Honor, thanks for making that point. I feel like I'm following this
debate through the wrong end of a telescope, but it seems like the
central point for discussion that Dan offered a while back was a bit
lost in the kerfuffle over branding and self-promotion:
"The point is that we are in this particular situation now, with its
drones and GPS phones and face matching algorithms. The New Aesthetic
label might be a useful shorthand for discussing those conditions. I
could see taking the stance that our conditions are not in fact
changing so drastically, or that this particular shorthand is flawed.
I'm just glad to see this stuff being considered outside explicitly
art/academic/activist circles."
Although the circumstances that Dan describes do have long histories
or genealogies, they remain poorly understood (despite the efforts of
the giants of the past, Cage or Richter or the Situationists or the
Vasulkas). I love to see new work that grapples with these
developments, and the questions they raise about human subjectivity,
behavior, agency and perception, in insightful and revealing ways.
The best work about this has not yet been made.
Michael
On Wed, Apr 18, 2012 at 3:27 PM, Rob Myers <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> On 04/18/2012 05:17 PM, Saul Albert wrote:
>>
>>
>> New Aesthetics is to The Internet of Things as net.art was to New Media?
>
>
> You win the Internet (of Things). But I'd point out that TNA is not in
> itself art. TNA is, as its name states, an aesthetic. The Tumblr blog is a
> presentation of examples of that aesthetic. This presentation is essayistic,
> but it would be a mistake to regard it as a failure to write an essay.
>
> - Rob.
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