Postdigitalism
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Postdigital, in artistic practice, is a term that describes works of art and theory that are more concerned with being human than with being digital, similar to the concept of "undigital" introduced in 1995, where technology and society advances beyond digital limitations to achieve a totally fluid multimediated reality that is free from artefacts of digital computation (quantization noise, pixelation, etc.). The postdigital is concerned with our rapidly changed and changing relationships with digital technologies and art forms.


Theory

According to
Giorgio Agamben Giorgio Agamben ( ; ; born 22 April 1942) is an Italian philosopher best known for his work investigating the concepts of the state of exception, form-of-life (borrowed from Ludwig Wittgenstein) and '' homo sacer''. The concept of biopolitic ...
(2002), the postdigital is a paradigm that (as with post-humanism) does not aim to describe a life ''after'' digital, but rather, attempts to describe the present-day opportunity to explore the consequences of the digital and of the computer age. While the computer age has enhanced human capacity with inviting and uncanny prosthetics, the postdigital provides a paradigm with which it is possible to examine and understand this enhancement. In ''The Future of Art in a Postdigital Age,'' Mel Alexenberg defines "postdigital art" as artworks that address the humanization of digital technologies through interplay between digital, biological, cultural, and spiritual systems, between cyberspace and real space, between embodied media and mixed reality in social and physical communication, between
high tech High technology (high tech or high-tech), also known as advanced technology (advanced tech) or exotechnology, is technology that is at the state of the art, cutting edge: the highest form of technology available. It can be defined as either the ...
and high touch experiences, between visual, haptic, auditory, and kinesthetic media experiences, between virtual and augmented reality, between roots and globalization, between autoethnography and community narrative, and between web-enabled peer-produced wikiart and artworks created with alternative media through participation, interaction, and collaboration in which the role of the artist is redefined, and between tactile art and NFTs. Mel Alexenberg proposes that a postdigital age is defined in ''Wired'' by MIT Media Center director
Nicholas Negroponte Nicholas Negroponte (born December 1, 1943) is a Greek American architect. He is the founder and chairman Emeritus of Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Media Lab, and also founded the One Laptop per Child Association (OLPC). Negroponte ...
: "Like air and drinking water, being digital will be noticed only in its absence, not by its presence. Face it - the Digital Revolution is over"


Music

Kim Cascone Kim Cascone (December 21, 1955) is an Italian American composer of electronic music who is known for his releases in the ambient, drone, industrial and electro-acoustic genre on his own record label, Silent Records. Biography In 1989 Casc ...
uses the term in his article ''The Aesthetics of Failure: "Post-digital" Tendencies in Contemporary Computer Music.'' He begins the article with a quotation from
MIT Media Lab The MIT Media Lab is a research laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, growing out of MIT's Architecture Machine Group in the MIT School of Architecture and Planning, School of Architecture. Its research does not restrict to fi ...
cyberpundit
Nicholas Negroponte Nicholas Negroponte (born December 1, 1943) is a Greek American architect. He is the founder and chairman Emeritus of Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Media Lab, and also founded the One Laptop per Child Association (OLPC). Negroponte ...
: "The
digital revolution The Information Age is a History by period, historical period that began in the mid-20th century. It is characterized by a rapid shift from traditional industries, as established during the Industrial Revolution, to an economy centered on info ...
is over." Cascone goes on to describe what he sees as a 'post-digital' line of flight in the music also commonly known as glitch or microsound music, observing that 'with
electronic commerce E-commerce (electronic commerce) refers to Commerce, commercial activities including the electronic buying or selling Goods and services, products and services which are conducted on online platforms or over the Internet. E-commerce draws on tec ...
now a natural part of the business fabric of the Western world and Hollywood cranking out digital fluff by the gigabyte, the medium of digital technology holds less fascination for composers in and of itself.' Japanese theorist, Ryota Matsumoto adapts the postdigital discourse of
Kim Cascone Kim Cascone (December 21, 1955) is an Italian American composer of electronic music who is known for his releases in the ambient, drone, industrial and electro-acoustic genre on his own record label, Silent Records. Biography In 1989 Casc ...
to their ingenious culture and construes Japanese social structure as the postdigital after the collapse of capitalist accumulation and the subsequent integration of their tradition with the pharmacology of digital age. In ''Art after Technology,'' Maurice Benayoun lists possible tracks for "postdigital" art considering that the digital flooding has altered the entire social, economical, artistic landscape, and the artist posture will move in ways that try to escape the technological realm without being able to completely discard it. From lowtech to biotech and ''critical fusion'' - critical intrusion of fiction inside reality – new forms of art emerge from the digital era.


