The Return of Technology as the Other in Visual Practices

Abstract

In this thesis I will ponder on the claims made by the protagonists of the contemporary philosophy movements Speculative Realism and Object-Oriented Ontology. They are looking at (technological) objects to understand them better from themselves, without any human intervention. The New Aesthetic can be seen as the visual branch of this philosophy. The works collected under this name look at how computational devices perceive our world through their sensors and software. By aiming at understanding these things better in their being, they are positioning these objects away from us. The consequential divide that occurs between man and machine is what I will discuss by taking into account discourses within media studies which have had the fading of this dichotomy at its heart for the past decades. I will look into how academic media discourse can deconstruct the urge for realism on the one hand, and how the New Aesthetic can pose new questions for media studies on the other.