Feeling Data: New Perspectives for the Aesthetic Experience

Abstract

The production of unprecedented amounts of data across all sectors of society stands out as the defining feature of the present age. Thanks to an all-reaching net of pervasive technologies, it is now possible to draw out data from every entity or event on the planet. Artistic practice provides a suitable stage for the attempt to isolate specific expressive and signifying features out of the indistinct mass of data flowing through the digital realm. This article focuses on a relatively under-explored strand of research, where technology interacts with abstract data in order to extract their “aesthetic sense”. Such an expression addresses the peculiar dynamics enabling art to move beyond the purely informative function of data, towards a different goal – designing experiences that turn the audience into perceptive participants, engaged in the otherwise imperceptible events and relations that are recorded and communicated by data. This kind of aesthetic experience presents interesting implications for philosophical enquiry. Through expressive means that are constantly reshaped by the interaction with digital technologies, contemporary art provides fertile ground for a philosophy of events and relations. This framework is analysed in the present essay by comparing the perspective of three philosophers: Alfred N. Whitehead, Gilbert Simondon, and Gilles Deleuze.