Towards post-digital aesthetics

Abstract

Over the past decades, digital technology and media had firmly integrated into almost all areas of contemporary culture and society. In this context, the Internet, computers or mobile phones are no longer considered products of new media, but instead are taken for granted. With this background in mind, this paper suggests taking a post-digital perspective on today's media society. The concept of post-digital refers to an aesthetics that no longer regards digital technology as a revolutionary phenomenon, but instead as a normal aspect of people's daily life. More precisely, post-digital aesthetics deals with an environment where digital technology became such a commonplace that its existence is frequently no longer acknowledged. Based on the analysis of contemporary artworks and practices inspired by their surroundings, this paper aims to bring those phenomena into consciousness that became unnoticeable in the contemporary digital environment. For this purpose, this investigation goes beyond the formal-aesthetic analysis, but instead focuses on the investigation of the receptive act. Concretely, post-digital aesthetics seeks to describe and analyze the changing modes of perception affected by the increased digitization of one's surroundings. In the context of this analysis, aesthetics is thus understood not as the goal per se, but rather as the means to enhance the understanding of contemporary digital culture.