A digital aesthetic
acknowledges the imprint and residue of digital/electronic
technology on its creative product. A discussion of digital
aesthetics would seek to explain and evaluate the creative
product of digital technology by examining its various factors/relationships
in their appropriate contexts, and by identifying that which
is unique to digital artworks/processes.
Digital
vs. Analog Media
What does "digital" mean and how is it differet
from "analog?"
Digital
media alters our social interactions. Not just email…not
just computers; digital culture is on TV, in comedian's
jokes, on the news, and in commercials.
Is
privacy obsolete in a networked digital culture?
It
not only changes the way we communicate with each other
(now we email friends, parents, potential employers,
teachers, customer service representatives) but it re-presents
the physical world by altering human expression of selfhood,
group-dom, and nationhood taken up in older media forms.
Digital
culture is not just that CD's can play in your computer
and that you can email mom. Digital culture encompasses
broad social, economic, and political changes.
EXAMPLES: napster
and .mp3
upset the record industry, how political candidates
are using the Web, changing ways we conduct business
(ebay),
the digital divide.
Digital
media mathematizes the physical world.
Web
Aesthetics: How does
this apply to the Web?
"The
exaggerated,
pixelated typography expresses the 'digital' and represents
a design aesthetic that defines itself in terms of the
limitations of the technology. The discontinuous nature
of digital technology, it's fundamental limit, is exploited
to communicate an idea -- the idea of digital."
-Steven Holtzman Digital Mosaics
We
can borrow from other media, but must make it native to
the Web
When
a new medium is introduced it frequently takes on the
charasteristics of the media that came before it
1st motion
pictures used stationary cameras
Early TV
news "read" the news to you
The
Web has been likened to many earlier media; first generation
sites were brochure-like; technology strove to deliver
TV on the web (when a television works perfectly fine
for that)
Digital
media alters our social interactions. Not just email…not
just computers; digital culture is on TV, in comedian's
jokes, on the news, and in commercials.
Is
privacy obsolete in a networked digital culture?
It
not only changes the way we communicate with each other
(now we email friends, parents, potential employers,
teachers, customer service representatives) but it re-presents
the physical world by altering human expression of selfhood,
group-dom, and nationhood taken up in older media forms.
Digital
culture is not just that CD's can play in your computer
and that you can email mom. Digital culture encompasses
broad social, economic, and political changes.
Digital
media mathematizes the physical world.
"The
exaggerated,
pixelated typography expresses the 'digital' and represents
a design aesthetic that defines itself in terms of the
limitations of the technology. The discontinuous nature
of digital technology, it's fundamental limit, is exploited
to communicate an idea -- the idea of digital."