(All quotes by Bogost unless otherwise stated):
The 'aims' of the New Aesthetic (NA) need to be more focused/ rigorous; "A heap of eye-catching curiosities don't constitute a world view" (Stirling). The NA should be about more than the idea of 'seeing like devices' and factoring our relationship with computers into this imagery. NA could consider the ontology of objects in themselves i.e aesthetics as non human centered. Bogost introduces Object-orientated Ontology (OOO) concepts and strategy to develop the NA theme.
Headings
Look beyond humans and computers
Take the experience of objects seriously
Make collecting an aesthetic strategy
Make things for understanding things, not just for human use.
Summary/ Quotes
NA does not have individual effects but aggregated ones.
Greg Borenstein: "I believe that the New Aesthetic is actually striving towards a fundamentally new way of imagining the relations between things in the world". This is only part right at present according to Bogost as its human centered
On things & OOO in relation to the NA Bogost writes:
"If ontology is the philosophical study of existence, then Object-orientated ontology puts things at the center of being. We humans are elements but the sole elements of philosophical interest. OOO contends that nothing has special status but everything exists equally[..] OOO steers a path between scientific naturalism and social relativism, drawing attention to things at all scales and pondering their nature and relations with one another as much as ourselves."
Central question - what is it like to be a thing? Philosophical problem: even when we refer to otherness (things that are alien to us) 'alien is assumed to be a human-legible intersubjectivity.
"[..]the true alien might be unrecognizable; it might not have an intelligence akin to our intelligence, or even one we could recognize as intelligence. Rather than wondering if alien beings exist in the cosmos, let's assume that they are all around us, everywhere, at all scales. Everything is an alien to everything else. It is ultimately impossible for one thing to understand the experience of another, but we can speculate about the withdrawn, inner experience of things based on a combination of evidence--the exhaust they leave behind--and poetics--the speculative work we do to characterize that experience."
Look beyond humans and computers - the NA is exclusively interested in computers on the one hand and humans on the other.
It "revels in seeing the grain of computation," (Berry, D) the exhaust of computer activity that courses through the non-computational world. Some of these examples are created by humans and others are not (satellite imagery).
Computers are important but they are just one thing among many - airports, kolas, toaster pastries etc.
Take the experience of objects seriously - The NA is still primarily interested in human experience i.e the New Aesthetics are human aesthetics. Computers are never our friends (Stirling) - we will never understand them on their own terms (clarification by Bogost).
"Being withdraws from access. There is always something left in reserve, in a thing. The best we can do as humans is to respect the hidden mystery of the experience of things, and speculate metaphorically about how an object like a computer or a pound cake encounters the world."
Make collecting an aesthetic strategy - "The New Aesthetic embraces an unusual creative technique: aggregation. It rejects the demands of the manifesto in favor of the indiscriminateness of the collection.[..]
Merely collecting things isn't aesthetics, its just avarice."
Consider; compendium as opposed to aggregate: "A list of things is most useful when it is large enough to show diversity and juxtaposition, but small enough to provide coherence: a tiny bestiary, not an infinite zoo."
Bogost suggests term 'ontography' - an aesthetics set theory, which can take the form of lists, photographs, collections, even Tumblrs.
Make things for understanding things, not just for human use - Most example NA showcases are made intentionally/ New Aestheticians are most interested in the way computational objects impact our lived experience.
"They want to know what CCTV means for social networks, what book scanning means for iOS apps, and what face detection means for fashion." (Borenstein) In short CCTV for social networks for people.
Bogost - a way to challenge this stance for NA is to pay attention to the secret lives of things and resist the temptation to conclude that they exist for our benefit even if we ourselves created them.
Note: NA's arbitrary focus on computational systems is to blame.
The experience of other entities is beyond our grasp yet is:
"available to speculation thanks to evidence that emanates from their withdrawn cores like radiation around the event horizon of a black hole. The aesthetics of other beings remain likewise inaccessible to knowledge, but not to speculation--even to art"
Cited 'Tableau machine'
Concluding quote:
"Is such a question even answerable? If so, this Alien Aesthetics would not try to satisfy our human drive for art and design, but to fashion design fictions that speculate about the aesthetic judgments of objects."
Thoughts:
Borgost questions whether 'digital' & 'physical' are logical spheres for inquiry or whether they repeat the nature/ culture divide. This is interesting as it bears similarities with Latours Actors and networks + chains of association - does OOO trace one half of Latours theory to their terminal conclusion?
Agency is not mentioned - why? Computer objectsmaybe connected and communicating but is this overly meaningful without some sense of agency?
'Computers as arbitrary in NA' - I don't think they are, the examination of the outcomes is just not focused enough. Agreed that there s a tendency to relate to 'human aesthetics' but 'object aesthetics' is difficult to apply properly. Computers are objects and may be arbitrary but code is not - material nature and instantiations are interesting.
Questions of how and where aesthetic 'judgement' takes place could be interestingly developed (experiential corporeal or a combination) - opens out onto phenomenology and Heidegger? OR aesthetics vs phenomenology
Original Article: www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/04/the-new-aesthetic-needs-to-get-weirder/255838
Article as PDF: Bogost-Ian-The-New-Aesthetic-Needs-to-Get-Weirder-The-Atlantic
