(con)juncture was lawson fletcher's thought pile. Now blogging at soundofruins.net
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31.1.09

aesthetics and history

Despite a sense of rigur mortis in its theorising, as if it were a static and pervasive phenomenon, the digital aesthetic has a history. Compare the compact disc and the mp3, for instance, both built upon the digital, but carrying very different forms of coding, sound, tactility, look. The fact that sound has 'detoriated' or at least been compressed in the 'advance' of the mp3 is interesting - whereas digital imagery is all about approaching 'reality' or at least something like 'clarity' or relief; more megapixels, sharper flat screen tvs, etc. etc. The disjuncture expressed in the progression of visual versus sonic digitality shows that there is no teleology in this history, but it at least gives rest to pre-digital nostalgia as if herein was petrified.

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