The Over-maximisation of Digital Aesthetics

“Aesthetics must be simultaneously promoted beyond all measure, and yet reduced to nothing.”
Steven Shaviro, in Accelerationist Aesthetics: Necessary Inefficiency in Times of Real Subsumption (2013)

For Steven Shaviro, accelerationist aesthetics refers to the ever increasing speed at which notions of beauty are hurtling toward obsolescence in the digital age (2013: 1). While some readers may feel this is a seemingly Ludditian take on technology, this is not an out-right rejection of the digital, but instead of the Capitalist framing through which it has been grounded within.

Contemporarily, aesthetics of digital reality are now designed and created in order to maximise viewer retention. Where the early digital age was characterised by new user accumulation, the current state of digitised audiovisual media is one focussed on retaining and exploiting these now indoctrinated consumers. As Shaviro acknowledges, “Aesthetics exist in a special relationship to political economy,” (2013: 8) wherein they hold the power to influence and inform their audiences.

Take the example above in which four videos play simultaneously; these shorts are common place on the social media platform TikTok, and are emblematic of the viewer retention digital spaces now characterise themselves through (Siehoff 2023: 7). Overlapping, intertwined formats of audiovisual aesthetics contribute to the seemingly shortening attention spans of its viewers , as well as to the intensifying search for instantly gratifying video content (Qin et al 2022: 3). TikTok in this instance has aided in the growth of such habits, both on the front of producers and consumers.

The less appetisingly named ‘sludge content’ that Youtube essayist Lily Alexandre makes reference to in her video ‘Everything Is Sludge: Art in the Post-Human Era’ categorises these accelerated aesthetics focussed on viewer retention as a now inescapable truth of the memetic culture of digital engagement (Nicoll & Nansen, 2018). Digital spaces have become monopolised by brands that follow the Capitalist tenet that anything can be profitable, as everything holds economic value. As such the retained attention of viewers, as subsumed by the aforementioned trends of overstimulating audiovisual content, is made profitable through covert and often egregious product advertising (Wojdynski 2019).

This ultimately has led to general populous’ of users to conflate brand and algorithm-generated mixing boards of aesthetics, feelings, & frameworks, with non-profit user created content. The end result produces an accelerated aesthetic culture that reduces individual creations to mimetically reproduced shells of their former selves. One only has to look at the number of sequels and new ‘cinematic universes’ pushing aside original movie ideas in film, shortening lengths of songs overtaking lengthier ones in music (Bonavita 2019), hyper-realistic animation in video games trumping stylised aesthetics in art, to see that culture is spiralling into reproductive, accelerated, nonsense.

At 1:08 in the clip above, Scarlett Johansson plays Lucy from the movie of the same name (2014), explaining how the repeated acceleration of time eventually accumulates in the loss of the original image. Director Luc Besson uses this to explore how time acts as the great metric of reality which, as he asks, “what proof do we have of [something’s] existence,” when cultural production speeds toward a point of exponential growth. As culture becomes more and more encapsulated and motivated by the digital landscape, memetic reproduction continues toward a point of over-maximised aesthetics; Best exemplified in the derivative nature of current ‘AI’ models, contributing to the production of ‘sludge culture’ (Alexandre 2023).

References

Shaviro, S. (2013) Accelerationist Aesthetics.

Qin et al 2002 (https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.932805/full)

Nicoll & Nansen, 2018 (https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2056305118790761)

Wojdynski 2019 (https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02650487.2019.1658438?casa_token=1ZDnRXtFxfAAAAAA%3Arc3av-_rtNP5lZ5hniFTs28qmXt_PwOE7KZBC8YhSJ-1ZmdPX79OzBdCD9AmIwLBwjspCatnWWSxKQ)

Siehoff 2023 (https://theses.ubn.ru.nl/server/api/core/bitstreams/68a6d9f2-684b-40bd-85e3-020fb0df7061/content)

Bonavita 2019 (https://go.gale.com/ps/i.do?p=AONE&sw=w&issn=&v=2.1&it=r&id=GALE%7CA572567588&sid=googleScholar&linkaccess=abs&userGroupName=anon%7Ed4af65d2&aty=open-web-entry)

Written by: Red Burgess