The Aesthetics of Agency

Abstract This chapter focuses on the aesthetics of agency, in which we can appreciate the aesthetic qualities of our own actions. These include aesthetic qualities in our own moving, deciding, analyzing, reacting, and doing. We can have aesthetic experiences of our own agency in everyday life. The chapter explores how ames concentrate and crystallize the aesthetics of agency. With games, we can sculpt activities for the sake of aesthetic experience of acting itself. And aesthetic experiences of one’s own actions can create a sense of practical harmony—of a beautiful fit between an agent and their practical world. It can also create a sense of aesthetic disharmony. There can be a game aesthetics of horror and clumsiness. Finally, the chapter squares the aesthetics of agencywith various theoretical demands—such as the demand for disinterest, and the demand for a nonpractical attitude—through the layered nature of agency in games.