Robin Mackay , Luke Pendrell & Tia Trafford (Editors)
ISBN 978-0-9575295-7-1
URBANOMIC/MIT
With contributions from:
Amanda Beech, Ray Brassier, Mark Fisher, Robin Mackay, Luke Pendrell, Benedict Singleton Nick Srnicek James Trafford Tom Trevatt Alex Williams & Ben Woodard.
The Specualtive Aesthetics project (SA) was concieved and lead by artist Luke Pendrell and Theorist Dr. Tia Trafford.
It introduced new ideas in philosophy to artists and shared them in a publication and a series of large scale public events. ‘Speculative Realism’ was a term associated with an emerging group of philosophers and thinkers who were engaged with reconsidering our perceptual connection to the real and philosophy's relation to science as a way of rethinking our place in the world by radically decentring the human.
Speculative Aetsthetics introduced these ideas to a contemporary artistic practice that seemed to us, trapped in an introspective postmodern impasse, asking “What bearing could Speculative Realism have upon aesthetics in theory and practice?”
Initially SA set out to establish a core set of questions and issues to explore, develop and test. This phase was focused and small scale, around forty invited guests and speakers attended a day long Round table discussion. Ten speakers either, philosophers or artists were invited to present a short paper of around ten minutes outlining and opening a particular aspect of contemporary philosophy and aesthetics. Speakers (contributing papers) included: Ray Brassier, Tom Trevatt, Mark Fisher, Robin McKay, Amanda Beech, Benedict Singleton, Nick Srnicek, James Trafford, Alex William And Ben Woodard. Presentations were kept to a minimum (e.g. 10mins) leaving most of the time for discussion.
Papers were distrubuted to all attendees two weeks before the event so that they could be circulated and read in advance of the day.
The sessions were broken into three themed panels, each half hour session being followed by open questions from the audience. The entire session was recorded and documented, the discussions transcribed and these were compiled into an edited an edited volume containing the papers interspersed with edited transcript of the discussion and artistic responses. This was published in 2014 by Urbanomic. The book considers the ramifications of Speculative Realism for aesthetics ranging from contemporary art’s relation to the aesthetic, to accelerationism and abstraction, logic and design.
From varied perspectives of philosophy, art, and design, the book examines the new technological mediations between the human sensorium and the massive planetary media network within which it now exists and considers how the aesthetic enables new modes of knowledge by processing sensory data through symbolic formalisms.
Speculative Aesthetics created the format for Urbanomics ‘Redactions’.
A series that documents conemporary events and discussions.
In addition to the texts, the volume explores and posits non linguisitic tropes in a series of original artworks that punctuate the volume.
The book has been described as a series of interventions on the ramifications of Speculative Realism for aesthetics ranges from contemporary art’s relation to the aesthetic, to accelerationism and abstraction, logic and design.
From varied perspectives of philosophy, art and design, participants examine the new technological mediations between the human sensorium and the massive planetary media network within which it now exists, and consider how the aesthetic enables new modes of knowledge by processing sensory data through symbolic formalisms and technological devices.
Speculative Aesthetics proposed and anticipated the possibility of a theory and practice no longer invested in the otherworldly promise of the aesthetic, but acknowledging the real force and traction of images in the world today, experimentally employing techniques of modelling, formalisation, and presentation so as to simultaneously engineer new domains of experience and map them through a reconfigured aesthetics that is inseparable from its sociotechnical conditions.
LINKS TO :
SPECULATIVE TATE URBANOMIC