I still feel silly calling Facebook by its new name, but Meta mostly ends up in the news for bad reasons these days, the same way it did before rebranding last year.
Despite Steyerl's defense, I think there is still a case to be made for the pursuit of aesthetic excellence even in digital spaces; art is what is left over after all the utilitarian concerns are addressed, and there is something in the human psyche that craves beauty. To reduce the digital side of things to mere information flow is to concede to the rampant utilitarianism that pervades our current society; such a situation might be able to provide us with all the necessary data points but there will be something missing, the human element which speaks to our soul. Instagram might at first be seeming to stand against this "mere utility" ethos, but the company's aesthetic is merely pursuing utilitarianism from a different angle. I'm sure the crazy patterns evident on the clothing of the models in an Ingres or Klimt portrait would fail to serve the uses that Instagram requires. Oddly coincidental, that Instagram and the Metaverse are operated by the same company!
I love that BBSP piece, one of the best. I agree that we should have high aesthetic standards in digital space; here I was mainly observing what's out there, not what we should be striving for. That's what I was getting at with the architecture analogy: We have fewer interesting/beautiful buildings and more that are optimized for financial conditions.
And you're totally right that IG is basically just the visually appealing version of this digital optimization, also unable to handle certain kinds of ambiguity or complexity. That's definitely what the "un-grammable hang zone" is affirming. Basically we just need more of our reality to not be tailored for some quantifiable set of metrics, whatever those happen to be.
But the "hardware" we used to use included magazines, movie theaters and museums where collection and curation usually gave us the best of images and objects.
Yes. I think this is one of the main advantages of analog vs digital - an ideal balance of access and quality. The hardware was definitely better in many cases which translated to better material for it. I almost went down that road in this piece, comparing music heard on a high caliber sound system to music heard on laptop speakers, but I didn't want to seem overly nostalgic (there's the counterargument that even crappy speakers today are better than what most people had back then, but that also supports my point in a way - now we have access to "content" at all times, but at a lower average fidelity level)
The quality vs mobility, flatness vs aesthetic concepts bring me to a thought I had the other day that of all the fine arts, sculpture may find itself to be the most AI resistent. Not completely: 3D models + printing = avenue for AI workflow... But the low sample number of available 3D renders of statues, the cost of fabricating in a material other than concrete or plastic, and adjustments required to keep the thing from falling down or apart etc etc means the very act of fabrication in meatworld terms of an art object pulls it away from its cyber world origin. Away from AI and back into fine art.
Fascinating observation. It's sort of counterintuitive but you may be right about that. It's basically an "expensive" statement because it is inherently physical and particular, therefore resistant to the AI logic of blasting out thousands of variants on a theme. I really like that.
I've had similar thoughts recently about poetry being AI resistant, but for different reasons.
Despite Steyerl's defense, I think there is still a case to be made for the pursuit of aesthetic excellence even in digital spaces; art is what is left over after all the utilitarian concerns are addressed, and there is something in the human psyche that craves beauty. To reduce the digital side of things to mere information flow is to concede to the rampant utilitarianism that pervades our current society; such a situation might be able to provide us with all the necessary data points but there will be something missing, the human element which speaks to our soul. Instagram might at first be seeming to stand against this "mere utility" ethos, but the company's aesthetic is merely pursuing utilitarianism from a different angle. I'm sure the crazy patterns evident on the clothing of the models in an Ingres or Klimt portrait would fail to serve the uses that Instagram requires. Oddly coincidental, that Instagram and the Metaverse are operated by the same company!
What is needed are more "un-grammable hang zones," as described in this Blackbird Spyplane report. https://www.blackbirdspyplane.com/p/un-grammable-hang-zone-manifesto
I love that BBSP piece, one of the best. I agree that we should have high aesthetic standards in digital space; here I was mainly observing what's out there, not what we should be striving for. That's what I was getting at with the architecture analogy: We have fewer interesting/beautiful buildings and more that are optimized for financial conditions.
And you're totally right that IG is basically just the visually appealing version of this digital optimization, also unable to handle certain kinds of ambiguity or complexity. That's definitely what the "un-grammable hang zone" is affirming. Basically we just need more of our reality to not be tailored for some quantifiable set of metrics, whatever those happen to be.
But the "hardware" we used to use included magazines, movie theaters and museums where collection and curation usually gave us the best of images and objects.
More of the medium being the message, I guess.
Yes. I think this is one of the main advantages of analog vs digital - an ideal balance of access and quality. The hardware was definitely better in many cases which translated to better material for it. I almost went down that road in this piece, comparing music heard on a high caliber sound system to music heard on laptop speakers, but I didn't want to seem overly nostalgic (there's the counterargument that even crappy speakers today are better than what most people had back then, but that also supports my point in a way - now we have access to "content" at all times, but at a lower average fidelity level)
The quality vs mobility, flatness vs aesthetic concepts bring me to a thought I had the other day that of all the fine arts, sculpture may find itself to be the most AI resistent. Not completely: 3D models + printing = avenue for AI workflow... But the low sample number of available 3D renders of statues, the cost of fabricating in a material other than concrete or plastic, and adjustments required to keep the thing from falling down or apart etc etc means the very act of fabrication in meatworld terms of an art object pulls it away from its cyber world origin. Away from AI and back into fine art.
Fascinating observation. It's sort of counterintuitive but you may be right about that. It's basically an "expensive" statement because it is inherently physical and particular, therefore resistant to the AI logic of blasting out thousands of variants on a theme. I really like that.
I've had similar thoughts recently about poetry being AI resistant, but for different reasons.