A few days ago Bruce Sterling posted an “Essay on the New Aesthetic”, summing up his most recent thoughts after a panel at SXSW, similarly titled “The New Aesthetic – Seeing like digital devices”. The focal point of definition for this New Aesthetic is well documented and a gestalt emerges quite quickly on the New Aesthetic tumblr, a juxtaposition of quotes, images, sensations, videos highlighting myriad examples of that which its curators are recognizing is already happening.
In short, New Aesthetic touches in some sense the bleeding of the virtual dimension into the actual and our increasing reflection of our own methods of sensing in machines, and vice versa. What’s surprising about Bruce’s usually sardonic critique of modern culture is that he acknowledges his own excitement and novelty with NA, that perhaps it does indeed holds the potential for something new…
I’ve felt this viscerally on spacecollective through these past years. We’ve watched the work of Andy Gilmore reflect us into fractal gradients, Xaos exploring on his canvas the poiesis of becoming, Gavin Keech exploring the hypersciences through the lens of experience, Gabriel Shalom in our many conversations about digital aura recognition (AUREC), hypercubism & object orientation and Wildcat recontextualizing the role of the knowmad in relation to aesthetics.
Robin Sloan boils it down to a general axiom(?) of NA on her blog:
the flip-flop (n.) the process of pushing a work of art or craft from the physical world to the digital world and back again—maybe more than once
…it becomes clear you aren’t aiming for fidelity in these transitions from physical to digital and back. That’s where your work gets exposed to a whole new set of tools—really, a whole new physics.
However there are several conceptual hurdles that require consideration and recontextualization that need to occur before I can rally behind the New Aesthetic. Our hybrid futures imply that we are moving at a pace of transformation to which we are little aware on a moment by moment basis.
