Abstract
Our aesthetic experiences are today conditioned by machines, which operate at multiple levels: at the moment of conception of a work, at the moment of conservation and distribution of the work, and at the moment of its contemplation. For art today, it is no longer a theoretical question of asking whether the machine can act with freedom in the sense of a game that remains as of yet open-ended—or if humans themselves can still so act in a world entirely conditioned by technology—because the brute fact is that machines are becoming ever more autonomous, and humans ever more dependent upon them. For some artists, therefore, the ideas of autonomy and sacralization are best addressed, not in the posing of serious questions, but rather through the subversive activity of enticing the machine to reveal its comic nature—and wherein we discover, with Bergson, the essentially rigid and mechanical nature of the humorous.
Highlights
Our aesthetic experiences are today conditioned by machines, which operate at multiple levels: at the moment of conception of a work, at the moment of conservation and distribution of the work, and at the moment of its contemplation
At the center of it all is the machine in its role of institutionalized automatism, and operating at several levels: at the moment of preparation of a work, at the moment of conservation and distribution of the work, and at the moment of its contemplation. These devices can be understood as organs, as extensions of our senses, and human perception as a system, using models taken from cybernetics, and conceived of on the basis of computations, actions, and feedback loops
Since the mid-20th century, in short, the automatic processing of information has brought about a major shift in the nature of the work of art; but even before the purely mechanical machine had become inseparable from our own aesthetic experiences, as with the sensation of speed and the rapid change of scenery when traveling by train, automobile, or airplane
Summary
If one were to be allowed a somewhat impressionistic description of the role of the machine in modern culture, one might begin by noting that it is nearly everywhere, and especially in the production of sound and image, as with photography, cinema, video (considered as a distinct art), and television. At the center of it all is the machine in its role of institutionalized automatism, and operating at several levels: at the moment of preparation of a work, at the moment of conservation and distribution of the work, and at the moment of its contemplation. These devices can be understood as organs, as extensions of our senses, and human perception as a system, using models taken from cybernetics, and conceived of on the basis of computations, actions, and feedback loops. We can enter a universe in which everything is calculated—reference points, forces, illumination, structures, textures, behaviors—and where, lacking mass and without up or down, we can even pass through walls: a so-called ‘virtual reality’
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