Digital Aesthetics

This chapter examines digital virtual environments as a site for art and proposes a formal aesthetics for art in digital virtual environments. The study arises from the author's decades-long practice producing art in virtual environments and the related theoretical considerations that have arisen from that practice. The technical, conceptual and ontological status of virtual environments is examined in order to establish a base of intrinsic qualities that identify virtual environments as a medium for art. The philosophy of Gilbert Simondon is used to achieve this. The elements and principles the artist must employ to work with this medium are identified as data, display and modulation. The specificities of virtual environments as a medium for art are examined in order to establish a formal aesthetics. In particular, digital colour, visual opacity, digital sound, code, artificial intelligence, emergence and agency are identified as the primary qualities that the artist manipulates to bring forth art in a virtual environment. Draft for chapter published in "New Opportunities for for Artistic Practice in Virtual Worlds", 2015.

El artículo busca delinear una experiencia estética vinculada a la utilización de lenguajes digitales en la creación literaria. La principal hipótesis es que las características hipertextuales de la literatura digital, así como la posibilidad de manipulación vinculada al lenguaje de códigos propio de lo digital, dan forma a lo que la autora llama "estética digital". La reflexión sobre los conceptos base de esta experiencia estética-hipertextualidad y "hackeo cultural"-se realizará a través de la presentación de trabajos de literatura digital chilena, en el entendido que sus poéticas se desprenden del uso y experimentación con el lenguaje de código.

The article aims to outline a digital aesthetic experience related to the uses of digital languages in literary creation. The main hypothesis is that the hypertextual structure characteristic of digital literature, along with the possibility of manipulation intrinsically related to code language, are two elements that define what the author calls "digital aesthetics." The reflection on the concepts that constitutes the basics of this experience-hyper-textuality and "cultural hacking"-will be developed through the presentation of some works of Chilean digital literature, understanding that their poetics are linked to the uses and experimentation with code.

In this paper I will study the artistic status and circulation of cultural products in the social network Twitter. To this end, I will take the ideas of Walter Benjamin on the loss of “aura” and the José Luis Brea’s approaches about the electronic cultural capitalism, a new stage of culture characterized by the passage of an auratic monumental logic to an "era of electronic distribution" and its new possibilities of distribution and access.

This article analyscs the rclationship b('twcen digital tcchnology and política[ film-making in thc current era of unevcn globalization. First, I study thc role of contemporary counter-narratives of mi¿.,:rratíon in gíving visibílity to thc illcgal bodies-in-motion that circulatc through the westem fortrcsses. Second, 1 disscct the di,1,.,rital and imperfect acsthctic of a set of films-Welcome to Sarajcvo (Michael Winterbottom, 1997), In this World (Michacl Winterbottom, 2002) and Turtles can Hy (Bahman Ghobadi, 2004) -in order to define the nuances of thcir poli tícal discourses. Third, l arguc that thc authenticating appeal of digital technology is largely based on thc fact that spcctators toda y cxpericncc thc digital in thcir quotidian lije expericnccs. Thcrcforc, they approach digital products not only as consumers, but also as producers of audio-visual imagcry. Finally, 1 study how these films operate in a limínal space between the flctional and documentary mudesthc fictorcal. l contcnd that thcse films fail to hidc thcir structuring artiftciality. Paradoxically, this failure, in combination with their imperfcct digital look, is the cornerstonc of their capacity to successfully engage an active spectator in thc interrogation of thc spccific sociocultural rcalitícs they explore. By deploying a range of represcntational convcntions working within a varicty of fictional genrcs, they KEYWORDS digital impcrfection immigration political film-making Winterbottom fict<Jreal

This chapter investigates an emerging culture of violent texts, so-called
diatribes, in the Congolese online sphere. These invectives are known as
mbwakela, a Lingala term for ‘something that is thrown to someone’ (plural:
bambwakela). Mbwakela has been inserted into political protest emanating from the Congolese diasporas. The analysis here will be limited to an exploration of the affordances of the digitalisation of the mbwakela.
My argument is twofold. First, I argue that when one particular form of communication, in casu verbal attack, is mobilised for new purposes (political protest) and is expressed in a new space (the internet), it meets significant differences along the line of impunity. Second, I argue that the mbwakela case study showcases how mediatisation of conflict uses distance as a productive aesthetic device in violent encounters. The online mbwakela, expressed by the migrant community and circulating online, plays with two forms of distance: first, the linguistic and poetic displacement of the initial forms of mbwakela; and, second, the migratory distance. In my view, it is exactly the combination of these two forms of dislocation (metaphor and spatial difference) that explains the appeal of the online mbwakela to Congolese migrant protestors.

