Experience Communication and Aesthetics

In this article the term "experience communication" will be introduced and discussed. It will be illustrated how different concepts of aesthetical experiences are an integrated part of experience communication and how these concepts are produced within the industries of consumerism, branding and entertainment. With a point of departure in Immanuel Kant's "the sublime" (2005, orig. 1790); Edmund Burke's " the sublime" (1998, orig. 1757); " Jean Francois Lyotard's "the sublime" (1984); Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's "flow ", (1997); Roland Barthes' "punctum" (1987) " and David Favrholdt's "the inexpressible experience"( 2000), a survey of different forms of aesthetical experiences in connection with the field of experience communication will be presented. In addition to the more established concepts of the aesthetical experience this article introduces a new term " the interference" which is  an aesthetical experience which is relevant in regards to some of the aesthetical experiences which we are met with within the industry of experience communication. The term "interference"  in the context of experience communication can be described as a kind of "intrusion," capable of creating a certain type of beauty in the form of a new aesthetic expression. An aesthetic expression which is based on "interference" denotes the space that may exist between what we know and what we don't know. With a point of departure in empirical studies it will be illustrated how these different concepts of the aesthetical experiences are produced within the field of experience communication. Aesthetical experiences may be a product of the concept of novelty, the unpredictable, the inexpressible, the making of identity, the self-actualization, the self-staging, the interactive aspect, the co-producer role (the prosumer role), the user to user aspect (web 2.0), the personal engagement or the community spirit. This increasing demand of experiences reflects the postmodern cultural trends where rules for how to think and behave no longer exist. This results in individualism, where the identity of the human being has changed from something which was a given to something which each human being has to manage individually. As a consequence the human being experiences an increasing sense of insecurity and restless seeking after identity and recognition, which is reflected in an increasing demand of among other things self-actualization. The individualization of the human being can lead to loneliness and a need of participating in communities as a replacement of an overall fixed point in one's life. (Anthony Giddens, 1990, 1991; Zygmunt Bauman, 1997; Carsten René Jørgensen, 2002). The field of communication is consequently experiencing a great challenge in terms of creating experience based communication designs which meet the need of self-actualization and creation of own identities of the target audiences.