How are we to unite existing
interactive computer art with a speculative, philosophical
aesthetic? In the age of digital simulacra, a work of art is
never safe, never to be trusted, never to be invested, read
the new headlines, since a digital piece is always already
in the hands of a consumer who is both interpreter and
creator. Or should I say re-creator? The original is also a
copy, a representation of something that may have never been
there. The work of art can be distributed; like airport
terminals residing in the no-man's-land between Heimat and
foreign matter, digital art is transitional and stochastic
in its vigorous and immerse design. It is always in the
process of becoming something else - or becoming someone
else's. What is the object of digital aesthetics?
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Let me for a moment narrow
the current theme of inquiry and propose that there is no
such thing as a digital aesthetic. It should be clear,
however, in the course of this paper, that I do not
necessarily affirm this peculiar thesis; but, still, there
can be good reasons for presenting it. Hence, if the subject
of digital aesthetics - the digitally rendered and
interactively applied work of multimedia art - is precisely
defined negatively, because it cannot be fixated in robust,
formal parameters, and because it cannot be locked up in one
structure of meaning; does, then, digital aesthetic have an
object? In the absence of the possibility of 'stopping'
emerging, digital creativity and productivity, the banal
question becomes more and more urgent: what is the object of
digital aesthetics?
But the thesis is wrong or
even false in its very foundation. What is crucial about a
(philosophical) aesthetic is not the diverse works of art -
be they analogue or digital - that can be gazed at and
analysed around the world, but, distinctively different, the
rational prism through which we in the first place become
spectators of the essence and epistemology of art. The
problem is that this prism between art consideration and art
production does not exist in itself (one can not, for
instance, install it on the walls of Guggenheim Downtown).
Instead, this prism provides for the transcendental
conditionals that are necessary elements within and
therefore the underlying ratio upon which we are able to
discuss art, values, taste, and significance. In respect of
ontology the aesthetic discipline thus reaches deeper than
poetic or historiographic theories, since the latter ones
precisely assume that there is art around, and that we all
somehow know when it is there, and when it is not there (and
then we can go and have a look at it in our favourite
museum).
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***Bo
Kampmann Walther, Assistant Professor, Ph.D., Centre for
Interactive Media, University of Southern Denmark, + 45 65
50 36 16,
(Mail): walther@litcul.sdu.dk,
(Net): http://www.sdu.dk/hum/bkw/index.htm
Part of this paper was presented at Digital Arts and
Culture, Bergen 2000. I thank the kind people of the
conference for a generous critic and stimulating curiosity.
The current paper forms a part of my forthcoming book
Digital Aesthetics: New Genres of Seeing and Knowing
(spring 2001).
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I would like also to thank Lars Qvortrup for kindly forcing
me to consider this thesis - and especially to refute
it!