Publication

What can and cannot be felt: the paradox of affectivity in post-internet art

Bibliographic Details
Summary:Focusing on the paradox of embodiment/ disembodiment in virtual space, and on the recent history of Net Art, this article proposes to go back to Roy Ascott’s metaphor of the ‘telematic embrace’ in order to examine different artistic and theoretical approaches to online affectivity. While the first generation of artists who founded the net.art movement was openly fascinated by the novelty of cyberspace as a medium, currently artists are adopting online tools to produce also offline works, revealing the presence of Internet culture in contemporary society instead of focusing on the nature of the medium in itself. In this scenario, marked by the current Post-Internet discourse, real and virtual worlds overlap, and hybrid artistic forms emerge. But are Net artists still reinterpreting the idea of virtual embrace? Or have they moved away from a romantic stance, highlighting the perils of the digital revolution in the so-called Post-Digital age? Adopting a phenomenological perspective, this essay aims to address these questions, exploring the paradox of affectivity in contemporary networked cultures through the analysis of emblematic artworks.
Authors:Instituto de História da Arte (IHA)
Subject:Net Art Post-Humanism Virtual Space Disembodiment Affectivity Post-Internet Culture
Year:2019
Country:Portugal
Document type:journal article
Access type:Restricted
Associated institution:Repositório Institucional da UNL, RUN, Journal of Science and Technology of the Arts
Language:English
Origin:Repositório Institucional da UNL
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author2 Instituto de História da Arte (IHA)
author_facet Instituto de História da Arte (IHA)
conditionsOfAccess_str Copyright (c) 2018 Rita Xavier Monteiro, Helena Barranha
contentURL_str_mv https://run.unl.pt/bitstream/10362/65392/1/380_1493_1_PB_1_.pdf
country_str PT
description Focusing on the paradox of embodiment/ disembodiment in virtual space, and on the recent history of Net Art, this article proposes to go back to Roy Ascott’s metaphor of the ‘telematic embrace’ in order to examine different artistic and theoretical approaches to online affectivity. While the first generation of artists who founded the net.art movement was openly fascinated by the novelty of cyberspace as a medium, currently artists are adopting online tools to produce also offline works, revealing the presence of Internet culture in contemporary society instead of focusing on the nature of the medium in itself. In this scenario, marked by the current Post-Internet discourse, real and virtual worlds overlap, and hybrid artistic forms emerge. But are Net artists still reinterpreting the idea of virtual embrace? Or have they moved away from a romantic stance, highlighting the perils of the digital revolution in the so-called Post-Digital age? Adopting a phenomenological perspective, this essay aims to address these questions, exploring the paradox of affectivity in contemporary networked cultures through the analysis of emblematic artworks.
documentTypeURL_str http://purl.org/coar/resource_type/c_6501
documentType_str journal article
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identifierDoi_str https://doi.org/10.7559/citarj.v10i1.380
language eng
publicationDateFull_str 2019-04-02T22:17:08Z
publicationDate_str 2019-04-02
publishDate 2019
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RUN
Journal of Science and Technology of the Arts
resourceName_str Repositório Institucional da UNL
spellingShingle What can and cannot be felt: the paradox of affectivity in post-internet art
Net Art
Post-Humanism
Virtual Space
Disembodiment
Affectivity
Post-Internet Culture
title What can and cannot be felt: the paradox of affectivity in post-internet art
topic Net Art
Post-Humanism
Virtual Space
Disembodiment
Affectivity
Post-Internet Culture