthetic information

Etymology

Calque of French information esthétique, as used by French social psychologist and philosopher Abraham Moles in his Théorie de l’information et perception esthétique (1958).

Noun

aesthetic information (uncountable)

1. (sociology, design) Sensory information that cannot be articulated in language.

   Coordinate term: semantic information

   • 1971, Murray Edelman, Politics as Symbolic Action: Mass Arousal and Quiescence, page 36:

     If esthetic information is a key element in the structure of political cognitions, it is clearly of crucial importance to learn as much as possible about the dynamics of their generation. Which forms of political cues convey or reinforce which meanings in mass publics?

   • 2020 [2015], Jörg Kurt Grütter, Basics of Perception in Architecture, →ISBN, page 5:

     That is to say that the feeling we experience when we see leaves fluttering in the wind is difficult to translate into a verbal description or a drawing. Aesthetic information has no immediate, direct use.

   • 2021, Alison Hedley, Making Pictorial Print: Media Literacy and Mass Culture in British Magazines, 1885–1918, →ISBN, page 82:

     Skimming and scanning were two of the main hyper-reading techniques encouraged by the abundance of aesthetic information in the turn-of-the-century ILN and Graphic numbers.

Further reading

• The Advertising Research Handbook Charles E. Young, Ideas in Flight, Seattle, WA, April 2005