Beyond The Screen: The New Aesthetics of Digital Citizenship.

Ferruccio Laviani, Good Vibrations Storage Unit, Carved wood, 2013.

Emma Louise Jones, “Mark Borthwick Photography” series, Digital Image, emma-louise-jones-tailoring.blogspot.com,

2011.

The New Aesthetic

Thejaymo, Flying over the Tulips Fields in Anna Paulowna, Digital Photograph, http://thejaymo.tumblr.com/, 2013.

In 2011, the British writer and technologist James Bridle set up a blog on Tumblr to document a few of the phenomena he had seen.

Bridle, an expert on digital publishing called it a “mood board for unknown products”.

Example of a visual, digital representation of hard-drive memory.

In 2011, the British writer and technologist James Bridle set up a blog on Tumblr to document a few of the phenomena he had seen.

Bridle, an expert on digital publishing called it a “mood board for unknown products”.

John Rafman, “Google Street View Image”, Digital Image, 9-eyes.com, 2012.

The New AestheticAt a glance, these appear as a random set of images. However, perhaps the reference to mood-boards is more telling, a highly contemporary technique of concepting integral to creative labour in advertising and design settings. This is a cultural technology which involves creating an 'atmosphere' or context for consumption around a product.

New Aesthetics is pointing towards something new, striving to stare down a thoroughly hybridized socio-technological world to the difficulties of temporality and a world that has untethered itself from such concepts as time, namely through its technology.

Adam Harvey, CV Dazzle, “How To Hide From Machines”, Digital Image,http://dismagazine.com/dystopia/evolved-lifestyles/8115/anti-surveillance-how-to-hide-from-machines/, 2013.

The New AestheticThe New Aesthetic is concerned with those moments of slippage between people and computers, network and individual, generational and contemporaneous, past and present.

The New Aesthetic and Digital Citizenship“Technology is no longer just a fast way of transporting information from one place to another and the information it moves is not longer static. Instead, information technology has become a participatory medium, giving rise to an environment that is constantly being changed and reshaped by the participation itself. The process is almost quantum in nature. The more we interact with these information spaces, the more the environment changes, and the very act of finding information reshapes not only the context that gives that information meaning but also the meaning itself” (Thomas & Brown pg. 42, 2011).

Seychelle Allah, Illustration 9: Welcome to The Tragic Kingdom 2k12, Digital Image, 2012.

It’s the increasing destabilisation of traditional categories that raise the most interesting questions for the New Aesthetic. Thoughts about why our computers are observing us are troubling. The New Aesthetic allows us to confront the unique social realities of our digital evolution: as we teach computers how and when to perceive us, we must engage with the discomfort of publicly discussing skin tone, race, and the nanny-state; as we celebrate the wide-scale application of sex with machines, we need to fully internalise the fluidity of sexuality and gender.By imparting agency on them (digital mediums), we can begin to imagine the inner lives of computers and how they might relate to our condition. As Meg Jayanth (2012) writes “phones know their location, algorithms read the news, the camera-mounted car is an organ of sight for the diffuse Google Street View body.”

The New Aesthetic and Digital Citizenship

Golan Levin, Surveillance and “the gaze”, 2009.

“The new culture of learning actually comprises two elements. The first is a massive information network that provides almost unlimited access and resources to learn about anything. The second is a bounded and structured environment that allows for unlimited agency to build and experiment with things within those boundaries” (Thomas & Brown pg. 11, 2011).

The New Aesthetic in Schools

TriStar Pictures, Terminator 2: Judgment Day, “Terminator T500 vision”, 1991.

"What does a scanner see? he asked himself. I mean, really see? Into the head? Down into the heart? Does a passive infrared scanner like they used to use or a cube type holo scanner like they use these days, the latest thing, see into me—into us—clearly or darkly?" Philip K. Dick, A Scanner Darkly.

The New Aesthetic in Schools:Beyond The Screen

Mishka Henner's, Dutch Landscapes, series, Digital Image, 2012.

Some examples within the context of the Digital Citizenship:• Social justice/Humanities – How have we imbued digital technology with the means of discerning? What

biases exist because of technology?• Art/Design – How is art created by computers? Can computers be “creators of art”? How does new

“digital” art challenge ideas of traditional art? How would a cybernetic entity create art?• Science/Technology – What are the achievements of digital technology? Are we improving society – at

what cost? How do we represent our futuristic visions of society through technology?• English/Literature – Can algorithms replicate the originality and personality of a writer? What elements

would the algorithm writer extract from a piece of work to emphasize this and why?

The New Aesthetic in Schools:Beyond The Screen

Martin Backes, Pixlehead, Elastic fabric, 2012.

Criticisms• Image-creating technological agents are far from

new, one can argue that the New Aesthetic has existed since the 1960s where some artists began using algorithms as an aesthetic choice.

• “Glitch” artists are less deterministic about their methodologies as they generally run a program that corrupts their media, allowing for “chance” aesthetics.

• “Despite its acknowledgement of computers as weird artifacts that have taken on lives of their own, the New Aesthetic is still primarily interested in human experience. That is to say, the aesthetics of the New Aesthetic are human aesthetics, appearances and interactions that we people can experience and that, in so doing, trouble our understanding of what it means to live in the twenty first century” (Bogost 2012).

