Questioning Digital Aesthetics[1]
Bo Kampmann Walther
Keywords
Digital art, digital aesthetics, transitionality, variability, mutation, artworld,
autonomy, interactivity, form.
Thesis
How are we to unite existing interactive computer art with a speculative,
philosophical aesthetic? In the age of digital simulacra, a work of art is never
safe, never to be trusted, never to be invested, read the new headlines, since
a digital piece is always already in the hands of a consumer who is both
interpreter and creator. Or should I say re-creator? The original is also a copy,
a representation of something that may have never been there. The work of
art can be distributed; like airport terminals residing in the no-manís-land
between Heimat and foreign matter, digital art is transitional and stochastic in
its vigorous and immerse design. It is always in the process of becoming
something else  or becoming someone elseís. What is the object of digital
aesthetics?[2]
Let me for a moment narrow the current theme of inquiry and propose that
there is no such thing as a digital aesthetic. It should be clear, however, in
the course of this paper, that I do not necessarily affirm this peculiar thesis;
but, still, there can be good reasons for presenting it. Hence, if the subject of
digital aesthetics  the digitally rendered and interactively applied work of
multimedia art  is precisely defined negatively, because it cannot be fixated in
robust, formal parameters, and because it cannot be locked up in one
structure of meaning; does, then, digital aesthetic have an object? In the
absence of the possibility of ístoppingí emerging, digital creativity and
productivity, the banal question becomes more and more urgent: what is the
object of digital aesthetics?
But the thesis is wrong or even false in its very foundation. What is crucial
about a (philosophical) aesthetic is not the diverse works of art  be they
analogue or digital  that can be gazed at and analysed around the world, but,
distinctively different, the rational prism through which we in the first place
become spectators of the essence and epistemology of art. The problem is
that this prism between art consideration and art production does not exist in
itself (one can not, for instance, install it on the walls of Guggenheim
Downtown). Instead, this prism provides for the transcendental conditionals
that are necessary elements within and therefore the underlying ratio upon
which we are able to discuss art, values, taste, and significance. In respect of
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ontology the aesthetic discipline thus reaches deeper than poetic or
historiographic theories, since the latter ones precisely assume that there is
art around, and that we all somehow know when it is there, and when it is not
there (and then we can go and have a look at it in our favourite museum).
To Interact
The American computer scientist Janet Murray believes that there are three
basic features which characterise the sense of digital media: Immersion,
which signifies the feeling of being transported to another (kind of) reality;
rapture, the enchanting encounter with objects in virtual reality; and, finally,
agency which deals with the userís delight in having a direct impact on the
electronically rendered space (Platt, 1995).
The notion of íbeing thereí, or íto be taken iní, seems to be closely connected
with interactivity. Nowadays, there is a consensus in applying information
scienceís concept of interaction, especially when it comes to understandings
of man-machine-interaction (MMI), human-computer-interaction (HCI), or, as
it were, natural interactive systems (NIS). Historically the development of this
terminology is closely tied to the progression from batch-drive (where vast
amounts of data and applications are synthesized prior to the actual
processing) to ëdialogueí-functionality with which it becomes possible for the
user to register in-progress-results via option-menus and dialogue-boxes, and
hereby continuously influence the interactive batch through new scripted
inputs in a ëdialogue-trafficí or interactive modality (Goertz, 1995; Jensen,
2000).
Popular computer games like Quake 3: The Arena or the celebrated Doom 2
emulate virtual and variable scenario-plots for automated, cybernetic
responses. The easy-going motto is íkill everything that moves!í; íthink fast!
Or, even better, do not think at all!í. Serious gamers and male cyber geeks
already know the sentiments by heart; on-line-gaming-environments are
state-of-the-art as regards Murrayís three key concepts (Walther, 2000 a, b).
Eye-hand-movements and near-synchrony experiences of shock could well be
cybercultureís ultimate technological consequence of the fragmented realities
once described by the early modernists. Thus Walter Benjamin, in 1936,
promoted the idea that the montage technique in modern film art pawed the
way for the mass audience's identification with violent changes in mundane,
industrialised life (Benjamin, 1982).[3] Today, computer games are not merely
mind-numbed simulacra aimed at greasy youngsters, but also a rich, cultural
context frame, which resonates literary in novels such as Alex Garlandís The
Beach and Tesseract. And now back in history.
