Publications – Sky Environment

A developing publications hub for work on the sky environment, situated within a broader framework of aesthetic inquiry and experience research on human–environment relations. Current focus: lived sky experience, sky visibility (including deep-blueness), and anthropogenic sensory pollution.

Aesthetic Vulnerability: An Experiential Category for Anthropogenic Sensory Pollution

Key contributions

  • Introduces aesthetic vulnerability as a critical concept for analysing anthropogenic sensory pollution and its effects on multidimensional aesthetic experience.
  • Specifies heightened exposure through frequency, intensity, and duration, with a focus on lived sky experience and shifting experiential baselines.
  • Develops the concept of aesthetic plasticity and its ambivalence: accommodation/normalization versus disruption, loss, and aesthetic agency.
  • Presents an aesthetic–environmental monitoring experiment centred on deep-blue sky appearance, documenting the recurring perceptual pattern termed stripe–cloud–veil evolution.

View the paper →

Citation:
Kolditz, Brit. “Aesthetic Vulnerability: An Experiential Category for Anthropogenic Sensory Pollution.” Contemporary Aesthetics 24 (2026).


The Loss of Sky-Blue: Changes in the Sky-Environment

Key contributions

  • Establishes the sky environment as an aesthetic–environmental object of inquiry by framing an emerging loss of sky-blue (reduced deep-blue visibility) as a shared experiential and ecological concern.
  • Introduces “living blue-beauty” as a conceptual anchor to integrate lived aesthetic experience (“living knowledge”) with scientific assessment, opening an inter- and transdisciplinary dialogue on anthropogenic sensory pollution and atmospheric (in)sensibility.
  • Identifies the difficulty of recognizing gradual sky change through shifting experiential baselines (normalization in everyday perception) and argues for anchoring experiential references to support critical environmental understanding and future-oriented protection of sky-blue conditions.

View the paper →

Citation:
Kolditz, Brit. “The Loss of Sky-Blue: Changes in the Sky-Environment.” ESPES. The Slovak Journal of Aesthetics 12, no. 2 (2023): 75–87. doi:10.5281/zenodo.10498500.

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