• The New Aesthetic is not necessarily a “revolutionary movement”. Kyle Chayka (2012) articulates this point, “[it] is not yet an actual aesthetic movement. It’s just reality.” The New Aesthetic is not “shocking society” but is a response to a “shocked society.”

Salvador Dali, Gala Contemplating the Mediterranean Sea Which at Twenty Meters Becomes the Portrait of Abraham Lincoln, Oil and collage on canvas, Dali Museum, 1976.

Questions & Recommended ReadingQuestions.

1. Can we look to the Australian Curriculum to provide guides on implementing the ideals of the New Aesthetic to classroom teaching?

2. How do we assess students when aspects of Digital Citizenship regard subjective interpretation and personal responses/reflection on the New Aesthetic?

3. Can the New Aesthetic be a school wide approach, incorporating the whole school community and school philosophy?

Recommended Reading.

Brindle, J. (2011, May 6), The New Aesthetic, Really Interesting Group. http://www.riglondon.com/blog/2011/05/06/the-new-aesthetic/

Cloinger, C. (2012, October 3), Manifesto for a Theory of The ‘New Aesthetic’, Mute. http://www.metamute.org/editorial/articles/manifesto-theory-%E2%80%98new-aesthetic%E2%80%99

Walter, D. G. (2012, April 2), The New Aesthetic and I, Damien G. Walter. http://damiengwalter.com/2012/04/02/the-new-aesthetic-and-i/ Kazuki Takamatsu, Japanese Ideology of Puberty, series, Gauche on wood, 2012.

Bibliography & ReferencesAlma, R. (2012, May 4), Breaking the Fourth Wall: Duende and The New Aesthetic, The Creators Project. Retrieved April 14 2013, from thecreatorsproject.vice.com/.

Ashby, M. (2012, May 4), Surveillance is Symptomatic of Magical Thinking. So Is Anthropomorphism, , The Creators Project. Retrieved April 14 2013, from thecreatorsproject.vice.com/. Berr, D. M., van Dartel, M., Dieter, M., Kasprzak, M., Muller, N., O’Reilly, R., & de Vicente, J. L. (2012, June), New Aesthetic New Anxieties. Paper written at the Blowup “Book Sprint”, Rotterdam, Netherlands. Retrieved April 14, 2013 from http://v2.nl/publishing/new-aesthetic-new-anxieties.

Bogost, I. (2012, April 13), The New Aesthetic Needs to Get Weirder, The Atlantic. Retrieved April 14 2013 from www.theatlantic.com.

Bussiere, J., Neuberger, M., Bezanilla, A. M., Waggoner, C., Sender, H., Holt, J., Gardener, M., Wagner, S., Deseriis, M. & Strafer, J. (2012, January), Another Essay on The New Aesthetic. The Digital Legacies of the Avant Garde. Retrieved April 14 2013, from http://www.booki.cc/the-digital-legacies-of-the-avant-garde/.

Chayka, K. (2012, April 6), The New Aesthetic: Going Native, The Creators Project. Retrieved April 14 2013, from thecreatorsproject.vice.com/.

Cloinger, C. (2012, October 3), Manifesto for a Theory of The ‘New Aesthetic’, Mute. Retrieved April 14 2013, from http://www.metamute.org/editorial/articles/manifesto-theory-%E2%80%98new-aesthetic%E2%80%99

Gannis, C. (2012, May 4), A Code for the Numbers to Come, The Creators Project. Retrieved April 14 2013, from thecreatorsproject.vice.com/.

Jayanth, M. (2012, June 14), Playing like a machine: The New Aesthetic in Gaming, Postdesk. Retrieved April 14 2013, from http://www.postdesk.com/.

Kaganskly, J. (2012, May 4), The New Aesthetic Revisited: The Debate Continues!, The Creators Project. Retrieved April 14 2013, from thecreatorsproject.vice.com/. Lichty, P. (2013, March 1), New Aesthetics: Cyber-Aesthetics and Degrees of Autonomy, Furtherfield. Retrieved April 14 2013, from http://www.furtherfield.org/.  

Stephens, A. (2012, June 28), Shading the New Aesthetic, Cluster Mag. Retrieved April 14 2013, from http://theclustermag.com/.

Stirling, B. (2012, April 2), An Essay on the New Aesthetic, Wired. Retrieved April 14 2013, from http://www.wired.com/.

Thomas, D. & Brown, J. S. (2011), A New Culture of Learning: Cultivating the Imagination for a World of Constant Change, Lexington, Ky.: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform.  

Vartanian, H. (2012, May 4), A Not-So-New Aesthetic, or Another Attempt at Technological Triumphalism, , The Creators Project. Retrieved April 14 2013, from thecreatorsproject.vice.com/.

Walter, D. G. (2012, April 2), The New Aesthetic and I, Damien G. Walter. . Retrieved April 14 2013, from http://damiengwalter.com/2012/04/02/the-new-aesthetic-and-i/

Wiles, W. (2012, September 17), The Machine Gaze. Aeon Magazine. Retrieved April 14 2013, from http://www.aeonmagazine.com/.

Zigelbaum, J. & Coelho, M. (2012, May 4), The Rasterized Snake Eats its Analog Tail, The Creators Project. Retrieved April 14 2013, from thecreatorsproject.vice.com/.