Closure and System
What is significantly new about Immanuel Kantís theories of the structure of
aesthetic judgement is his emancipation of íthe beautifulí [das Sch­ne] from a
property within the thing itself to a property in the viewing [Anschauung] of
the thing.[4] In Kritik der Urteilskraft (1790) he claims that the centre of
taste and judgement must be located in îsubjective commonnessî [das
subjective Allgemeine], which, in turn, corresponds to the common beautiful. A
certain piece of art may evoke a specific joy [Wohlgefallen] in us; and hence it
would seem that the work itself possessed beautyís source through immanent
correspondences  such as the Renaissance art theoreticians believed. But
this is an illusion, according to Kant. True beauty is placed in the form
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attributed to the transcendental subject; and this form acts as a prism
through which the art-thing is experienced.[5]
Thus Kant has not only liberated the art discussion from the Rationalistic
position, where beauty is a readable entity assigned to the object in itself (in
the guise of substance); he has further accentuated the ongoing
secularisation of art. As the Danish media researcher Lars Qvortrup notes in an
article on interactive multimedia art, Kantís critique expresses the idea that
beauty in art signals human beauty (Qvortrup, 2000). And hereby the
differentiation from a religiously oriented hierarchy of judgement (that is, a
deocentrism) to a rationalistic form of articulation is brought to an end. Art in
Kantís anthropomorphic theory is not entirely de-conditionalized, since the
essential criteria for artís transcendentalism are precisely guarantied by what
is believed to be shared human faculties.
One may say that Kant closes the philosophy of art by ascribing the aesthetic
judgement to mere questions of the transcendental perspective of viewingís
aprioric status. But that does not imply, however, that Kant banishes the
experience of art to a hysterical assembly where everybody reveal their less
than adequate opinion on art. The very forms of viewing and the categories of
reason that carry the aposterioric delight in art experience are not simply
subjective interiors, but rather inter-subjective premises for apt
communication concerning the structure of aesthetic laws. The common
conditions of art allow us to discuss the transcendental bios of taste and
experience  for this very bios is a concept deployed by philosophy.
By contrast one could claim that Niklas Luhmann in his systemic definition of
art as a symbolic, generalising medium opens up art thinking, not least
because he seems to dismiss 20. Centuryís congenial prioritising of art as a
pivotal and utopic placeholder for otherwise unacknowledged metaphysical
experiences. Like economy, love, society, and religion, art is a bundle of
contingent relations, which account for modern manís testing of selfexperience
and self-reflection.
To Kant the forms of viewing condition artís reason. In Luhmannís perspective
the domain of art is a general sphere or form within the world-structure where
different kinds of viewing and viewing mechanisms are staged. There has been
a tendency in post-Kantian art philosophy to regard the aesthetic judgement
of taste as a temporary result of the development of a more general art
system, and not, as Kant would claim, as a transcendental, a-temporal
apperception. Luhmann builds heavily upon this critique. In Die
Ausdifferenzierung des Kunstsystems (1994) and Die Kunst der Gesellschaft
(1995) he suggests that art, in its emancipation from religious, metaphysical,
or edifying motives, none the less íobligesí itself to difference. Modern art must
be conceived as a difference which is propelled forward when man, in the
absence of a ícleaní code of communication, embarks upon an artform which,
paradoxically, tries to articulate the very un-explicable or un-articulated fabric
of true expression. This vision of art  which furthermore is normative, since it
puts art on a special mission within society and history  we can also find in
the writings of Adorno and Lyotard. According to them, the language of art is
non-identity, that is, a difference that cannot be mediated; or it is diffrence,
as in Lyotard and his concept of the sublime.
The shift from Kant to Luhmann can be described as a movement from a
metaphysically grounded understanding of art to an interferentially based art
form. Kant may withdraw from the orthodox idea of both God and the thing îin
itselfî [an sich], but still he builds his critique on an order that exists prior to
sensual experience and physical touch. This order is the human concept of
beauty, the optics through which we regard and judge upon art. The
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interferential aesthetic, on the contrary, creates works and theories of art
that are more likely consequences of the world. That is also why I pushed
forward the hypothesis that Luhmann widens the field of art critique, precisely
because he transforms the system of art into a (by-) product of a worldmovement
 as it were, a movement towards form.[6]
Fluxus Movement?
