New Aesthetic New Anxieties - Institute for the Unstable Media

practices in relation to the New Aesthetic here, it is clear that the overlaps, synergiesand connections remain relevant – here we think of open access, piracy, and glitch assome of the possible critical movements that also have a popular following and link tocurrently existing cultural practices. There are also important critiques to beestablished and interventions to be made in a constantly strengthening andcontentious regime of intellectual property rights which walk hand-in-hand with thegrowing institutionalisation of the informative part of the economy. It remains the casethat the onward march of copyright and patent regimes is not just overbearing, but insome cases threatens life itself. The dimensions of a critical making-visible ofcomputationality, accordingly, must remain linked to an aesthetic practice,New technologies and new ways of using information are continually beingdeveloped and these serve to question our assumptions about copyrightand creativity. The current criminalisation of piracy, data ‘theft’ andhacking are the latest salvos by industries trying to restrict the flow anduse of their creative work. It is interesting to note that the owners of thesecreative works are seldom the creators and pressure for the extension andstrengthening of copyright comes almost exclusively from the multinationalcorporations. This alone should raise questions as to who is benefitingfrom the rise in intellectual property protection (Berry 2008: 28).We might consider how creative works are increasingly distributed throughparameterization, data-pours and the 'embed' mechanism, which, of course, Tumblralso uses. These are important dimensions of comprehension and critique (Liu 2004).For exampe, certain national copyright regimes have been structured to create 'safeharbours' for particular ways of using and sharing digital culture more generally. At thelevel of the screenic these practices have increasingly become invisible to the user,who remains bolstered by the ease of flow of the streams of data across the browseronscreen, whilst computational processes mediate the 'correct' use of copyrightedmaterials, display authorisations, and so forth. Needless to say, whilst also collectingso-called 'tracking' data about how the screen and interface are used through the useof compactants and related technologies (Berry, 2012a).The New Aesthetic and Everyday LifeIn so far as neoliberal governmentality also subordinates state power to therequirements of the marketplace, political problems turn to be re-presented or cast inmarket terms. If the New Aesthetic concerns the ubiquity of digital and networkedsystems, then think about how computation has challenged and reconfigured theways in which citizens and subjects now understand themselves, for example: (1)Education – How well educated and literate or people in relation to the digitalstructure of the contemporary world. How active are they in their participation in thepolitics of digital technology, (2) Health - What typically is the condition of people’sphysical strength and health, additionally their mental and physical skills fordevelopment and coping? (3) How well acquainted are people with the arts in digitalculture and how proficient are they in artistic practices and their relation to them; andlastly (4) Conviviality - How compassionate are people privately as citizens of61