Index

Contents

Acknowledgments     11

Introduction     13

Chapter I 
Dialogue Inside and Outside the Web

Closed Monads     20
- Polyphonies and Patchworks 
- Homogeneous Clouds 
- Autism and Self
- Referentiality 
- Monolingualism 
- Dialogic Conditions 
- Travelling in Surface

Spam and Viruses: The Evil to Be Eradicated     34
- The Problem of Legitimation 
- World Visions

New Media Culture     39
- Limits and Prospects 
- New Media Art 
- The Utopia of a Consensual World 
- To Open Oneself to Difference

Chapter II 
Aesthetic Diffusion

A Short History of the Concept of Aesthetic Experience     48
- In the Footsteps of Tatarkiewicz 
- Art as Experience 
- The Technological Sublime

Diffuse Aesthetics     58
- The Virtualization of Reality 
- Society and Global Spectacle 
- Metamorphosis of Things 
- The Spillage of the Aesthetic from the Artistic Sphere 
- The Domestic as Aesthetic

Theory of Memes     74
- The Meme Machine 
- Scale-free Networks 
- Contagion, Repetition and Social Inheritance

Aby Warburg: The Concept of Engram     80
- The Bilderatlas
- The Memetic Contagion of Aesthetic Ideas

Meme Gallery     84
- Santo_File
- Memetic Simulations
- The Relational Element

Chapter III Aesthetic Experience on the Web

To Flow or Not to Flow     90
- Interactivity: a Founding Myth
- The Meme of Usability
- Social Networks and the Expropriation of the Philosophy of Community
- Flow and Process

Fictions     100
- The Interface
- The Separation of Form and Content
- An Impossible Task
- Form as Fiction
- Representations of the Web
- The Search for a Centre
- Invisible Processes
- Form and Function
- The 'Communicating Block'
- An Unconcerned Interest

Optical and Haptic     126
- Theoretical Premises
- Tactile Modalities
- The Skin of the Film
- The Optical/Haptic Antinomy on the Web
- Out of the Web

Chapter IV Aesthetic Experience and Digital Networks

Travellers in the Aesthetic Matrix     144
- Latency States
- Accumulation and Exhibition
- The DivX and MP3 Experience 150
- Imperfect Cultural Objects
- Disturbed Aesthetic Experiences
- A Genealogy of Noise
- Perfection Versus Fluidity
- Unauthorized Copies
- The Evolution of Aesthetic Taste
- In Praise of Imperfection

The Centrality of the Eye     167

Digital Cameras and the Will of Technology     169
- Contemporary Obsessions
- The Will of Technology
- Technologies of the Self

What to Fill Digital Memories With?     174
- Be Your Media
- 'Cool' as a New Aesthetic Category
- Exercises in Style
- Occasional Ruptures in Insignificance

Chapter V Remix as Compositional Practice

Innovation and Repetition     184
- The Myth of Originality
- A Genealogy of the Remix
- Transparent Surfaces?
- Read/Write
- The Beginning of the Game
- The Remix as Compositional Paradigm
- Aesthetics of Repetition
- 'Dick in a Box'

Remix It Yourself     203
- The Rise of the 'Bricoleur'
- Aesthetics of Hybridity
- Amateurs and Professionals
- Creative Existences

Remix Ethics     212
- The Inadequacy of the Legislator
- Towards a 'Free Culture'
- A Relativist Ethics
- Aesthetic Fallout

Machinic Subjectivity     221
- Dual Subjectivity
- Machinic Aesthetics
- The Technological Hyper-Subject

Notes     231

Bibliography     261