new aesthetics

Why does contemporary culture so often feel as though it has stopped producing genuinely new aesthetics? In this lecture, given at Rutgers University in New Jersey, USA, artist, designer, writer, and professor Ruby Justice Thelot examines the conditions under which new forms emerge, and the economic, technological, and cultural forces that prevent them from reaching the mainstream. Moving from the Beaux-Arts and Bauhaus to the Seagram Building, contemporary African architecture, Hollywood sequels, Pitchfork, video games, internet collage, experimental performance, fashion, and artificial intelligence, the lecture argues that aesthetic stagnation is not simply a failure of imagination. It is also the result of industrialization, financial risk aversion, algorithmic recommendation, and the growing weight of the cultural archive. Ruby Justice Thelot is an artist, designer, researcher, and professor of design and media theory at NYU. His work focuses on digital phenomenology, virtual ontology, artificial intelligence, digital communities, and the implications of being online. He is the founder of the design and research studio 13101401 Inc. and the author of A Cyber Archaeology of Checkpoints and A Few Essays on Taste. “We have a responsibility and a duty to make the future. Because if we don’t, somebody else will.”