Abstract (Short paper)

Keywords: digital objecthood, immateriality, hypermateriality, neomateriality, post-digital, post-Internet, new aesthetics, coded material.

This paper explores the evolution of materialities in the context of art and digital technologies and proposes “neomateriality” as a current condition of material and objecthood. It traces the evolution from dematerialization and the immaterial to hypermateriality and neomateriality as a term capturing various disruptions that introduce new aesthetic paradigms. The concept of neomateriality strives to describe an objecthood that incorporates networked digital technologies, and embeds, processes, and reflects back the data of humans and the environment, or reveals its own coded materiality and the way in which digital processes see our world.

• Christiane Paul is Associate Prof. and Associate Dean at the School of Media Studies, The New School, and Adjunct Curator of New Media Arts at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, US.  Her recent books are Digital Art (Thames and Hudson 3rd revised edition, 2015), Context Providers – Conditions of Meaning in Media Arts (Intellect, 2011; Chinese edition, 2012), co-edited with Margot Lovejoy and Victoria Vesna; and New Media in the White Cube and Beyond (UC Press, 2008). At the Whitney Museum she curated exhibitions including Cory Arcangel: Pro Tools (2011) and Profiling (2007), and is responsible for artport, the Whitney Museum’s net art gallery. Other recent curatorial work includes The Public Private (Kellen Gallery, The New School, 2013), Eduardo Kac: Biotopes, Lagoglyphs and Transgenic Works (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 2010); Biennale Quadrilaterale 3 (Rijeka, Croatia, 2009-10); and Feedforward – The Angel of History (co-curated with Steve Dietz; LABoral, Gijon, Spain, 2009).

Full Text (PDF) p. 552-555