So, what does Luhmannís interferential aesthetic mean in light of art in the
age of digital reproduction?  Is there a digital aesthetic?  Or is there not?
Without further ado, one can state that Luhmannís perspective seems to
answer well to the praxis of digital artforms. Here the raison díÍtre of art is to
put elements and viewpoints within the world at stake and at stage  to open
up the level between the artistís form-decision and the art-spectatorís
fluctuating and unpredictable form-realisation. This new relation between
artist, work of art, and public sphere is by far an unreflected aftermath of
multiple social constructivist theses about a certain artworld, in which art as
form, praxis, and institution is solely produced via the naming procedure in
itself (today, in the act of naming, I turn my dog into a piece of art; tomorrow
I shall make the whole world a work of art, etc. etc.). Even though we may
acknowledge the turn in the philosophy of art towards a polycentric system in
which many different social codes are manifested, we must also maintain that
the artist can be depicted as a unique 'point' in the ecology of art-structure
from where the initial (and hence original) form-condition and decision are
extracted. To put it harshly: art is freed from the vague democratisation of
participatory culture where anybody is an artist in his or hers own right. Thus
we have an íartist of the first degreeí who happens to press the button right
before the work of art takes on its infinite journey towards change in
character, form, and originality. But, however, all that which we used to call
interpretation now reach into materialised expression; a fact that, negatively
speaking, also means that the art-market is overflowed by products that are
ímerelyí spiralling reproductions of the original content. Mona Lisa with a beard
and sunglasses may be performance art on Louisiana, but it is a crime on
Louvre.
Letís step back to the bizarre thesis: We can answer by negatively affirming
that there is such a thing as a digital, aesthetic viewpoint, namely the
viewpoint that can be reflected in the initial form-decision made by the
multimedia artist. This viewpoint is closely tied to the fragile centre of
departure and growth, which is the tiny íspotí right before hell breaks loose
and everything becomes  art. As a way of looking at the world, art is still
conditioned, though, because it is a formalised manifestation of social and
epistemological codes, which together make up our complex reality as an
unforeseeable riverbed of (sub-) systems. But the rationale of art is no longer
privileged, because it is also a historical product of manís self-reflection, that
is, a product of deciding íform through formí. And so we seem to employ a
double view: digital aesthetics foregrounds with the advent of artistic, initial
form-decision. Following upon this affirmation, we can reflect the conditions of
art production independently from the actually existing works of art. And if this
is so, we also have a strong case for a philosophy that deals with the
transcendental possibilities of art. This is a temporal argument: first there is
the artist; then there is the spectator  which is, if I may say so, fifty percent
Kant. But we can also state the opposite, namely that the work of art is the
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result of a contract made between the viewing operations of, respectively, the
artist and the spectator  which seems to be half a Luhmann.
Interactive multimedia art does indeed sets new standards as regard
considerations of form, fabric, and interpretation. It seems as if our traditional
idea of the work of art as a more or less fixed temporal and spatial entity
interferes with the floating structure of the cyber-artwork. When does a piece
of art or a multimedia installation seize to be that particular work or
installation, and instead becomes an altogether different one? Digital art
moves in areas of deliberate hybrid constellations wherein specific artistic
knowledge and instruments of meaning reveal innovative, generic deplacements
and infinite input-output-architectures. We witness a cascade of
conceptual dissimulations: from work of art to art-event, from reproduction to
simulation, from mimesis to virtuality, from interpretation to interactivity, from
image to interface, and from system to rhizome (Deleuze and Guattari, 1980).
All this is, assumingly, also part of a digital realisation of the media
contextualism of Avant-Pop (Walther, 2000 c).