See also

*
Circuit bending Circuit bending is the creative customization of the circuits within electronic devices such as children's toys and digital synthesizers to create new musical or visual instruments and sound generators. Circuit bending is manipulating a circuit ...
* Databending *
Digital Art Digital art, or the digital arts, is artistic work that uses Digital electronics, digital technology as part of the creative or presentational process. It can also refer to computational art that uses and engages with digital media. Since the 1960 ...
*
Glitch A glitch is a short-lived technical fault, such as a transient one that corrects itself, making it difficult to troubleshoot. The term is particularly common in the computing and electronics industries, in circuit bending, as well as among pl ...
*
New Aesthetic The New Aesthetic is a term coined by James Bridle used to refer to the increasing appearance of digital technology and the Internet in the physical world, and the blending of virtual and physical. The phenomenon has been around for a long time, b ...
*
New media art New media art includes artworks designed and produced by means of new media, electronic media technologies. It comprises virtual art, computer graphics, computer animation, digital art, interactive art, sound art, Internet art, video games, robo ...


References


Further reading

* Alexenberg, Mel, (2019), ''Through a Bible Lens: Biblical Insights for Smartphone Photography and Social Media''. Nashville, Tennessee: HarperCollins; . * Alexenberg, Mel, (2011), ''The Future of Art in a Postdigital Age: From Hellenistic to Hebraic Consciousness''. Bristol and Chicago: Intellect Books/University of Chicago Press; . * Alexenberg, Mel, ed. (2008), ''Educating Artists for the Future: Learning at the Intersections of Art, Science, Technology, and Culture''. Bristol and Chicago: Intellect Books/University of Chicago Press, 344 pp. . (postdigital chapters by Roy Ascott, Stephen Wilson, Eduardo Kac, and others). * Ascott, R. (2003), ''Telematic Embrace''. (E.Shaken, ed.) Berkeley: University of California Press. . * Barreto, R. and Perissinotto, P. (2002),
''The Culture of Immanence''
in Internet Art. Ricardo Barreto e Paula Perissinotto (orgs.). São Paulo, IMESP. . * Benayoun, M. (2008), ''Art after Technology'' abstract of the text written by Maurice Benayoun in Technology Review - French edition, N°7 June–July 2008, MIT, ISSN 1957-1380
Full text in English
* Benayoun, M., ''The Dump, 207 Hypotheses for Committing Art'', bilingual (English/French), Fyp éditions, France, July 2011, . * Berry, D. M. (2014) ''Critical Theory and the Digital'', New York: Bloomsbury. . * Berry, D. M. and Dieter (2015) ''Postdigital Aesthetics: Art, Computation and Design'', London: Palgrave. . * Birnbaum, D and Kuo (2008) ''More than Real: Art in the Digital Age,'' 2018 Verbier Art Summit''.'' London: Koenig Books. . * Bolognini, M. (2008)
''Postdigitale''
Rome: Carocci. . * Ferguson, J., & Brown, A. R. (2016)
"Fostering a post-digital avant-garde: Research-led teaching of music technology"
Organised Sound, 21(2), 127–137. * Ferreira, P. (2024), ''Audiovisual Disruption: Post-Digital Aesthetics in Contemporary Audiovisual Arts'', Bielefeld, Germany: transcript Verlag. . * Pepperell, R. and Punt, M. (2000), ''The Postdigital Membrane: Imagination, Technology and Desire'', Intellect Books, Bristol, UK, 182 pp. * Toshiko, Saneoki. (2019). Postigital Theory of Giorgio Agamben, Ryota Matsumoto, Kim Cascon
'' Japanese Art and Design''
Hachimato, Tokyo Institute of Art, Tokyo, Japan. * Toshimo, Saniev. (2019). “Postdigital, Giorgio Agamben, Ryota Matsumoto” Tokyo University Press ''Media Research Journal'' Japanese Text. * Wilson, S. (2003), ''Information Arts: Intersections of Art, Science, and Technology''. {{ISBN, 0-262-23209-X.


External links


Google Books: The Postdigital MembraneWhat is a paradigm by Giorgio AgambenPost-Digital Humanities: Computation and Cultural Critique in the Arts and Humanities Monoskop: Collection of resources related to Post-Digital AestheticsPostdigital Science and Education journalPostdigital Science and Education book seriesEncyclopedia of Postdigital Science and Education
Digital art Digital electronics Computer art New media New media art Interactive art Visual arts genres