Re: New Media v New Aesthetic

The "New Aesthetic" sounds very close to "New Media" but he (Sterling) does a lot to differentiate the two. There are lots of things he says that are spot on jodi or hi-res or mk12, but he does identify a few key differences.

For instance, while he calls the New Aesthetic a "gaudy … heap," but the words in-between are "a gaudy, network-assembled heap." Few of the New Media artists approached crowd-sourcing. Social media was not even a term during the New Media era. In those days we would have said "network-connected," but even that seldom referred to real-time networked connections, let alone network-assembled. 

He does say, "It is generational," and New Media was also generational, but they are different generations imo. He really draws the point out with "Most of the people in its network are too young to have been involved in postmodernity." New Media on the other hand was influenced by things like The Simpsons, a stark literary example of post-modernism and a TV show. These days, the Reality Television genre is much like ghost of post-modernism, the apparition left after post-modernism's self-referential death. And Reality Television is far from the hip new trend among teens. No television program is popular at all among teens.

Bruce also devotes an entire paragraph to distance the New Aesthetic from 8-bit and another to distance it from the "glitch-hunt." In both cases, he basically says that while the New Aesthetic may be messy, it also "manifest a friendlier attitude toward non-artistic creatives and their works. It would be kinder with non-artists, at ease with them, helpful to them, inclusive of them, of service to them." 

Hi-res and others definitely do fit the New Aesthetic on this level, but most New Media artists do not. I think he is suggesting that New Media needed sanded down, as you said, but that the polish of the New Aesthetic comes more from inclusion, connectedness and transparency, than from the glamor of high-end traditional media. I think he is saying that the New Aesthetic is messy human and that New Media was messy digital.

And he has a point, global culture has been fetishizing machines for almost 80 years and computers for 20; maybe it is time to fetishize humanity and consciousness.



On Apr 18, 2012, at 7:42 PM, Curt Cloninger wrote:

> I don't think Stirling is promoting new for new's sake in the 
> particular excerpt below. In the context of the essay, and given his 
> particular background,  "mythos of phantoms" is his dis of the 
> gee-whiz, Artificial-Intelligence-chasing, anthropomorphization of 
> 'puters. Sterling is right to observe that it is a dead-end to 
> apprach these "new" images as if "the machines" have their own kind 
> of aesthetic. The technical networks aren't "seeing" anything. We 
> humans are the ones seeing stuff.
> 
> Shutting down that early-'90s approach (may) lead toward the 
> neo-Heidegger / Harman / Bogost thing-being approach (not that 
> Sterling himself makes this connection). It is from this object 
> oriented philosophy perspective that "new aesthetics" might yield 
> something fruitful. Beyond categorical dismissals. Beyond spectacular 
> hype. Can we hang in there with it a bit more and see where might it 
> lead?
> 
> Curt
> 
> 
> 
> Bruce Sterling:
>> "Modern creatives who want to work in good faith will have to fully
>> disengage from the older generation's mythos of phantoms, and masterfully
>> grasp the genuine nature of their own creative tools and platforms.
>> Otherwise, they will lack comprehension and command of what they are doing
>> and creating, and they will remain reduced to the freak-show position of
>> most twentieth century tech art. That's what is at stake."
>> 
>> Honor Harger:
>>> This is clearly contentious, and I'm sure many here will disagree with
>>> this call-to-action as a cultural strategy (and I can't comment on whether
>>> this has anything particularly to bring to bear to/on The New Aesthetic).
>>>  But I am personally excited and intrigued by the idea that a different
>>> group of people, some from different fields, some from different
>>> generations, are earnestly exploring topics which are close to our heart
>>> with a different sensibility.
>>> 
>> Nick Lambert:
>> No, the contentious bit is Sterling's disingenuous revisionism about the
>> "older generation's mythos of phantoms." In a field where the wheel is
>> constantly being reinvented, encouraging a new generation of artists and
>> designers to boldly go where many have been before is not the way forward,
>> in my opinion.