The concept of generative art surfaces here. The question is how the
promotion of new ways of expression can be supplied with the computer's
automated processes. Part of the hype surrounding this endeavour gathers
around the notion of variability (Weibel 1996). Normally it is used of complex
systems that change behaviour and dynamic state due to pre-programmed
stimuli as well as to exterior (variable) perturbations ('noise'). The future within
digital art - on the Net, in the museums, and in the art galleries - is complex:
the work of art will not only be capable of altering its own, autonomous
parameters; it will further react 'intelligent' due to context-dependent
adjustments.[7] And hence the sharp division between autonomy and
heteronomy, which has been a central element in art thinking, becomes almost
impossible to uphold. Rather than clinging to the a priori shape and structure
of the work, we must operate with sequences of events whose internal
relations cannot be rooted in a single sense or a single pattern of
significance.[8] The tough challenge, especially to art-historians, is probably
to prophesise if we will ever come to see the aposterioric qualities of digital
art-events as ëa priorií essentials  or whether we will be blocked by our
traditional, transcendental prejudices.
Digitally rendered art strongly challenges time, space, and place, not least
because it seems to abolish classical time-processes and hereby emancipates
from the affinity to materiality and spatiality. The German film scientist Edgar
Reitz phrases the positive aspects of new digital narratives and images, since
they both uniquely parallel the non-linear dynamics of human consciousness
and the biological body. Even more feverish, Reitz views digital media as a
case for Henri Bergson's qualitative time  dure (Reitz, 1995). In this
culturally optimistic agenda, the computer becomes a strange mixture of
informational codebreaker and communication tool. The tendency one can
trace, is an ideologisation of digitality that leads to new visions of the creation
of meaning, bodily presence and 'true' conscience; the idea of the computer
as a hardware-box with appropriate software is tossed aside.
Endings
In my view the hype surrounding interactive multimedia art and new artforms
stems (partly) from an unreflected distinction between structure and function.
Kant's idea of art's transcendental optic that rests in shared human faculties
may not endure scientific attacks anymore, because key elements in Kant's
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critique, such as time, space, and causality, in the course of micro-physics
and quantum mechanics have showed themselves to be far less than obvious
categories. But to our discussion, this is not essential. Rather, it is the Kantian
project that leaves an impact, because it tries to capture the structure within
the process of artistic modelling and thereby contributes to a levelling of the
viewed object, viewing itself, and the place of viewing. In post-Kantian era
Luhmann has put the metaphysical, apriorical project in parenthesis, and
instead he focuses on the functionality of aesthetic operations within society,
sociality, and knowledge. But the one-dimensionality that risks being the
outcome of such a concentration on art's functional practises in the digital
oeuvre also transforms computer-mediated ways of expression and processes
into pure miracles which elegantly surpass classical art theories and their
'snobbish' insistence of oil and canvas, solidity and correspondence.
A digital aesthetic must therefore first and foremost be founded in a structural
understanding of what goes on between the ontology of work and viewing.
The Kantian project is still sober because it maintains that art is located in a
specific consideration of form through form. Only when we 'have' form at our
disposal (that is, within reason's faculties) we can 'see' form. But a digital
aesthetic must also reflect the particular changes which the computergenerated
modalities stage. Right now, in the year 2000, there are still art and
artists around; there are still privileged platforms for suspicious and ingenious
experiments with material, viewpoints, and communication. John Doe does not
become an artist by blurring a few PhotoShop-samples into delightful
dissemblance. And it is one-sided to call oneself creative artist if what one is
really doing in the virtual museum is to participate in the multi-facetted
articulation of art's viewing-mechanisms.
References
- Aarseth, E. (1997); Cybertext: Perspectives on Ergodic Literature, Baltimore and
London
- Benjamin, W. (1982); "Das Kunstwerk im Zeitalter seiner Technischen
Reproduzierbarkeit" (1935, 1936), Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 1.2 and 7.1, Frankfurt
am Main
- Brown, G.S. (1971); Laws of Form, London
- Deleuze, G. and Guattar, F. (1980); Mille plateau: capitalisme et schizophrnie, Paris
- Elsaesser, T. (1998); "Digital Cinema: Delivery, Event, Time", Cinema Futures (ed.
T. Elsaesser and K. Hoffmann), Amsterdam
- Goertz, L. (1995); "Wie interaktiv sind Medien? Auf dem Weg zu einer Definition
von Interaktivit"t", Rundfunk und Fernsehen, vol. 4
- Jensen, J.F. (2000); "Through Flatland to Thoughtland", Cyberflux (ed. B.K.
