No. 20 (2019): Issue No. 20, October 2019 - Main Topic: Contemporary Aesthetics of Media and Post-Media Art Practices
In the light of the previous journal issue, the current number of AM Journal of Art and Media Studies – with the main topic contemporary aesthetics of media and post-media art practices – tends to challenge the request of identifying and discussing the possible worlds of contemporary aesthetics, that is posted to the theoreticians from different continents during the 21st International Congress of Aesthetics that was held in Belgrade, on July 2019.
While in the September issue the possible worlds of contemporary aesthetics of the visual arts have been discussed, this issue joins theoretical reflections on contemporary media and post media practices. The common thing for all the articles in this journal issue is that their authors are dealing with artistic and theoretical manifestations that belong to the era of dominance of computer technologies, multimedia platforms, global networking and media-transmitted (artificial) reality.
Specific philosophical and aesthetics questions are in the focus of the first three papers: the different examples of philosophical views about the sensible configuration in both artistic and non-artistic realm are discussed; the actual phenomenon of art and life science collaborative projects are highlighted as the opposition to the historically prevalent approach to art and science as the autonomous fields of practices; the question of what is subversive in aesthetics is analyzed through the case study of ecofeminist aesthetics in literary art.
The next group of papers could be described as the one dealing with the different phenomenological, poietics, and esthetical aspects of contemporary film, cinema and television practices: modes of multisensory immersion from the beginning of 20th century are confronted with those of the 20th/21st centuries; the examples of post-media art practices as the hybrid audiovisual genres conducted in the digital environment are critically observed in relation to historical media of representational film; the intersection of humor and politics are discussed through the lens of television aesthetics; the phenomenon of the transformation of visual art through digital technology and social media transposition of images is analyzed.
The last group of papers belongs to the field of post-digital aesthetics and deals with the issues of artificial reality and artificial intelligence: the New aesthetics is defined as the one examining new forms of art and aesthetic experience as the products of artificial intelligence; the exemplary case study of artificial intelligence creative activity is presented; the thesis that both artificial reality and art have a common means of working on the senses is emphasized and the question connected to this is posed: where is a borderline between artificial reality and art and can artificial reality technologies have an impact on the definition of art?
This journal issue in whole shows that the worlds of contemporary aesthetics critically problematize both the cases of media and post-media sensual configurations from the historical and current times. But, it also suggests that – connected with the aesthetical aspects of artificial intelligence – the new world of aesthetics phenomena just has been opened that are waiting yet to be fully theoretically identified and discussed.
Sanela Nikolić
On the cover: Jale Erzen, Amazon 1 (135 x 181 cm) oil on canvas, 2019.
