Following from the opening lecture for BCM112, in which I laid the foundation for approaching digital media convergence from a McLuhan perspective, these are the prezi slides for the follow-up lecture focusing on the logic of digital production. I open the lecture with a fairly dense conceptual frame establishing the logic of craft and production in digital media, and then follow this up with a range of examples focusing on the aesthetics of glitch, hyper kawaii, vaporwave, and Twitch mess. Again, I build up the concept frame as a shift from the industrial logic of the assembly line to the internet’s logic of mass-customization, where the new aesthetic form is characterized by rapid prototyping, experimentation, rapid error discovery, and open-process mods leading to unexpected outcomes . The key element of this logic-frame is that the openness of the process of digital making – all aspects of the object are open for modification even after release – leads to an emergent unpredictability of the end-result [there is no closure], and a resultant risk embedded in the process. This state of indeterminacy is how digital craft operates, and it is the risky openness that generates the new aesthetic of the medium.
Flaneur Musings by Teodor Mitew