Resumen

La saga Silent Hillen su conjunto, y de manera específica Silent Hill 4: The Room, supone un caso paradigmático de construcción de lo fantástico en los videojuegos. Sirviéndose de las convenciones características de este medio, y alterándolas oportunamente
para obtener determinados golpes de efecto, es posible generar en el jugador un amplio abanico de sentimientos. Concretamente, la modificación de algunos parámetros
del espacio de juego (ya sean audiovisuales o aquellos que afecten a las mecánicas lúdicas de ese universo) es uno de los recursos más eficaces a la hora de sumergir al jugador en la experiencia. En el caso de Silent Hill 4, diversas modificaciones en el espacio de juego (el apartamento del protagonista) revelan de qué manera lo fantástico y lo
siniestro pueden converger en el medio videolúdico.

Abstract:

Silent Hill, and specifically Silent Hill 4: The Room, are paradigmatic cases of the construction of the fantastic in videogames. Developers are able to generate a wide range
of feelings in players if they alter some of the usual videogame conventions. Modifications to various parameters of game space (whether audiovisual or relative to game
mechanics) are one of the main and most effective resources to create a deeper and
more immersive game experience. In Silent Hill 4, various changes in the space of game  (the main character’s apartment) show how the fantastic and the uncanny can converge in videogames.

The article questions the two dominant views on media aesthetics – one takes the empiricist stance, and the other pushes forwards a media-technological a priori – in order to posit a third view. This view is transcendental empiricism, which one can trace in the work of Gilbert Simondon and Gilles Deleuze. This article demonstrates this argument with the example of digital objects – the new form of industrial objects composed of data and metadata – and proposes to investigate their aesthetics by articulating three logical operators – induction, deduction and transduction – as correlations to the three views mentioned above.

This article presents a research in the field of the history of art that
seeks to realize an approximation to the plot of interrelationships art,
science, technology in the artistic contemporary production. By planning relations from the theory of art towards the new epistemological
approaches of the science and the appropriation of the new technological developments from the field of art, this approximation allows to
realize a tour that contrast work as center in the face of the process as
context, the object as cult in the face of the system as environment, the
author as distortion in the face of the observant pollutant.
The results of this research show a set of artistic practices in the
field of the cybernetics and the cognitive sciences in which it is
possible to contrast diverse notions on the cognitive processes in its
relation with the overlapped art, science and technology. The above
mentioned practices have allowed the individualization of important
relationships among the methods, aims, and instruments of art, the
science and the technology as well as new lights on the convergence
art and science in the social construction.
Within the results, two concrete areas of work are presented with
the specific notable results: 1. Axis of the Predicate: Shaped on the
reason (artificial intelligence) works constructed from intelligent agents
who allow its constant reproduction from the reception; in this environment the works are understood as processes. 2. Axis of the
function: Shaped on the nature, the digital art from its production; the
information as raw material

La presente investigación se propone analizar dos estéticas contemporáneas: el cyberpunk y el vaporwave. Ambas basan su imaginario creativo en una sociedad tecnológica, motivo por el cual se abordan cuáles son sus principales temáticas e iconografías con la finalidad de acercarnos al estudio de sus diferencias y cómo interpretan los nuevos avances tecnológicos, prestando especial atención a la realidad virtual.

The present research intends to analyze two contemporary aesthetics: Cyberpunk and Vaporwave. Both base their creative imagination on a technological society, because of this we try to see what their main themes and iconographies are in order to approach the study of their differences and how they interpret new technological advances with special emphasis in virtual reality.

