The Aesthetic Imperative and New Media by Susan Kime, President and co-founder

At Kimedia, we help extend the exposure and reach of a destination experience club or destination club experience by using New Media protocols. These include scripting, directing, composing music for and producing short, on-the-ground, experential videos for integration onto our client’s websites.

Podcast and vidcast design and implementation may also be generated. The goal here lies in the potential members/clients/customers to feel a small part of the location, the residence or the adventure travel experience in a way that wasn't open to them before through more conventional text and picture oriented websites.

Kimedia is also committed to exploring new and better ways, in addition to websites, to deliver new media content. In addition to interactive websites, iPhones and iPods are an ever-expanding market for mobile information dissemination. Access to luxury messaging may also be provided via RSS feeds as well.

The relevance and need for aesthetics has never been been lost on the shared residence industry. Founded by a diverse amalgam of real estate, hospitality and hotel investors, they all knew on some level, the need in this time and space for beauty in their members’ lives. Whether it was for a beautiful location, great architecture, and exceptional interiors, coupled with great adventure or peaceful sanctuary, the shared residence industry – from the high end private residence club to the high end destination and experience club – knew and felt the need.

Media, especially print, has been quick to jump at the lucrative glitter of such an aesthetic – large, glossy magazines create sheaves of print ads, one touting the iconic nature of one club over the other, all the while with the club president praying that some potential member will be magnetically drawn into the static, though beautiful, pictures – a beach home near both a golf course and the ocean, a glorious ski chalet with valet, a Mexican Villa and negative edge pool, outlined with bougainvillea --and make that first call to obtain more information.

Therein lies the paradox of aesthetics: -- they all combine the trivial and the profound, the cognitive and the sensuous. The beauty: homes, décor, location, sunset, golf course, ski run -- all stereotypes, all seen before, and on a certain level, trivial. Yet, the public are still moved by them, and often profoundly as they are symbols of lives well lived. Maybe not OUR lives, but lives we desire and aspire to, and are, on a most profound level, valued.

The real question, then, and one that new or old media, or the shared residence industry has yet to fully explore, is, how such value is acquired, and how it can be conveyed beyond the static image. Many philosophers, from Plato down through the contemporary French thinker, Alain de Bouton, have written that it is only in a dialogue with pain that many beautiful things acquire value. One needs, they say, to have a deeper sense of the temporal, be aware of beauty’s transitory nature, before we can adjudge how valuable and how needful the experience of beauty – in whatever form it takes -- is in our lives.

It is no wonder then that the average age of buyers of a Destination Club or a Private Residence Club is age 52. They have been around the block more than once, many have children who are growing or grown, maybe on their second marriage, have lost jobs, loved ones, friends. They are, almost literally in the middle of the road, not exactly seeing the end, but knowing they have lived 1⁄2 century, and probably won’t live another 1⁄2. There has been pain enough, experience of loss enough to begin appreciating the value of beauty wherever it is discovered. But mostly it is discovered with family, friends, children and grandchildren, those who have the genetic and instinctive grace to receive a legacy of memory, derived from the great experiences accrued when at a Destination, Experience or Private Residence Club.

How then does a great club experience with its attending aesthetics inherent in great locales, significant architecture, exceptional interior design translate into an interactive, new media look and feel? Because print is one part of the cognitive decision making process. The stickier side, the affective side, the side that the potential member return to again and again, is the side the internet and the immediate reveal of new media.

In all cases, the need for a more intimate experience than print can provide, and one that can be controlled by the site visitor, will allow for a greater sense of what the club residence and the location and the experience looks and feels like on the visitors terms. This is the beginning of an intriguing relationship that will allow the visitor to become a potential member and perhaps a new member. The decision-making process starts here, with a need for a valued aesthetic experience. Kimedia provides a tasting menu of what is to come.