The last of our selected theoretical approaches to learning, in which it is meaningful to speak of learning as intertwined with the creative process in artistic work, is an aesthetic learning perspective� The aesthetic approach to learning opens what in the pragmatic, cognitive and socio-cultural approaches to learning seems to be “the black box” of body and senses� The black box expression refers to presupposed phenomena or concepts, which are not ex-plained, but rather used as commonalities or pre-understandings in a line of arguments and reasoning� In the pragmatic, cognitive and socio-cultural ap-proaches to learning, the senses and body are presupposed as an instrument for learning, and the material and physical environment seem to be presup-posed as objects for human attention� Body and physical surroundings thus seem to have an implicit significance for learning, because the focus of atten-tion is construcatten-tion of meaning, knowledge and understanding� In contrast to this position, the aesthetic learning perspective focuses on nature and cultural and artistic products as material bodies in interaction with the individual and his or her bodily-sensory perception, as well as on cultural meaning making and interpretation of sensory experience� In other words, aesthetic learning refers to the interplay between body, culture, nature and the transformation of knowledge forms into different modalities (Dewey 2005, Jensen 2011, Langer 1957, 1961)�
K� E� Løgstrup (1905-1981) was a Danish philosopher whose works have had large impact on pedagogy and understanding of human relations in the pub-lic sector professions in Denmark� His works are only in part translated into English, which in some ways limits his thoughts to a Scandinavian context, and which furthermore concentrates on his religious and ethical ideas (Løgstrup 1979, 1997)� However, we will briefly introduce some of his later works, where he developed a specific understanding of the significance of arts and aesthetic experience for learning, enhanced imagination and empathy� To this end, he in-vestigated the correlation between art and knowledge building (Løgstrup 1983)�
In our study of the interviewed artists’ experience of learning and creativity as interwoven, his ideas about artists and their way of working with artistic pro-cesses can add to and offer a sensitive vocabulary for our understanding of this experience�
Løgstrup’s fundamental idea is that artistic activity and its products in the form of music and art can be seen as basic human faits de vie (expressions of life)� With the concept of faits de vie, focus is on the time and space (here and now) of human life, and on body and senses in the aesthetic experience� Ac-cording to Løgstrup, the aesthetic experience is a receiving, but active process, where the individual investigates the given sensory impressions� Løgstrup sees the artist as an expert on this receiving process, as the artist uses the aesthetic experience as a starting point for further investigation of the impression of the senses� The reason for this prolonged investigation of perception and aes-thetic experience is that the artist’s mode of working is to examine and ex-plore the attunement of the sensory impression and the situation� Attunement encompasses the details, the moods, the sounds and so on, which as a whole constitute the feeling of the situation� This attunement is what the artist ar-ticulates and expresses in the artwork� Therefore, the artist’s first professional tool is the way in which he or she investigates the impression of the senses�
Subsequently, this sensory attention shapes the impressions into an artistic expression ( Løgstrup 1983, pp� 9-13)�
This aesthetic approach to the world is one of the ways in which the artists in the interview work with learning as a creative tool� In the example with Kvium above, his statement of working against own limitations can be viewed as having an aesthetic origin� In order to fight limitations in his own expertise, he tries to stay open, to investigate his works further, not to be content with immediate expressions and routines� The quote below expresses how Michael Kvium more specifically pushes both his creative process and learning:
If you don’t have this space, where you can’t formulate what you experience and if you don’t dare to be so humble that you actually sit down and wait and wait… What
does the painting want? What is it trying to tell me? […] There, you are very small�
There, you really are the craftsman, who should try as far as possible to listen to what the work wants� This is not taking place only once […] this is going on during the entire process, that you repeatedly have to draw back and say “hey, it is actually not me who is deciding� If I decide everything, then I am not an artist”� […] So [the work]
has to contain something, which might be many tiny things that other people do not notice� But for me it is very important that they get through this process� And it [the work] also has to stay in the workshop until I have seen it on a very bad day and a very good day�
In the effort of creating his paintings, Kvium continues to investigate what he sees with his eyes, trying, as well as he can, to understand the impression with as little bias and prejudice as possible� Relating to Løgstrup’s concept of attune-ment, Kvium’s openness to his senses is used to conceive an impression and at-tune to the content of the situation – the painting� The strong emphasis on and awareness of senses and bodily impressions is for Løgstrup the way in which the artist works against his or her own pre-understandings, expectations and im-mediate interpretations of situations� According to Løgstrup, the patient, open and sensitive approach to sensory impressions expressed in the quote, is gener-ally in opposition to the ways Western people at large approach sensory impres-sions and learning� In everyday life, non-artists move quickly from perception to understanding, interpreting and completing sensory impressions at speed to move and progress in daily actions, chores and doings (Løgstrup 1983, p� 9)� The relation to assimilative and reproductive learning is obvious, but these processes are also necessary to function in daily life� However, fast interpretations based on pre-understandings of the situation will confirm existing understanding and knowledge� The point is that in order to get to a renewing, creative approach to the world, individuals must from time to time separate sensing from under-standing and explore what they sense as purely sensory impressions, like the quote from Kvium indicates�
The best way to illustrate this point is Løgstrup’s reference to the human way of relating to sounds� Sounds are persistent sensory impressions and a fundamental part of the way we orientate ourselves in the world� We can-not close our ears as we can close our eyes� Therefore, the mind will always sense and understand sounds simultaneously� Løgstrup refers to the siren of an ambulance� We hear the sound and at the same time we understand and know that it is the sound of an ambulance� The sound of the siren will immediately convey the understanding and knowledge of the ambulance – the sound itself: its tone, peak, its quality, is rarely paid attention to, when it comes to our daily orientation in the world� The artist works differently�
By attempting to separate sensing from understanding and by listening to, exploring and describing the sound as sound, the artist tries to come to new understandings of the sound and the immediate interpretation of it as a siren�
The sound might be interesting to investigate as a composer, as a musician or as a singer, if it could widen their expressional width� This separation of per-ception and understanding is not only a creative effort, it also encompasses a learning dimension� The learning dimension can develop into a first step of creative renewal, because the basic sensory impression can lead beyond the culturally given world views, and by means of this identify problems, describe phenomena in new ways� According to Løgstrup, this can spark new common understandings, expressions, ways of thinking of phenomena in the world (Løgstrup 1983, pp� 9-10), in other words, what we could understand as crea-tive renewal�
This creative renewal requires a more phenomenological, receptive, sensory-aware approach to surroundings than everyday perception� Moreover, this artis-tic-inspired attention to the world is what can stimulate creative endeavours to express attunement, and to express sensory impressions in ways that create new meaning and understandings of the world� In other words, one of the creative dimensions of learning is related to sensory awareness and abilities to express impressions� The aesthetic learning perspective can in this way assist in under-standing the artists in the study and their experience of learning as part of the creative art-making process