PART ONE.

I just went off for a quick toilet break and by the time I got back some nong had announced a ‘New Aesthetic’. Actually the first inkling was some whining from the Hauntology crew that somebody had dared to be excited about something other than 1970′s English shopping centres and Thunderbirds. Which of course is NOT ABOUT MY CHILDHOOD OH DEAR NO it’s a legitimate philosophical stance with Derrida shoved into the middle of it like a spoon in a tub of yoghurt. They’ve identified the ‘New Aesthetic’ as a 80′s obsession because they see everything measured in decades. But it’s not, it’s something far less.

Derrida

All this howling of English dorks led me to a tragically bad essay by Bruce Sterling which is yet another low point for Wired Magazine, proof that minus infinity can be breached. In a sloppy porridge of words the phrase ‘the New Aesthetic’ repeats in dreary multiples. It’s one paragraph time stretched so I jumped to the blog cited which didn’t seem that more interesting than the usual wacky picture compilation – yet another jump got me to the original brain fart. As a purveyor of such farts myself I’m pretty sure we’ve got a rockin’ case of intellectual comb over.

It goes like this: think of the modernist viewpoint that existed in the ‘space age’. It led to ‘a way of seeing’, a zeitgeist, inspiration, an aesthetic. But modernity was shallow and collapsed under the critique of the post modern, which has in turn been parasitic, ineffectual and implausible. Now there exists a new aesthetic that is built upon a new positive viewpoint, the computer eye, the web, the online society and so on. This positive is needed at this time and should be followed.

Like any good story, it requires that you ignore elements that don’t fit the flow; ignorance or ‘operational definitions’ depending on who’s talking. And it’s NOT ABOUT MY CHILDHOOD OH DEAR NO. Get to the heart: if you think animated GIFs are the genesis of a new way of seeing then step right up…

…there’s a website that you should see called You’re The Man Now Dog. It’s just deluged in The New Aesthetic. But if you’re too smart to fall for that trap let’s have a look at what’s really going on here.

…we need to see the technologies we actually have with a new wonder is a fine idea. It renounces cynicism and that’s good. Just today I was carting groceries home and tried to see the familiar streets as if I was a tourist. But that principle works for anything, and very quickly the instruction became we need to see the technologies we actually have as if they posses some artistic worth beyond the everyday. By the time Wired got its dentures into it; you should repair your ignorance about something that looks more or less like a weltanschauung.

What do they mean by ‘see’? The actual physical evidence presented is the current version of a Front 242 record cover; with the pixels, the colours, the timecode in the corner, the gun/camera sight. This kind of thing was really cool in 1988. Now it’s really cool in 2012. New Media is back, having had a bottle of milk and a midday nap, ready to smear brightly coloured pixels on walls. I already denounced this in 2008.

Never tired of CyberPaint

This is just a style. So let’s have the real stories that go with this style, not the unicorn horn that Wired wants to manufacture.

PART TWO

Jack Tramiel died recently; Jack that ran Commodore and then Atari. The style begins with the limits of the machines that Jack built. The look is entwined with the tools; we saw a new wonder in the technology we actually had. With every new version of Deluxe Paint the community would push it as hard as they could to reach the limits of their imaginations. What the New Aesthetic proposes was there, and still there when the tools are transparent.

I’ve revisited the tools I used around the time that New Media was being born. I’ve used 3D Studio since 1994 and the software always seems a vast landscape that I will never be able to encompass. I went back and installed the oldest copy of 3D Studio I could find:

What at the time seemed impossibly complex and futuristic now seems clunky and limited. The 256 colour renders look hand carved from soap and the interface feels like I’m snow blind. It was a shock to hit the limits of this tool in a couple of hours. Compare to the 3D Studio Max I use now:

which will seem just as clunky and toy like in 2030.

But each is equal in its own time, part siren and part antagonist in a drama of creativity. You are granted a vision, you move towards it, you never reach it. That’s what I mean by the tools being transparent – the intention and the vision is the same and the limitations are the LEAST INTERESTING thing about the art. Not worth the name ‘aesthetic’.

To fetishise pixels and bright colours and animated GIFs and all that misses the artistic vision that was being followed, one that these tools could not / may not ever satisfy. Those are the exact things that we did NOT SEE, and only through a retrospective viewing do they become a kind of arty version of  ‘Magnets, How Do They Work?’

I can vaguely recall what I saw in my head when I was looking at

and I sure wasn’t thinking about the modern aesthetics of 64 colour dithering. I was trying to make as best a picture as I could.

Actually, the hauntology guys are closer to the truth. These old tools recall ghosts of people and places that flesh out my own personal history. It’s about they way my hand reached up and typed F10 to make the picture full screen without my concious recall. It’s ALL ABOUT MY CHILDHOOD.

{If you too want a seance with your motor memory: I found all of these oldies online without too much trouble, but if you want help and directions just ask.}

P.S. Stephen M Jones wants me to post this

spiderman, spiderman, does whatever a spider can

which I think just puts the cherry on top.