the cyberaesthetics... and much more

CyberEmpathy - Visual and Media Studies Academic Journal ISSUE 10 / 2015 Hyper Visions ISSN 2299-906X

Source of Image: Anarchy Dance Theatre, Seventh Sense, http://www.flyglobal.tw/en/article-307

Sidey Myoo

The Cyberaesthetics... And Much More


Sidey Myoo

The Cyberaesthetics... And Much More With reference to Cyberaesthetics - Some Basic Theses by Piotr Zawojski

(“CyberEmpathy” ISSUE 8/2014: Augmented Reality Studies)

Abstract:

When I talk about the cyberaesthetics, I try to pay attention to the importance of the

influence of technology on art, taking place as a result of the evolution of technology, and

what art did not have to deal with before. The issue of the cyberaesthetics should take to

account the ontology of art, which is formed on the surface of the digital matter. This

ontological difference in relation to the art using the physical matter will be the basis for

further content in this article.

Tags: cyberaesthetics, cyberart, cyberculture, hybridization;

SIDEY MYOO Michael Ostrowicki (pseudonim: " Sidey Myoo " )

(b. 1965) – philosopher, an employee of the

Department Aestetics at the Jagiellonian University

and associate proffeseur at Academy of Fine Arts and

Academy of Mining and Metallurgy in Krakow.

Member of The Collegium Invisibile. His main

research interest is the aesthetics , regarded as a

theory of art, mainly in relation to contemporary art,

including electronic art.

http://issuu.com/cyberempathy/docs/cyberempathy_issue8_article2_zawojs?e=0/30786597


Cyberaesthetics and Cyberart

Thinking over the cyberaesthetics and electronic art, I mean particularly two issues.

Firstly, I think that art based on the technology greatly influences the present shape and

a broad understanding of art. Therefore, this kind of art is developing the very essence of

art, which has been expressed in the creation of new directions, for example, such as the

network art or GPS, the virtual reality, monitoring, robotics and the artificial intelligence,

bionics and bioart. There were also developed the new types of works of art, for

example, the interactive installation or deviceart.1 Thus, it is most important to develop

the cyberaesthetics that is the theory relating to the art based on the modern technology.

The second issue arising from the cyberaesthetics is a widespread digitization,

which concerns art from the point of its documentation and archiving.2 The digitization

aspect may be even broader than the development of art, because it concerns the

historical art and all its kinds. This aspect is the creation of the history of art, which only

in the digital form can get a common ground for all kinds of art. Therefore, in summary,

the cyberaesthetics, in my opinion, has two main components: analysis and criticism of

art created on the basis of the developing technology and archiving.

Theses related to the cyberaesthetics, presented by Piotr Zawojski, have value today,

showing the artist and theorist that use for art the scientific discoveries and concepts

1 H. Leopoldseder, G. Stocker, Ch. Schöpf, ...what it takes to change, Ars Electronica 2014 – Festival for Art, Technology and Society, Hatje Cantz, Ostfildern 2014, pp. 98-109.

2 D. M. Berry, M. Dieter, B. Gottlieb, L. Voropai, Imaginary_Museums,_Computationality_And_The_New_Aesthetic, BWPWAP (Back When Pluto Was a Planet), Transmediale, Berlin 2013 pp. 14 and 37.

http://www.aec.at/c/en/deviceart/

http://sro.sussex.ac.uk/49805/1/Berry,_Dieter,_Gottlieb,_Voropai_2013-_Imaginary_Museums,_Computationality_And_The_New_Aesthetic.pdf


suitable for analysis in this way of the newly-created art. 3 Theses, cleared by my friend

from Silesia, are close to me, but I would like to add a few threads. I would like to draw

attention to the development of technologies that can change the meaning of the creative

process, e.g., when it comes about generating of the works, understanding of whom the

artist is and the importance of the phenomenon of hybridization. This comment comes

from the difference of a philosophical nature, which lies between the traditional physical

matter and the digital one – the electronic matter. That hybridization, as a stable

coexistence of different types of matter: physical and electronic, or biological and non-

biological, seems disputable to me in the sense that it may be that one of the parts of a

hybrid – Digital- prevails over the other, meaning that the technology is dominant here.

Hence the development of the essence of the art may be closely associated with the

artistic workshop espoused on the basis of technology and similarly the archiving in the

digital form can be an essential source of the knowledge about art, regardless of the

contact of recipients with the originals.

When I talk about the cyberaesthetics, I try to pay attention to the importance of the

influence of technology on art, taking place as a result of the evolution of technology, and

what art did not have to deal with before. The issue of the cyberaesthetics should take to

account the ontology of art, which is formed on the surface of the digital matter. This

ontological difference in relation to the art using the physical matter will be the basis for

further content in this article.

