BOOK FORMAT
Paperback, 5.5 x 8.25 in. / 276 pgs.

PUBLISHING STATUS
Pub Date 1/31/2011
Out of print

DISTRIBUTION
D.A.P. Exclusive
Catalog: SPRING 2011 p. 106

PRODUCT DETAILS
ISBN 9789056627706 TRADE
List Price: $30.00 CDN $35.00

AVAILABILITY
Not available

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Web Aesthetics

How Digital Media Affect Culture and Society

By Vito Campanelli.

The rise of social media and digital networks has been so dizzyingly swift that any cogent appraisal of the aesthetics of the web has, until now, been almost impossible to propose. A much-anticipated book, Web Aesthetics sets aside current debate about digital culture by directly addressing this neglected facet of the discipline. Here, the Italian media theorist and freelance curator Vito Campanelli examines social networks, peer-to-peer networks and our contemporary "remix culture," tracing their cultural precedents and explicating an aesthetics based on digital social exchange, cut-and-paste, the viral dissemination of concepts, the proliferation of digital platforms and other properties of the web. Campanelli's thesis is not primarily concerned with web design, but with the idea of aesthetics as a non-utilitarian element negating the commercial drive of the web. Web Aesthetics therefore proposes a uniting of communication and a rarely espoused ideal of beauty.

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FROM THE BOOK

"The proliferation of tools for self-production of media content gives rise to the question: What to fill digital memories with? Most studies of self-production are characterized by a certain degree of pessimism: the most probable result is products that have no meaning outside the individual sphere and the individual archive. After all, since the mass distribution of cameras, have they not been used mainly for the petty, shallow projects of tourists? From this point of view, digital media can contribute nothing new or meaningful, just as photography and cinema, as mass technologies, failed to subvert the dominant reality. The exponential multiplication of sources of digital production has not enriched the world with meaning, it has only made it more complex and perhaps more multilateral. Nevertheless, it is commonly believed that blogs, pirate or street televisions, independent magazines and streaming radio broadcasts are more adequate to report upon contemporary events than official media. If amateur pornography is supported by voyeurism and affordability, it is more difficult to justify amateur works belonging to different genres."

Vito Campanelli, excerpted from Web Aesthetics.