Digital Aesthetics: The Discrete and the Continuous

Aesthetic investigations of computation are stuck in an impasse, caused by the difficulty of accounting for the ontological discrepancy between the continuity of sensation and the discreteness of digital technology. This article proposes a theoretical position intended to overcome that deadlock. It...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Theory, culture & society culture & society, 2019-01, Vol.36 (1), p.3-26
Main Author: Fazi, M. Beatrice
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Aesthetics
Ascription
Computation
Concept formation
Critical theory
Deleuze, Gilles
Digital technology
Emotions
Mass media
Ontology
Technology
Uncertainty
Virtual reality
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Summary:Aesthetic investigations of computation are stuck in an impasse, caused by the difficulty of accounting for the ontological discrepancy between the continuity of sensation and the discreteness of digital technology. This article proposes a theoretical position intended to overcome that deadlock. It highlights how an ontological focus on continuity has entered media studies via readings of Deleuze, which attempt to build a ‘digital aisthesis’ (that is, a theory of digital sensation) by ascribing a ‘virtuality’ to computation. This underpins, in part, the affective turn in digital theory. In contrast to such positions, this article argues for a reconceptualization of formal abstraction in computation, in order to find, within the discreteness of computational formalisms (and not via the coupling of the latter with virtual sensation), an indeterminacy that would make computing aesthetic qua inherently generative. This indeterminacy, it is argued here, can be found by reconsidering, philosophically, Turing’s notion of ‘incomputability’.
ISSN:0263-2764
1460-3616
DOI:10.1177/0263276418770243