Summary
Contents
Subject index
The rapid development of digital technologies continues to have far reaching effects on our daily lives. This book explains how digital media—in providing the material and infrastructure for a host of practices and interactions—affect identities, bodies, social relations, artistic practices, and the environment. Theorizing Digital Cultures: • Shows students the importance of theory for understanding digital cultures and presents key theories in an easy-to-understand way • Considers the key topics of cybernetics, online identities, aesthetics and ecologies • Explores the power relations between individuals and groups that are produced by digital technologies • Enhances understanding through applied examples, including YouTube personalities, Facebook’s ‘like’ button and holographic performers Clearly structured and written in an accessible style, this is the book students need to get to grips with the key theoretical approaches in the field. It is essential reading for students and researchers of digital culture and digital society throughout the social sciences.
Aesthetics and Affects
Aesthetics and Affects
Since digital media transform the perceptual capacities of the human body, we should think in detail about the aesthetics of digital media. Aesthetics refers to the understanding and judgement of what can be perceived and sensed. This chapter reviews key concepts from the general field of aesthetic theory, including the relationship between aesthetics, form, and politics. It concludes with a discussion of affect as it relates to aesthetics and sensation. The next chapter continues this discussion with an overview of specific forms that characterize digital culture.
- TERMS: aesthetics; affect; distribution of the sensible; hypermediacy; ideals; immediacy; medium specificity; remediation; three regimes of images (ethical, poetic/representative, aesthetic)
- THEORISTS: Leon Battista Alberti, Walter Benjamin, Jay David Bolter, Eugenie Brinkema, Richard Grusin, William James, ...
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