Thought I'd buy into, just briefly, this discussion on the notion of the new aesthetic, which is purported to address images created through the use of various technologies and saturated into social media and other sites on the Internet. I'm not going to include the address of the blog or any of the other links to the conversations because I don't believe that there is such a thing at this present time as a new aesthetic, but agree to a certain extent with Steve Middleton's statement: Despite the dazzling array of new electronic media objects available, new media of itself is not avant-garde. He further explains:
We did not so much abandon old culture as allowed its amputation. New culture was thought to signify how clever, how creative, we had become. Inevitably, inexorably, new culture became a prosthesis; for lack of the old. Now we are asked to engage in the onerous task of mourning the loss of the archive, something that formerly we thought we no longer needed. Calling new media new was a mistake of the kind identified by both Frege and Wittgenstien. We see that critical theory should have alerted us to that mistake, but as critical theory itself became subsumed by the hypertext our critical faculties seem lost in, and subsumed by, mechanical specifications of bodies and culture. It is clear now that conceptualizing media as new created a kind of corporate schizophrenia brought about by irrational imaginings of ourselves as being outside history. We betrayed our cultural heritage the moment we decided it was old, and now we feel abandoned by it. Critical theory is now itself in need of restoration and repair. Critical theory should abandon its technological entanglements and turn again to human experience as a guiding principle in the search for truth (Vital Signs: Creative Practice and New Media Now, RMIT University, 2005). However, having posted this slice from Steve's article I do believe that what may be new is that current technologies allows anyone, even those without an art sensibility or training to make what appears as 'art' and what I mean by this, is that art deemed so simply by virtue of the fact that it was created through a particular technology is not dissimilar to images that can easily be made by any member of the public using the same technology. For example, Instagram software confines photos to a square shape, similar to Kodak Instamatic and Polaroid images, in contrast to the 4:3 aspect ratio typically used by mobile device cameras and with its numerous filters users may construct what appears as a new aesthetic, but in fact relies heavily on an older one.
Perhaps after all the question is not whether there is a new aesthetic, but a new kind of artist, since as someone said (or was it many) - anyone can be an artist or musician using new technologies, that is, of course if they have access to high end computers, application programs, Internet access and other equipment & resources necessary for them to explore their ideas. No longer the artist as genius, but the elite artist of technologies. You may produce a video or artwork that has a million hits on YouTube - it used to be that everyone had 15 minutes of fame, now you can be famous for a few minutes, for as YouTube says: 'broadcast yourself', but that doesn't equal creativity, it just means that for that particular moment in time you were noticed; a few minutes later the flock that circles you will move on screeching and crying for something else that's NEW.
We did not so much abandon old culture as allowed its amputation. New culture was thought to signify how clever, how creative, we had become. Inevitably, inexorably, new culture became a prosthesis; for lack of the old. Now we are asked to engage in the onerous task of mourning the loss of the archive, something that formerly we thought we no longer needed. Calling new media new was a mistake of the kind identified by both Frege and Wittgenstien. We see that critical theory should have alerted us to that mistake, but as critical theory itself became subsumed by the hypertext our critical faculties seem lost in, and subsumed by, mechanical specifications of bodies and culture. It is clear now that conceptualizing media as new created a kind of corporate schizophrenia brought about by irrational imaginings of ourselves as being outside history. We betrayed our cultural heritage the moment we decided it was old, and now we feel abandoned by it. Critical theory is now itself in need of restoration and repair. Critical theory should abandon its technological entanglements and turn again to human experience as a guiding principle in the search for truth (Vital Signs: Creative Practice and New Media Now, RMIT University, 2005). However, having posted this slice from Steve's article I do believe that what may be new is that current technologies allows anyone, even those without an art sensibility or training to make what appears as 'art' and what I mean by this, is that art deemed so simply by virtue of the fact that it was created through a particular technology is not dissimilar to images that can easily be made by any member of the public using the same technology. For example, Instagram software confines photos to a square shape, similar to Kodak Instamatic and Polaroid images, in contrast to the 4:3 aspect ratio typically used by mobile device cameras and with its numerous filters users may construct what appears as a new aesthetic, but in fact relies heavily on an older one.
Perhaps after all the question is not whether there is a new aesthetic, but a new kind of artist, since as someone said (or was it many) - anyone can be an artist or musician using new technologies, that is, of course if they have access to high end computers, application programs, Internet access and other equipment & resources necessary for them to explore their ideas. No longer the artist as genius, but the elite artist of technologies. You may produce a video or artwork that has a million hits on YouTube - it used to be that everyone had 15 minutes of fame, now you can be famous for a few minutes, for as YouTube says: 'broadcast yourself', but that doesn't equal creativity, it just means that for that particular moment in time you were noticed; a few minutes later the flock that circles you will move on screeching and crying for something else that's NEW.
The difference between a lolcat and, say, a photograph by Nina Sellars, is the lolcat is made for socio-cultural reasons and the photograph for artistic ones. Those differences are becoming more evident now that the novelty of new tech is fading a little and contexts are more sharply focussed. Not much difference between a lolcat and, say, graffiti on the ruined walls of Pompeii. But Nina's photographs are something more, and it is the more which invites and challenges us to appreciate and understand.
ReplyDeleteYes, that’s exactly what I am talking about – artistic intent. But my post was not directed at any artist I’ve met or currently know, but a response to an article posted by Troy Innocent and Moira Corby on Face Book; indeed two digital artists who were instrumental in bringing what might have been considered back then in the mid 90s a new aesthetic to Melbourne, one related to the digital arena and current imaging technologies as well as animation programs. Of course, there were numerous artists, and the strange thing is that current artists (or those not trained as artists, but who nonetheless engage with the aesthetics) either haven’t done their research, or just consider that they are the ones involved in a new aesthetic. Since you mentioned Sellars (though don’t know why, since there are a number of photographers out there who might have been used as an example) & by association Stelarc, her/his aesthetic is also NOT new, since the depiction of medical procedures has a long and colorful history within art practice, particularly depictions of the écorché (Da Vinci), dissection (Andreas Versalus) and monstrous, deformed bodies (Ambrose Pare) since the sixteen century, if not earlier. Stelarc/Sellars images of the aberrant body engage with the art historical movements of Futurism, Surrealism, the Baroque and even Dada, so again, are not ‘new’.
ReplyDeleteThe people who were there would say Adem Jaffers was Melbourne's new media kunstmeister :) My point was and remains that labelling something "new" takes it out of history, decontextualizes it at the very moment that context might inform thinking about it.
ReplyDeleteYes, rather like the post in posthuman - interrupts the continuum.
ReplyDeleteSomething outside history is beyond critical theory and probably lost to culture, a satellite spinning out of orbit and into the Sun :)
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