I'm failing to see how the New Aesthetic represents a novel paradigm. It seems to be an umbrella term for a range of tendencies that have been apparent for some ten or twenty years. Like Relational Aesthetics before it, I fear it is a branding exercise for a dumbed-down consumer-friendly version of some rather more sophisticated earlier work.
best
Simon
On 17 Apr 2012, at 21:55, Helen Sloan wrote:
> Finally a decent argument about the 'New Aesthetic'. Hats off to Robert
> Jackson for writing this.
>
> I wonder if it was James Bridle's wish to rise to media stardom through an
> article by Bruce Sterling. It ensures Lighthouse in Brighton some good
> coverage and audiences over the next months, that's for sure.
>
> As far as I'm concerned the 'new aesthetic' as championed has been apparent
> for about 20 years. It is different from art but there are points of overlap
> and they should be allowed to flourish together if needed. In my own career
> I supported AntiRom, Arup and Tomato and vice versa in this context in the
> relatively early days. I knew the difference between their work and art (but
> these overlapped on many occasions). Art however still needs some freedom
> beyond the design context and vice versa. Many art programmes do not fulfil
> my expectations any more, not least the current cultural olympiad one in UK.
> Art is instrumentalised, and I felt this pressure from the 'new aesthetic'
> not because of a context like olympics or social mobility but because it
> needed an instant impact. Art is often a slow burner that needs thought and
> depth as Robert Jackson pointed out in his article.
>
>
> I suppose it depends on what your belief is about art - for me, it's an
> opportunity to put a different spin on the status quo. It could be
> politically, visually, experientially etc.
>
> The New Aesthetic Tumblr project is interesting in that context, but there
> are other blogs, artworks and streams that make this debate much more
> diverse than the one that's been presented as the New Aesthetic.
>
> Best wishes
> Helen Sloan
> SCAN
>
> On 17/4/12 21:00, "Guilherme Kujawski Ramos"
> <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
>> a reasoned contribution to the debate
>> http://www.furtherfield.org/features/banality-new-aesthetic
>>
>> -----Mensagem original-----
>> De: Curating digital art - www.crumbweb.org
>> [mailto:[log in to unmask]] Em nome de Sarah Cook
>> Enviada em: terça-feira, 17 de abril de 2012 06:44
>> Para: [log in to unmask]
>> Assunto: Re: [NEW-MEDIA-CURATING] belatedly new
>>
>> Hi all
>> thanks for your thoughts, and links, on the new aesthetic. i think the points
>> raised are really interesting and something which has been circulating around
>> my research for some time:
>> aggregating and 'liking' as new forms of curatorial practice
>> how audiences consume content differently in online spaces
>> object-beingness (old fashioned Heideggerian dasein, or the networked-object's
>> present-at-handedness and how that is accommodated curatorially)
>>
>> I particularly am interested in Dan's comment that
>> "A lot of my New Media Art friends seem to want to avoid this conversation, or
>> have adopted a "tell me why this matters" stance. I guess that's
>> understandable, it's easy to look at the Tumblr blog and not see much
>> substance. Plus it's a broader cultural thing, it doesn't exclude fashion and
>> advertising, it is probably generationally divisive."
>>
>> I'd like to unpick this further... Is it an art and design division or a
>> generational one? cultural one? in what way did Eyebeam's Re:group show (which
>> Beryl and I were nominally involved in as Eyebeam's research partners at the
>> time) address this and is it the only show to have done so? We've talked about
>> exhibitions on this list where media art on view was at the service of other
>> than aesthetic experience -- changing the world, addressing issues such as
>> financial regulation or climate change -- but not in terms of how information
>> about these works circulates, how the history of art and design is being
>> written through them. What are the criteria for evaluating these works beyond
>> those we've used so far (how the work behaves, how the audience participates,
>> how the work questions or exhibits its own production and distribution)? As
>> Curt said,
>> To fail to ask these questions leads to a kind of reversion toward evaluating
>> these new image as discrete, hermetic, "aesthetic" objects rather than as the
>> residue/result of a series of cultural processes, networks, and relationships
>> (which is what images have always been, and what these new images particularly
>> are).
>>
>> Apologies for rambling,
>> Sarah
>>
>> P.S. I would love to hear of other writing about surf clubs -- is there (or
>> should there be) a reader on it?
>>
>>
>>
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>
Simon Biggs
[log in to unmask] http://www.littlepig.org.uk/ @SimonBiggsUK skype: simonbiggsuk
[log in to unmask] Edinburgh College of Art, University of Edinburgh
http://www.eca.ac.uk/circle/ http://www.elmcip.net/ http://www.movingtargets.co.uk/
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