New Aesthetic New Anxieties - Institute for the Unstable Media

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10. THE NEW AESTHETIC AS MEDIATIONLet's explore the notion of mediation within the contours of the New Aesthetic, inparticular the computational contribution or facilitation of certain way of working,looking, and distributing. Whilst we are aware of the limitations that the structure ofthis book enforces on our discussion of mediation, and especially the difficulties ofexplicating the complexities of computational media, it is clear that emerging creativepractices are problematising, in some sense, this medial dimension. Indeed, medialchange is linked to epistemic change – and here of course, we are referring to asoftware condition.Software presents a translucent interface relative to a common 'world' and soenables engagement with a 'world', this we often call its interface. It is tempting, whentrying to understand software/code to provide analysis at the level of this surface.However, software also possesses an opaque machinery that mediates engagementthat is not experienced directly nor through social mediations. Without anattentiveness to the layers of software beneath this surface interface we are indanger of 'screen essentialism'. In terms of this analytic approach, one of the keyaspects is that the surface can remain relatively stable whilst the machinery layer(s)can undergo frenetic and disorienting amounts of change (Fuller 2003). This franticdisorientation at the machinery layer is therefore insulated from the user, who isprovided with a surface which can be familiar, skeuomorphic (from the Greek, skeuos -vessel or tool, morphe - shape), representational, metonymic, figurative or extremelysimplistic and domestic. It is important to note that the surface/interface need not bevisual, indeed it may be presented as an application programming interface (API)which hides the underlying machinery behind this relatively benign interface. Here, areuseful links to many of the formulations around a notion of the New Aesthetic.Indeed, we argue that the New Aesthetic is interesting as a kind of pointing orgesturing towards mediation by digital processes, in some instances connecting toclaims whereby it renders human input or control unnecessary – similar to claims abouta non-human turn. This is the very act of automatic computation or a form of idealizedartificial intelligence is in some senses a technical imaginary that runs through theBridle/Sterling formulation. Mediation itself can be understood within a frame ofunderstanding that implies the transfer between two points – often linked to notionsof information theory. Guillory argues,the enabling condition of mediation is the interposition of distance (spatial,temporal, or even notional) between the terminal poles of the communicationprocess (these can be persons but also now machines, even persons andmachines). (Guillory 2010: 357)The software that is now widely used is part of a wider constellation of softwareecologies made possible by a plethora of computational devices that facilitate thecolonisation of code into the lifeworld (see Berry 2012d). In other words, softwareenables access to certain forms of mediated engagement with the world. This isachieved via the translucent surface interface and enables a machinery to be49
engaged which computationally interoperates with the world.AVAILABLE COMMODITIESIn this vein we want to explore the notion of availability in relation to this idea ofsurface. It is helpful here to think of the way that computationality has affordancesthat contribute to the construction and distribution of a range of commodities. Wethink of computationality as the very definition of the framework of possibility forsocial and political life today, that is, again using computationality as an ontotheology(see previous chapter). Here we think of a commodity as being available when it canbe used as a mere end, with the means veiled and backgrounded. This is not only intechnical devices, of course, and also includes the social labour and material requiredto produce a device as such. But in the age of computationality we think it isinteresting to explore how the surface effects of a certain form of computationalmachinery create the conditions both for the black boxing of technology as such, butalso for thinking about the possibility of political and social action against it. I will callthis the paradigm of availability. Upon this surface we might read and write whateverwe choose, as we are also offered a surface to which we might read the inscrutablehowever we might wish.What is striking about the paradigm of availability made possible by computationality,is that it radically re-presents the mechanisms and structures of everyday life,themselves reconstructed within the ontology afforded by computationality. Thismoment of re-presentation is an offering of availability, understood as infinite playand exploitability (interactivity) of a specific commodity form which we might call thecomputational device. Here we think of the computational device both in terms of itsmaterial manifestations but also as a diagram or technical imaginary. That is, it is notonly restructuring the mechanisms and structures, but the very possibility of thinkingagainst them. Part of the paradox of availaibility, however, is that the 'deeper'structures are progressively hidden and offered instead through a simplified 'interface'.In computational capitalism this affects not just the what we think of as naturallycomputational, for example a laptop, but also other technical and mechanical devicesthat are reconfigured through this paradigm.50
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NEW AESTHETIC NEW ANXIETIES
Page 4: TABLE OF CONTENTSNew Aesthetic New
Page 8 and 9: 1. AESTHETIC TURNSA month before th
Page 10 and 11: arguably animated all of these scen
Page 12 and 13: esource for curators. She has writt
Page 14: INTRODUCTION3. INTRODUCTION4. NEW A
Page 17 and 18: This is followed by a series of ref
Page 19 and 20: Jumping from the medium of the scre
Page 21 and 22: Aesthetic seems to evoke what alrea
Page 23 and 24: 4. NEW ANXIETIESThe # tumblresque i
Page 25 and 26: worked to propane-fuel this intelle
Page 27 and 28: “pigeon language” that takes pl
Page 29 and 30: NET EFFECTSThe new aesthetic episod
Page 31: CURATORIAL READINGS5. A BLOGPOST AS
Page 34 and 35: the image are those that can be dis
Page 36 and 37: which radiate a lightness of form,
Page 38 and 39: intends to produce connections betw
Page 40 and 41: 7. ERROR 404: NO AESTHETIC FOUNDAt
Page 42 and 43: privacy, or lack thereof, in the di
Page 44: IRRUPTIONS8. THE NEW AESTHETIC AS R
Page 47 and 48: are in danger of further 'screen es
Page 49 and 50: 9. WHAT ARE THE CONDITIONS OF POSSI
Page 51 and 52: at-hand/ ready-to-hand) - this is a
Page 53: the difference between aesthetic fo
Page 57 and 58: Kant argues that ‘mere reason’
Page 59 and 60: 11. THE POLITICS OF EMERGENT AESTHE
Page 61 and 62: We now find ourselves in a situatio
Page 63 and 64: crisis-ridden economic condition, i
Page 65 and 66: ultimately responses that together
Page 67 and 68: ‘informational societies’? How
Page 69 and 70: 12. BIBLIOGRAPHYADILKNO (The Founda
Page 71 and 72: Bridle, J. (2011a) 'The New Aesthet
Page 73 and 74: Heidegger, M. (1977) The Question C
Page 75 and 76: Globally', empyre, http://www.maila
Page 77 and 78: 13. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTSBy its very nat
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