AESTHETIC OR ANAESTHETIC: The Competing Symbols of Las Vegas Strip

Visible Language, 2003 by Bhatt, Ritu

Goodman's most important contribution, however, is in the distinctions he draws between symbolic systems in general and those that can be argued to be functioning aesthetically. According to Goodman, the properties that distinguish aesthetic systems are: syntactic and semantic density, repleteness and exemplification. As symbol systems, these features are neither necessary nor sufficient for aesthetic functioning; they are indications that the item is functioning as a work of art.

Syntactic density: A work of art contains an undefined number of symbols. The symbol system that a work belongs to has an indefinite number of symbols, so that between any two there is a third. There is no claim that all of these symbols occur within a single work. Rather the point is that if there are infinitely fine differences between symbols of the system, it is not clear exactly which symbol belongs to the work.

Syntactic repleteness: Symbols function along relatively many dimensions. That is, relatively many of their features or aspects perform symbolic functions. We cannot say that only ten, or a thousand, symbols are significant in an artwork, and the rest are superfluous. There is no feasible way to quantify the number of aspects a symbol has.

Semantic density: The field of reference of a symbol system is such that between any two reference classes there is a third. all language is semantically dense and therefore paraphrase is impossible; the problem of paraphrase stems from repleteness.

In Venturi, Scott Brown and Izenour's argument, the Las Vegas Strip emerges as a route of reference in which competing symbol systems -both literal and metaphorical -are open to analysis. They start with a basic analysis and identify that the Strip consists of two distinct visual systems: the obvious visual order of street elements and the difficult visual order of buildings and signs.

They describe the two visual systems in the following passage:

The zone of the highway is a shared order, and the zone off the highway is an individual order. The elements of the highway are civic; the buildings and the signs are private. In combination they embrace continuity and discontinuity, going and stopping, clarity and ambiguity, cooperation and competition, the community and rugged individualism. The system of the highway gives order to the sensitive functions of the exit and entrance, as well as to the image of the Strip as a sequential whole. It also generates places for individual enterprises to grow and controls the general direction of that growth. It allows variety and change along its sides and accommodates the contrapuntal, competitive order of the individual enterprises.10

Venturi, Scott Brown and Izenour are searching for a vocabulary that will allow them to explain the ambiguity and apparent chaos, underneath which lies an order not obvious to the eye. The analysis of various building types ranging from typical hotel-casino complexes, gasoline stations, motels and service-stations to wedding chapels shows how building typologies connect to add syntactic density in the landscape, and how it is possible to discern and recognize this process of accretion. For instance, they point out that gasoline stations that one sees in Las Vegas are the typical buildings one sees in one 's neighborhood and their meaning connects at that level of everyday association. While not the brightest in town, "these less bright typologies" of the gasoline stations galvanize together to form yet another layer of meaning on the Strip.