Walther and A.S. Srensen), Odense (in press)
- Luhmann, N. (1994); Die Ausdifferienzierung des Kunstsystems, Bern
- Luhmann, N. (1995); Die Kunst der Gesellschaft, Frankfurt am Main
- Lunenfeld, P. (1997); "Hybrid Architecture and the Paradox of Unfolding",
Intelligent Environments (ed. P. Droege), Amsterdam
- Mitchell, W.J.T. (1995); City of Bits. Space, Place, and the Infobahn, Cambridge
Mass.
- Nichols, B. (1996); "The Work of Culture in the Age of Cybernetic Systems",
Electronic Culture (ed. T. Druckrey), Aperture
- Platt, C. (1995); "Interactive Entertainment", WIRED no. 3.09
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- Pold, S. (1999); "An Aesthetic Criticism of the Media", Parallax, vol. 5, no. 3
- Qvortrup, L. (2000); "Interaktiv multimediekunst - digitale medier og
hyperkompleksitet", Cyberflux (ed. B.K. Walther and A.S. Srensen), Odense (in
press)
- Reitz, E. (1995); Bilder im Bewegung, Hamburg
- Walther, B.K. (2000 a); "Kom lad os gtte gÂder. Om lege-, lre- og
fascinationskultur i computerspillet Myst", Dansk Pdagogisk Tidsskrift, no. 3
- Walther, B.K. (2000 b); "Myst-o-Mania: Cyber-Play for voksne. Refleksioner over
interaktiv fiktion", Cyberflux (ed. B.K. Walther and A.S. Srensen), Odense (in
press)
- Walther, B.K. (2000 c); "Matrixen. Henimod en digital stetik", Vinduet,Ý netedition,
march 2000
- Weibel, P. (1996); "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of the Methodological
Convergence of Art and Science", Electronic Culture (ed. T. Druckrey), Aperture
Notes
[1]
Bo Kampmann Walther, Assistant Professor, Ph.D., Centre for Interactive Media,
University of Southern Denmark, + 45 65 50 36 16,
(Mail): walther@litcul.sdu.dk, (Net): http://www1.sdu.dk/hum/bkw/index.htm
Part of this paper was presented at Digital Arts and Culture, Bergen 2000. I thank the kind
people of the conference for a generous critic and stimulating curiosity. The current paper
forms a part of my forthcoming book Digital Aesthetics: New Genres of Seeing and Knowing
(spring 2001).
[2] I would like also to thank Lars Qvortrup for kindly forcing me to consider this thesis and
especially to refute it!
[3] Compare Nichols, 1996 and Pold, 1999.
[4] How to translate Anschauung? Comprehension, or envisioing? I have deliberately
chosen viewing here, primarily to emphasise the strong allusions to the gaze and the eye in
the German philsopheme.
[5] See especially paragraph 6 in Kritik der Urteilskraft (Kant, 1971).
[6] Compare Brown, 1971.
[7]
Compare the concept of cybertext as formulated by Espen Aarseth: îA cybertext is a
machine for the production of a variety of expressionî. It îfocuses on the mechanical
organisation of the text, by positing the intricacies of the literary exchangeî (Aarseth, 1997,
1, 18). Further: Cameron, 1998. A fine, contemporary example of an art-form that disputes
the extent of interactivity as well as the place of the interface is Fibre Wave II, a work by
the Japanese artist Mahato Sei Watanabe that was exhibited at Inter Communication Centre
in Opera City Tower, Tokyo 1999. The centre of the installation was a computer that kept
registering force and direction of the wind in cities such as Paris, Buffalo, and Moscow and
on Jupiter, and Mars. Not only were the wind-conditions depicted on large displays in the
installationís venue depending on what locality the audience chose to zero in on at the
computer screen. The computer also transmitted the wind-information onto two huge jet
engines placed on each separate wall in the exhibition room. From here a Mars-storm or a
Moscow-breeze were dispatched to a field of three metre high transparent glass-fibre sticks
that led like fluorescence whenever they moved. The audience would stroll around in a field
of glass-fibres that gently waved beneath the world-wind (Qvortrup, 2000). See also
Lunenfeld, 1997 and Mitchell, 1995.
[8] Compare Elsaesser, 1998.
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