Editorial "Digital Aesthetics" (original) (raw)
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The Affordances of Digital Aesthetics
Screen Thought Journal, 2022
This article will examine the changing role of digital aesthetics in art and screen in a context of Metamodernism. As the problem of a structure of feeling will be argued as lacking the formalism of its cultural predecessors, the rapid proliferation of artificial intelligence as both a creative producer and distributor will be framed as an 'autonomous other' to hypothetically attest to the defunct of human orientated born digital artefacts. As much as this proposition is akin to a re-examination of metamodernity, a proposed formalism thought of as a structure of reason is as determinant to the shaping of digital aesthetics as the deployment of opposition in an era of self-aware pictorial networks.
AM Journal of Art and Media Studies
If aesthetic and teleological judgments are equally reflective, then it can be argued that such judgments can be applied concurrently to digital objects, specifically those that are products of the rapidly developing sophisticated forms of artificial intelligence (AI). Evidence of the aesthetic effects of technological development are observable in more than just experienceable objects; rooted in inscrutable machine learning, AI’s complexity is a problem when it is presented as an aesthetic authority, particularly when it comes to automated curatorial practice or as a progressively determinative aesthetic force originating in an independent agency that is internally self-consistent.Rooted in theories of the post-digital and the New Aesthetic, this paper examines emerging new forms of art and aesthetic experiences that appear to reveal these capabilities of AI. While the most advanced forms of AI barely qualify for a ‘soft’ description at this point, it appears inevitable that a ‘har...
THE AESTHETIC WORLD IN THE DIGITAL ERA. A CALL TO ARMS FOR EXPERIMENTAL AESTHETICS.
Reti Saperi Linguaggi, 2020
The main gist of the present article consists in a call to arms for experimental aesthetics, motivated by the conviction that aesthetics is the still poorly investigated key entry point to a deeper understanding of how digital technologies shape our identity, our social relationships and the world where we are living. Aesthetics, as normally conceived, deals with art and beauty. Neuroscience in the last two decades started investigating the neurobiological basis of the appreciation of beauty and art. Aesthetics, however, pervades all forms of social cognition, even more so in the present digital age. The digital disintermediation of perception and meaning-making operated by the new mediascape has literally aestheticized the world. Interconnected mobile digital devices are changing the style of our interaction with images and words, multiplying our «province of meaning», projecting it into multiple dimensions beyond the reach of our naked eye. Our ontology is ever less confined to what we can directly experience through the factual bodily interaction with the «real world». Our present digitally-mediated reality moves our take on the world into novel and poorly explored dimensions, requiring a new empirical understanding and conceptualization of aesthetics. We must investigate the impact that the new digital technologies and related social practices have upon social life. Capitalizing upon the results obtained by experimental aesthetics, and privileging embodiment and the performative quality of perception and cognition, preliminary suggestions for a future research agenda can be outlined. Embodied simulation, a model of perception and cognition, can provide a new take on these issues, fostering a newly based dialogue between neuroscience and the humanities.
The composition of a digital aesthetic Mark Cypher
The Encyclopedia of New Media Art: Volume 2: Artists & Practice, 2024
Digital aesthetics is characterized by a diversity of approaches that stem from the constantly evolving nature of new media and aesthetics. What qualifies as digital or its umbrella term, ‘new media technologies’, is continually changing and covers various applications and theories from art, science and industry. Aesthetic discourse is concerned with the experience of the world and its effect on the embodied subject (Karatzogianni and Kuntsman 2012). Anna Munster argues that aesthetics ‘cannot remain undisturbed by the machine’ since its influence manifests and augments itself in our perception and associated responsibilities (2006: 151). I argue that the relations inherent to the processes of new media influence, mediate and sensitize us to digital artworks and their associated aesthetic, perceptions and ethical and political affects (Felski 2020). This will require taking into account the material-discursive dimensions of digital media and how they work in relation to the generative possibilities of the body and its sensations.
Aesthetics of the Banal – New Aesthetics in an Era of Diverted Digital Revolutions
Postdigital Aesthetics
What is “new aesthetics”? James Bridle, who first introduced the term, provides a number of examples of associated cultural practises and phenomena on his tumblr-blog (Bridle, 2011-). Through the images of how pixels are used in the design of t-shirts, of 3D prints that visualizes how Microsoft Kinect sees a player, and satellite photos of agricultural fields appearing as mosaics, the examples point to the side effects of technology. Such cultural practices and phenomena are often brought about by cheap gadgets and services, and produce a new and positive sense of beauty, almost at the fringe of kitsch and banality. The article presents how this 'aesthetics of the banal' is reflected in digital art and culture.
Digital Aesthetics: The Legacy of Twentieth Century Modernism
The advent of digital technology is commonly attributed to technological advancements in science and engineering. While efforts of scientists and engineers play a central role in development of new technologies, visionary ideas are rarely formulated in isolation of social context. This essay examines the role of aesthetics in the emergence of digital technology, proposing that the revolutionary vision of modern architecture gave rise to concepts and conditions that enabled rational minds to fathom and construct the imaginary world of digital technology. By cultivating an aesthetic of transparency, modernists inverted the relationship between the material and immaterial realm, opening a new frontier to prospectors and settlers.
Technosphere – New Digital Aesthetics
The attempt of this consideration is to show paths towards a technosphere as an new discourse of aesthetics in the age of digital currents. In this way various concepts of science, technology, and art are linked with a view to revising the notions of art, aesthetics, and spectator. Without a doubt the artistic use of new technologies and the specific current forms of interlocking science and art lead to diverse formulations of questions – of practical and formal, as well as conceptual and philosophical nature – to which only future developments will deliver an answer. The technosphere as new «Aesthetics of the Digital» addresses several of these principle questions.
Algorithms we live by. Art and aesthetic experience in the age of the digital
SHORT ABSTRACT. Today, a consistent part of our everyday interaction with art and aesthetic artefacts happens through digital media and platforms. Moreover, it is well known that our preferences and choices are systematically tracked and analyzed by algorithms according to processes that are far from transparent. In fact, we are mostly unaware of the fact that our choices and habits are constantly documented and that these actions are fed back through tailored information, contents and experiences we are exposed to. We are therefore witnessing the emergence of a complex interrelation between our aesthetic choices, their digital elaboration and transformation, and also the production of content and the dynamic of creative process. All are involved in a process of mutual influences, and are partially determined by the invisible guiding hand of algorithms. Concerning this issue, in this contribution I will try to point out two main aspects: firstly, how algorithms are shaping us; that is, to what extent they have an effect on our taste formation and guide our aesthetic experience. Secondly, in which way this has also an impact on the contemporary dynamic of cultural production.
The State of the Real: Aesthetics In the Digital Age
2007
Published in 2007 by IBTauris & Co Ltd 6 Salem Road, London W2 4BU 175 Fifth Avenue, New York NY 10010 www.ibtauris.com In the United States and Canada distributed by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of St. Martin's Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York NY 10010 ...