3 P. Zawojski, Interface – the Art of Interface – „Interface Culture”, in: R. W. Kluszczyński (ed.), Wonderful Life. Laurent Mignonneau + Christa Sommerer, Centrum Sztuki Współczesnej Łaźnia, Gdańsk 2012, pp. 68-69.

http://www.zawojski.com/2014/03/26/interface-the-art-of-interface-interface-culture/


Hybridization: soft and hard approach

I try to show that it may not be enough to think about the synchronized, and above

all, continued compliance of such a duality, as the physical world and the cyber reality 4

which in turn have the implications for art. I focus on the border between the worlds or

types of matter and arising of them consequences. The interesting part of the discussion

on art is the transformation of reality of the physical world through the digital

technology, and perhaps even succumbing of reality of the physical world at the face of

digitization. 5 Thus, where I will return later, the mentioned by Piotr Zawojski

hybridization may be important process for art. It is associated with a dual

understanding of hybridization, either as a state of affairs, or as a process that converts a

physical entity into the electronic form and even transforms the human behavior.

Let's propose two ways of understanding of hybridization: soft and hard. Soft

approach of hybridization concerns the attitudes embedded in anthropocentrism, which

retains the view of the human capacity to master the technology. This approach also

implies that the hybridization is a state, not followed by a significant shift in the roles

that are performed by its components, so in our case, for example, in the creative process

the technology would play an insignificant role. Hard approach takes into account e.g.

the fact that the evolution of technology is faster than the biological one, hence its

importance in the hybrid may become more and more significant. This approach also 4 E. Baily, Real Virtuality: Authenticity in Electronic and Non–electronic Environments, in: R. Ascott (ed.), Engineering Nature Art & Consciousness in the Post–Biological Era, Intellect Books, Bristol – Portland 2006, pp. 127-132.

5 M. Fleischmann, W. Strauss, Interactivity as Media Reflection between Art and Science, in: Ch. Sommerer, C. J. Lakhmi, L. Mignonneau (eds.), The Art and Science of Interface and Interaction Design (Vol. 1), Springer-Verlag, Berlin, Heidelberg 2008, p. 76, and Baron D., A Better Pencil. Readers, Writers, and the Digital Revolution, Oxford University Press 2009, pp. 76-90.


implies a vision of the world - that actually is shaken today - that technology, including

digitization, is only a set of tools that are used or fully managed by human, and that this

structure is forever unchangeable.

With the hard approach the creative process can be largely dominated by

technology. Hard understanding of hybridization assumes that technology continues to

develop faster than human, and in some realms it will be more perfect. This approach

recedes the anthropocentrism to the observation that the sphere grows around human

that is, or becomes, dominant in many cases. Soft approach to hybridization is in my

opinion not enough; because it does not take into account the importance of the

paradigm of development, which technology is. Hard approach assumes the growing

inequality between the hybrid components, taking into account the speed of the

technological development. The most important is that this approach, generally

speaking, awoke a sense of uncertainty about the role of human - but I think it is

important in the discussion on cyberaesthetics and cyberculture.

Let me use an example of work of art, or rather of the creative process that piqued

my interest because its creator kind of got rid of, or moved some artistic values to the

machine. I think about the presented at this year's Ars Eletronica in Linz work by Patrick

Tresset titled as 5 Robots named Paul. Patrick Tresset, the painter, at his own request

has been replaced by five robots scratching the portraits. The robots did his job, and the

role of the artist has been brought to their programming. Of course, this example does

not have to mean a lot when we refer to it in such a way as it is often encountered, that,

firstly, robot does not have something human inside, which a creative person has, and it

never will paint in such a way, and, secondly, that the attitude of Patrick Tresset is

resulted from a single, unique decision, which will have no relevance to the real creative

process.

http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2012/11/tresset_robot_artist_artist_engineers_robots_to_make_art_and_save_his_own.2.html


1 Patric Tresset, 5 Robots named Paul, https://vimeo.com/106178871

In the first case the point is that we do not need to think about the robot in terms of

human artist, or to argue that the robot does not have such human qualities that only

human can bring to the arts. The point is whether robot can be treated as a creator in

only similar way to human, but independently. The emphasized boundary defining two

anthologies, the boundary between human and robot, makes it unnecessary to insist to

rediscover in robot same human features, but you may find that the robot features are

the valuable alternative to the human ones. 6 This is where I see the role of

cyberaesthetics, to deal with phenomena such as e.g. drawing or painting, the cybernetic

6 Campanelli Vito, Web Aesthetics How Digital Media Affect Culture and Society, NAi Publishers, Rotterdam and the Institute of Network Cultures, Amsterdam, 2010, pp. 225-230.

https://vimeo.com/106178871


poetry or acting of robots. I believe that the similar issues arise at the event horizon in

the future of aesthetics and art.

