I wrote this as a reply to a question about the ideas behind WRLDs. But as I did, I realized that it contained useful information about the role of aesthetics as Web 3.0 emerges. Here it is…
The Founding Philosophical Ideas Behind WRLDs; From the Practice of Art.
WRLDs comes from a desire to broaden and clarify the definition of art practice within a culture based on information, through interdisciplinary collaborations between advanced researchers, (including artists, scientists and economists). These partnerships explore how language determines meaning in fields of specialized research and also analyzes information as it becomes encoded through language.
It is useful to view information within an aesthetic context, as things which have beauty tend to identify that which is exceptionally coherent; a place where new meaning is likely to emerge. This is useful within the context of the emergence of Web 3.0, as it addresses ontological structures.
We are using the vehicle of beauty, in order to bring the larger public, into a discussion which can be complex and abstract; qualities which describe practices in both the humanities and the sciences. It is our interest to educate the public on the valuable contributions made from all of these fields and to reduce the amount of dogma which often accompanies specialization.
Nomadic Crossings with Beauty as the Carrier of Meaning
What we understand as beautiful, is represented in many forms and may include words, ideas, images or objects. It is often associated with what George Lakoff refers to as conceptual metaphor, which provides cross-domain mapping through a neutral mechanism that allows us to use the inferential structure of one conceptual domain for another. We feel carrying information from one field to another is one of the most significant contributions art makes to the culture, and for many artists, it is the foundation of their practice. It is also part of creative inquiries in all disciplines, and we hope to reveal how these nomadic crossings evolve into meaning in every field.
Since the end of the 20th century, information has come to be regarded as something utilitarian; it is now an economic resource, and is considered on par with other resources such as labor, material or capital. Information is also unique, in that it is ephemeral, and quickly changes form and meaning depending on the context in which it is found.
With this in mind, beauty refers to moments in our culture where flows of information intersect and cross-over, creating unique forms which can clearly be described as beautiful.
Beauty in this sense is not static, but a recognition or observation, which occurs only for a brief and transitory moment, and then is gone forever; except in memory or by the artifacts it leaves behind, (WRLDs generates these artifacts).
Beauty has great importance in the world of information because it becomes a carrier of meaning. Unlike science, it does not investigate the causes of an object or event. Where the sciences seek to explain; beauty only identifies. But identification within a complex stream of words and symbols provides new directions and indicators, and opens up fresh possibilities; words, objects, and experiences emerge, where before there was only the chatter of the familiar and meaningless.
The Functional Model of WRLDs
We are a global culture based on markets with increasingly shorter life spans. Markets are impacted, and even created and dissolved through social media. As the technologies advance, retail locations become more like “containers” or empty fields in a database.
Information generated by online social networks can create products that rapidly fill these locations with a momentary inventory. As consumers purchase the content, the locations empty, to be replaced with the next set of products.
Advances in the changing world of 3D printing and fabbing techniques allow information generated in social networking environments to accommodate this type of rapidly changing market within the retail sector.
In addition, because of this transformation, aesthetics will become more frequently used to identify meaning within information.
WRLDs is an experiment which uses this idea as its functional model.
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