(left to right) Pixel Fashion by Kunihiko Morinaga for Anrealage. www.anrealage.com Google employees recently began testing the company’s new augmented-reality glasses called Project Glass. The glasses are the company’s first venture into wearable computing. The glasses are not yet for sale. Google will, however, be testing them in public. Square Enix and Prada teamed up to promote the fashion giant’s 2012 men’s spring/summer collection by producing a CGI photoshoot, starring JRPG Final Fantasy characters. The images appeared in Arena Homme+ as part of the 25th Anniversary celebration of the Final Fantasy series. Characters Lightning, Noel, Snow, Sazh and Hope are all wearing Prada gear. They were created by Square Enix’s Visual Works studio in Japan, working alongside the Final Fantasy character designers.
So what is the thing that distinguishes between them? Or what is common to both of them? That’s us. That comes down to human consciousness and perception that must stretch across both of those things. I see us attempting to use the same models and metaphors for things in both the physical and networked world. But something else must be coming down and I’m trying to—well, I don’t want to pin down what that thing is, but I definitely want to point to the things that make you realize it. My favorite things of the New Aesthetic are the kind of images that you look at and you genuinely struggle to comprehend, your brain goes, “I can not figure out how this thing can come to be.” When you understand quite how many pressures must be operating or how far various cultural images and ideas must have traveled in order to come together into this thing, that sort of hints toward something. But that something, for the moment, has to remain unknowable and unsay-able. When you start talking about consciousness, I point toward the unsay-able, essentially. ANP: You don’t seem to like to pin things down. JB: No. I really, really don’t. I think that’s a mistake in idea. I’m deeply uninterested in that. ANP: Why? JB: Because if the network reveals anything, it’s that these things are heterogeneous but connected. They exist in a state that you can’t make some kind of concrete definition of. Maybe we will, but the urge to do so destroys it instantly. As soon as you try to nail these things down, it will escape it. I was having a conversation last week—a couple conversations, actually. One was with an author; we were talking about the process of writing a non-fiction book now, the idea of trying to write a book about something. What you are trying to do in that state or action, is trying to ringfence something: Here is my opinion of it, and I’m going to stamp this with my own particular view. While the argument will carry on, here is my position. I can’t do that now. I’ve approached that issue from a number of angles and I don’t see why you would attempt to do that now. And the other conversation was with a curator of an art gallery who was quitting her job. She talked about curation in similar terms. In order to be a curator you essentially have to have a strong opinion about something, and you curate things that uphold that opinion. And that is how you make a name, practice, career, or whatever. And she used the phrase, “That seems deeply non-contemporary to me.” That simply is not the way in which we experience the world anymore. That these things are more interleaved and more interconnected now. And therefore trying
to put a neat circle around something is so obviously reductive as to be ridiculous. I’m hoping that doesn’t mean an end to all kinds of cultural production, but that’s the bit that I’m stuck in at the moment. ANP: I think it’s about adaptation, right? It’s the same thing with journalism—where the subjective experience is undeniable at this point, it’s integrated into reportage and pretending otherwise is crazy. People saying journalism is dead because there’s no way to get to objective truth, in that way I am relieved. I like the idea that the experience is a process. JB: Absolutely. It has historically always been that way. We’ve trusted those experiences of the people who have the loudest voices. And that is starting to break down. ANP: Yes, as soon as you name something, it is gone. It’s the past. We’re continuously putting things behind us as soon as we identify them in a concrete way. Something I find exciting about New Aesthetic: You said it all theoretically coalesces at a certain point, but it seems like actually it would just keep racing ahead of itself. JB: It should. That’s the sign that you’re onto a good thing, right? That’s definitely a sign that there’s something going on here that’s worthy of attention. As soon as you can stamp it and go, “I’ve got that thing,” it’s dead. ANP: Exactly. JB: Something is living here. So as long as you keep that door open to what it might become, then it remains the interesting thing. ANP: I wonder if it’s not even so much an aesthetic that you’re identifying, then, as much as an archetype, or even a form of modern mythology. Am I being too romantic? JB: I hope not. The aesthetic was always the bits that fell off the back as you were looking for it. You find these shards of evidence and you gather them together and go, “Is this the thing? Does it look like this? Is this a bit of evidence for the thing that I’m talking about?” But if you focus on the things then you lose it instantly. You can keep picking up these things and they’re very interesting and they may be pretty or ugly or whatever, but they are merely the artifact of the thing, they’re not the thing itself. ANP: A taxidermied idea. This idea of exploring a seam: Do you think there are seams in our “real world,” our physical experience? JB: Do you know a book called The City & The City by China Miéville?
AT&T and Boston Police anonymous crime reporting billboard in Boston. Photo by Adam Greenfield. What Apple would like to know about you. Apple’s new security questions for iOS.
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