7th International Conference on Environmental Aesthetics

Celestial Aesthetics: The Aesthetics of Sky, Space and Heaven

Time and Place:
Thursday to Saturday, 26–28 March 2009
The Valamo Monastery, Heinävesi, Finland

 The multidisciplinary series of conferences on environmental aesthetics began in 1994 and is now reaching its final stage. So far, the conferences have reflected on the Earth’s cover and its topography: forests, bogs, water, fields and rocks – all of which also incorporate a dimension of depth under our feet. Above, the sky unites them and provides a sheltering cover. Behind it is space, whose objects belong to our perceivable sky too; we talk about deep sky that is beyond our solar system. Our sphere of life is limited by the atmosphere, which begins from the ground and stretches all the way to up to approximately 100 kilometres, slowly becoming thinner and fading into space.
Sky is the same everywhere, even if its appearance varies. The highest point of the zenith is always above us, wherever we are. Although we can talk about the sky above us, it is not something tangible nor does it not separate us from anything; the sky holds an infinite depth. It is experiential and possible to pass through into space, both in reality and metaphorically, and to the imagined beyond – we can, in fact, separate its measurable, experimental and mythological dimensions.
The perceivable sky, with its atmospheric phenomena and objects, fascinates us: bright starry sky, moonlight, the splendid colours of dawn and dusk, shimmering sunshine in the springtime, aurora borealis, thunder and lightning, rainbows and shooting stars, but also clouds and their formations, mist, fog and rain too. Our sensory perceptions have been supported, categorised and coloured by mythological, religious and scientific explanations of the world that are linked to their own kinds of interpretations of sky. Even the ancient myths, coloured by folklore, illustrate man’s interest in incorporating the phenomena of the skies and their birth into his explanation of the world.

Man has only been able to soar and take off from the ground for some hundred years, and hardly more than half a century has passed since the first space flight. Every pilot admires the Earth’s beauty. Take-off is the turning point: for the first time we are able to observe humankind’s sphere of life from above, essentially much further away than has ever before been possible to see from towers, turrets or even the highest mountain tops.
The pilot’s perception and experience, Earth from the air, has gained an extension in the experience of astronauts: the Earth seen from space. Experiences and photographs from those who have been there and seen it have led us to notice and feel our mutual interdependence and responsibility over our Earth. At the same time, man has reached ever more distant targets with probes, and unmanned vessels are travelling ever further. The sky has expanded into space, but we can only reach and travel to its closest parts.