Another example, which arises directly here is the activity of Stelarc, - the creator of

the robotic and bionic art. In the artistic projects, such as Extended Arm or Exoskeleton, it

is clearly visible the message about the human evolution under the influence of

technology.

2 Stelarc, Extended Arm, http://stelarc.org/?catID=20218

http://stelarc.org/?catID=20247

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PWSYkplTG2s

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2MntBUwUxY



The question that arises here is whether in these works human remains in his

biological nature, or even it disappears? This question gains even more pronounced

response, when you look at one of the recent work of Stelarc - Inverse Motion Capture

System - Movatar 7 which Stelarc expresses about in the following way: Consider, though,

and the virtual body or an avatar that can access a physical body, actuating its

performance in the real world. If the avatar is imbued with an artificial intelligence,

becoming the most amazing and unpredictable autonomous, then it would become more

an AL (Artificial Life) entity performing with a human body in physical space. 8 Movatar is

an avatar that being in the cyberspace has an impact on the physical body, this is the

artificial intelligence, which in this artistic vision may even dominate over human. The

above quotation shows that hybridization has exceeded a certain threshold, where we

are dealing with a completely new understanding of human nature, assisted or

determined by the technology. This is an aspect of the cyberart, where the

cyberaesthetics should reach for the concepts such as transhumanism or bionics.

Let’s recall the example, which was used by Piotr Zawojski, i.e. a photo of the Last

Supper, located in the church of Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan, made with a resolution

of 16 billion pixels. The digital version of the fresco is more perfect, in a technical sense,

representation than that, which is possible, when dealing with the original. This

excellence is reflected, for example, in the possibility of zooming shots or making this

way the projection of the reconstruction. The same was done in 2009 in the Prado

Museum in Madrid with the 14 masterpieces of art of painting. I would not be surprised 7 Stelarc pursued similar artistic projects, such as Ping Body – An Internet Actuated Uploaded Performance. This is an installation in which the person is connected to a computer in such a way that recepinets are able to move his limbs through the use of the interface enabling stimulating parts of the body of the performer with slight current potencials.

8 Stelarc, Inverse Motion Capture System – Movatar



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1EOJr11bvo

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1EOJr11bvo

http://www.artelectronicmedia.com/document/stelarc-ping-body

http://www.artelectronicmedia.com/document/stelarc-ping-body



by the statement like "Have you seen how it looks like in the network?", or maybe even

"it looked better in the network". One can bring up the argument that the contact with

the original is not to be replaced by the contact with the electronic version - of course -

but the point is that one does not have to replace anything. The alternativeness of these

two performances appears here from a broader perspective: the digitization of all

possible contents and following new opportunities. This is the modern way of life, where

the digital is in a general sense competing with the physical. This happens automatically,

and in the case of the Last Supper one may find that the electronic access to the digital

display of this masterpiece will become a usual thing. This is another aspect of the cyber

aesthetics, that is the universal access of the recipients to the art existing in the digital

form, which not only increases the access to the works of art and statistics of contact

with art, but it is fit into a broader cybercultural nature of our times - that the aesthetics

should take care of the value of such collection and presentation of art in the

presentational space of the Network.

Hence, the discussion on the cyberaesthetics should take into account the

importance of the creative process and the nature of the works of art itself in relation to

the rapid development of technology. The development can cause the artistic

phenomena that will arise not only thanks to human, but to machine or bionic being, that

is human combined with a computer. The cyberaesthetics will have to face the human

understanding of inhuman art pieces and the acceptance of the similar phenomena. The

cyberaesthetics and the formulation of what it should have been as a part of the

aesthetics or the "aesthetics of the contemporary times" is a key issue due to the

changing art in the perspective of the technologic development.


The Cyberaesthetics... And Much More. With reference to Cyberaesthetics - Some Basic

Theses by Piotr Zawojski (“CyberEmpathy” ISSUE 8/2014: Augmented Reality Studies) /

M. Ostrowicki “Sidey Myoo”. CyberEmpathy: Visual Communication and New Media in

Art, Science, Humanities, Design and Technology.

ISSUE 10 / 2015. Hyper Visions.

ISSN 2299-906X. Kokazone.

Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web: www.cyberempathy.com



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