Post-Digital Aesthetics in the Art Practices of the Digital Art

Abstract

The article is dedicated to the relevant topic - latest trends in the contemporary forms of visual art, which are associated with recent technical and cultural changes. The article analyzes the concept of “post-digital aesthetics” by the example of several contemporary art practices, demonstrating the retreat from techno-positivism of the 1990s towards the neo-material trends in art. There are reviewed the works of the new generation of artists, designers, who rose in the age of “total digitalization”, domination of mass culture, and have turned to the post-digital art practices to represent the world as a hybrid, in which the digital and the real, the artificial and the material are equal, and co-exist with the equal values. Their works evidently try to restore the value of materiality, physicality, of the qualities inherent in the human being specifically. By the example of certain artworks, the author demonstrates the expressive capabilities of the post-digital works, reveals the peculiarities of neo-material strategies in the digital art, and discusses the artists’ interests in the enhancement of the processes of interaction between media and users. The article asserts that the “post-digital aesthetics” does not mean the end of the digital aesthetics. On the contrary, it means the continuation and representation in the new historical conditions.