Object and Identity in a Digital Age
CHArt 25th ANNUAL CONFERENCE
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Object and Identity in a Digital Age
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Timothy Allen Jackson, Savannah College of Art and Design
The Case of Liberation Aesthetics Versus Digital Identit(ies)
'Machines for seeing modify perception’. Paul Virilio. Liberation aesthetics is a theory I have developed for the evaluative analysis and interpretation of phenomena in relation to meaning and identity formation. The term ‘liberation’ is used in this theoretical construct given all of its semantic resonance. The term ‘aesthetics’ is used broadly in its classical Greek definition as: the philosophy of the senses. This meaning therefore positions liberation aesthetics in a much wider frame of analysis, which has significant impact upon our conceptions of art criticism, media theory, aesthetics, and other branches of philosophy (such as Metaphysics and Epistemology).
Simply stated, liberation aesthetics invites one to consider how our sensory experiences shape our consciousness, and by extension, our experience of existence. The term liberation clearly points towards the emancipation of human agency as a primary project. The theory of liberation aesthetics asserts that the human sensorium can be incarcerated. This control of basic phenomenological input through the effects of language, institutions, belief systems, and other ideological practices which seek to control or influence human agency can lead to the incarceration of the mind, body, and spirit. These social and cultural structures must therefore be carefully examined on an ongoing basis to comprehend whether an experience is more liberating, incarcerating, or some variation of these two extremes. Then we may better assess the value and meaning of such phenomena in a more informed and personal manner linked to meaning and the constitutive subject of our personal and collective identities.
Liberation aesthetics is an extension of critical theory in the shared assertion that a primary goal of philosophy is to understand and to help overcome the social structures through which people are dominated and oppressed (in this case through sensorial/cognitive incarceration). Artists and designers assist in the process of identity formation by producing liberating aesthetic systems.
In this presentation and paper, I will ground liberation aesthetics in praxis through employing the theory in an analysis of examples drawn from digital art and culture that seek to illustrate the powerful and insidious forces at work in identity formation.Timothy Allen Jackson is Professor of New Media in the Art History Department at the Savannah College of Art and Design. His research interests include: Theory and Criticism of New Media, Telematic Networked Art Systems Research and Development, Interactive Art Installations, Art as Research/Research as Art, New Media Design and Consulting, New Media Poetics and Aesthetics, the History of Ideas, and Critical Pedagogy. He has received numerous academic awards, grants, and honors; and has developed more than twenty courses in the field of new media in several institutions of higher education over the past twenty years in North America. He has published articles in a wide range of disciplines related to new media in scholarly journals, book chapters, catalogue essays, art criticism, and online media and cultural journals. Originally trained as a painter and poet, Professor Jackson remains an active new media artist. His work has been exhibited internationally and he has lectured widely in many conferences and symposia in a wide range of subjects relating to cultural theory and production.