SM5325 Chap.9 The Postdigital and the New Aesthetic
The Postdigital and the New Aesthetic
When the digital is no longer new
Week 10 closes the section on analogue, digital and postdigital media. Its guiding questions ask what the word postdigital captures about a world where digital technology has lost its novelty and become messy and everywhere, and how the New Aesthetic shows machine ways of seeing merging into human culture.
The readings are the first chapter of Sean Contreras-Koterbay and Łukasz Mirocha's book on the New Aesthetic and art, and an interview in which Florian Cramer explains to Petar Jandrić why postdigital is a term that sucks but is useful.
The New Aesthetic and its critics
The New Aesthetic began in May 2011 when the London-based writer and artist James Bridle started collecting images that seemed to arise from a digital way of seeing: satellite views, glitches, camouflage designed to confuse cameras and pixelated objects.
His best-known example is a pixelated cushion on sale in a furniture shop, a pattern that did not exist in the physical world before digital images. Bridle insisted it was not a movement.
Critics called it vague and over-hyped, and the chapter opens with a 2014 exhibition that mocked it alongside a set of national banknotes whose design used pixel patterns, evidence that the style had entered official visual culture.
Beneath the screen
Contreras-Koterbay and Mirocha argue that the New Aesthetic should be studied through the computational processes behind images, not only their look.
Drawing on Flusser's idea that images made with devices are made through the device's program, and on Manovich's description of digital media as algorithms plus data structures, they reject screen essentialism. The glitch, an error that exposes hidden processes, becomes a central case.
They then link the New Aesthetic to the postdigital, which they describe not as a period after the digital but as the condition of a world in which computing is autonomous, ubiquitous and in real time.
Cramer on a useful bad word
Cramer concedes that postdigital is literally untrue, since life keeps becoming more digital.
It is useful because the difference between digital and non-digital proves less clear and less relevant on inspection, and because the digital has become the default condition rather than a mark of difference.
He associates post-digital aesthetics with tangibility, do-it-yourself practice, local scenes and indexical traces rather than abstract symbols, contrasts it with the hype he calls the crapularity, and advises finding out who installed any supposedly autonomous system and what they wanted from it.
How the chapter is built
The chapter follows the week through its cases, draws the shift from a boundary to a default, and applies both readings to the return of film cameras among phone users.
What this chapter covers
- 01
The New Aesthetic as a collection of ways of seeing
- 02
Machine vision entering visual culture
- 03
Critiques of vagueness and hype
- 04
Images made through a device's program
- 05
The glitch and screen essentialism
- 06
Postdigital as a condition, not a period
- 07
The digital as default
- 08
Indexical traces and do-it-yourself practice
Worked example · free
Decide whether an artwork belongs to the New Aesthetic
- 3Identify the machine way of seeing the work takes up.
- 2Explain what the missing data exposes beneath the surface.
- 3Add the postdigital reading of the embroidery.
Key terms
- New Aesthetic
- Bridle's collection of images and objects that seem to arise from a digital way of seeing, which he said was not a movement.
- Machine Vision
- Ways of seeing produced by devices such as satellites, surveillance cameras and depth sensors.
- Glitch
- An error in a digital process that exposes workings a smooth surface normally hides.
- Postdigital
- A condition in which the digital is no longer new but the default, blurring analogue and digital.
- Indexicality
- A trace physically caused by what it records, such as light on film, which post-digital aesthetics values.
- Crapularity
- Cramer's ironic name for everything that goes wrong in the promise of technological singularity.
The Postdigital and the New Aesthetic FAQ
What does postdigital actually mean?
In Cramer's usage it names a condition in which the digital has stopped marking a difference and become the default, so that the line between digital and non-digital is less clear and less important than the new media view assumed. It does not mean a time after digital technology. Contreras-Koterbay and Mirocha agree, describing it as the messy condition of a world where computing is ubiquitous and in real time.
Is the New Aesthetic an art movement?
Its founder James Bridle said it was not a movement and not a thing that can be done; it began as a collection of images showing a digital way of seeing. Contreras-Koterbay and Mirocha accept that it is hard to define but easy to point to, and argue that it deserves study because it marks the moment computation became visible in everyday images and objects.
Why does screen essentialism matter for this week?
Because the readings argue that digital images are made through programs, algorithms and data structures, so analysing only what appears on the screen misses how they are produced. The glitch is the key case: an error that briefly exposes the computational layer. The same criticism appears in Chapter 8, where Apperley and Parikka reject screen essentialism in platform studies.
Assessment move
Collect five images from your own phone or feed that show a machine way of seeing, such as a map view, a filter artefact or a scanned document, and five analogue objects you or your friends chose on purpose. Writing one sentence about each pair is a quick way to find a presentation angle on the postdigital.