In recent years there has been growing interest in artificial neural networks (ANNs) which are quickly becoming the primary device for machine learning. Used for finding patterns in large data sets, ANNs were also recently employed in many artistic contexts: as tools for artists, semi-independent creators of content, and even as invisible " critics " which / who predict our aesthetic preferences. The aim of this paper is to speculate about the disruptive effect of these 'alien agencies' on the (modernist) aesthetic regime of art centred around the notion of autonomy. The author examines how neural networks and connectionist epistemologies may potentially affect the most common ways of producing, circulating, and valorising art. He claims that the possibility of automatizing creativity and art criticism may lead to the emergence of a new aesthetic regime based on forms of dynamic, distributed and probabilistic governance.

En este artículo me centraré en algunos desarrollos del arte informático aplicados a la generación automática de aforismos, así como reflexionaré sobre la influencia de la creatividad maquínica-algorítmica, celebrada por los escritores oulipianos, en el sistema literario y en la propia idea de literatura. Concretamente, analizaré los generadores de aforismos del portugués Pedro Barbosa y del español Ginés Cutillas –Máquinas pensantes y La increíble máquina aforística–, dos proyectos que representan respectivamente dos momentos en el desarrollo de estas prácticas: un estadio fundacional ligado al surgimiento y avance de los lenguajes de programación y un segundo estadio en el que se aprecia la integración y funcionamiento de estas “máquinas” en la web.

The logic of representation that underpins most (if not all) photography theories, considers photography as a recording of space and this is done at the expense of those aspects of photography that relate directly to temporality and duration. The automatic privileging of space over time has some significant consequences for the ability of photography to respond to political, social and cultural change, not least because national capitalism is gradually being replaced by intensive, interactive and networked model that operates not according to the spatial logic of borders, territories and classes but according to a new logic that creates sites of intensity in which identity and the legal status of persons is thrown into question (online chat rooms and privately owned public spaces such as Canary Wharf are prime examples). As photography is the dominant form of visual communication everywhere, its inability to represent the changing landscape of citizenship and the reconfiguration of the ‘polis' into privately owned space without the possibility of political action, contributes to the absence of a critical discourse regarding the effects these changes have on people’s lives. In light of such dynamics, I end the chapter by outlining three strategies of photographic intervention that bypass representation and allow to engage directly and materially with the changes brought about by networked and computational technologies through the ability of the technical image to reflect on its own mode of production. These strategies are: erasure, self-replication and repetition. Taken together, these strategies make a case for photographic practice that is alert to its own mode of production and to the productive forces that shape our world.

 Vicente Rodriguez-Ortega  July 2005  The Metaphysics of Violence  Issue 36 Upon its release in 1996, Alejandro Amenábar's Tesis was praised as a groundbreaking achievement in the history of Spanish cinema due to its superior appropriation of Hollywood's audiovisual and storytelling aesthetics. While critically championed, Tesis did not manage to attract a massive audience to the movie theatres until the Spanish Film Academy awarded it seven Goyas, including best film. Scholars have hailed Amenábar as the ultimate representative of a new breed of Spanish filmmaker who understands the necessarily commercial co ordinates of the film market. In Tesis, commerce and art form are brilliantly integrated for the sake of establishing a different kind of Spanish cinematic product, one that recognizes the demands of the filmmaking as a fundamentally capitaldriven practice and, at the same time, selfconsciously incorporates the heritage of Spanish cinematic form. (2) 8/4/2015 » "Snuffing" Hollywood: Transmedia Horror in Tesis Amenábar initially utilizes Ángela in the role of video spectator within the film to draw us into his generic ride in a double manner: first, by making her embody the problematic attraction to violence that exists at the core of our own subject position as Tesis' viewers; second, by situating her character in the flexible generic slot of "victim/hero" and directing our secondary identification to her. Ultimately, Amenábar makes Ángela cross over to the other side of the video camera lens, resorting to the horror thriller's generic apparatus. Nondiegetic spectators reach for Ángela then, mimicking her previous reactions to the viewing and listening of snuff, and, at the same time, are caught up in the hypercalculated frenzy of Amenábar's masterful rendering of the genre product.

The famous quantum physics experiment 'Schrödinger's cat' suggests that some situations are undecidable, i.e. they exist outside of the normative distinctions between 'truth' and 'false'  because both states can co-exist under certain conditions. This paper suggests that photography has very close links with this state of affairs, because photography allows one to move from the world of certainty into the quantum dimension of undecidability and indeterminate states.