the return of analogue aesthetics in a digital world.
(publisged in the march edition of art&deal)
It all began in the early nineties in the name of multiculturalism, but the technology behind the change was largely influenced by the ‘digital’. ‘how that journey was we will come to later...but it seems that the journey is ending. some people are even declaring that we are heading towards a post digital art world. before we go any further lets reflect on what post digital means. In one sense, post-digital refers to works that comes from a stylistic rejection of the so-called digital revolution. The familiar digital tropes of purity, pristine sound and images and perfect copies are abandoned in favor of errors, glitches, marks and artifacts. And in another sense (as in the term post-modernism) it refers to the continuation or completion of that trajectory.
Post-digital includes a number of sub-genres, and most of it is based on playing with the aspect of process. In music, photography, painting (but not yet sculpture), one sees a return of what was previously being ‘photo-shopped’ as ‘noise’.
In terms of aesthetics this return is, already, well under way. The manifestations have
arrived even before we cared to notice. Way back in 2004, Nero Player added a new option in their equalizer section. It was called radio. To any who might have wondered why such a feature -which was essentially a manipulation of the digital to re present it as analogue- was introduced when the mainstream was moving towards making the analouge sound digital, well the answer is that the Nero research and development team read cultural trends and predict a boredom with the finished-hood of digital, when we were just beginning to understand the dominant trends in the mainstream.
At this juncture let us try not to theorise here, but first to observe. to avoid pitfalls of cultural generalization, one needs to make it clear that one is not talking about universal trend movements...but more of what could be sun terrain shifts in the south-asian culture scape. more specially about emerging urban pockets and what kind of aesthics could influence fashion. the first traces of it began to occur with the advent of chinese mp3 players and eventually cell phones. the cheap technology naturally distorted sound, and very soon created a culture that loved it. parallely in certain pockets of music began to be often presented with, bare mathematical structures, stripped back modular repetition and long form minimalist drones. As it spread thorough what is generalized as ‘rave parties’ and also though some minimalist jazz lovers, it also began to enter bollyhood with some rahaman remixes.
Then suddenly there a sudden burst in we based art, abstract geometrical forms, pixel thin lines, delicate but simple lightness, the privileging of negative space, and the distinct absence of information. Album covers slowly began to consist of minimalistic geometric designs verging to total blankness (in contrast to the digital design “Photoshop art”). Yashas Shetty ...And how it Rained..., sound and software installation - 2006 at the Apeejay Media gallery, was way ahead of times, a truly cutting edge experiment with sound distortion and abstraction. however for a long time it seemed that Contemporary Indian Art had become so insulated, that it would not respond to this sub terrainian sweep with popular culture. Having cultivated an entire generation of consumers and patrons with the finish of the digital, could painting go analogue again?.
Many noticed the large drip on the Shubodh Gupta canvas during the 2009 art summit. however that stylistic trajectory was inconsistent and many did not know what sense to make of it. even now its difficult for buyers and collectors to showcase and sale works carrying errors, glitches and marks. This discomfort is part due to the age and class bias that rules the consumption of contemporary Indian art. Music is mostly free or affordable and transient, allowing makers and listeners to experiment and thereby music is mostly ‘free’ to capture the latest in cultural taste. however ‘fine art’ is much more insulated, and often reacts to the entrapment of its own history. Thought the decade of 2000s one saw traditional print making disappear form the domain of mainstream gallery practices. This is no way a reflection of taste, but more a reflection of how in a new neo liberal , multicultural world obsessed with digital finish, gallerists and traders ‘forgot’ (and also could not reinvent) the language thought with the formal joys of an etching and lithograph could be translated into sales. thus we witnessed a strange phenomenon where in such works were widely praised in private conversations, but were actively discouraged to enter exhibition space..and over the years some very talented print makers were forced to turn in to boring painters.
indeed we are yet very far form moving from the placid beauty of the digital to the picturesque landscape of noise, marks and mistakes but we are not that far that it not around the corner. shibu Natesan has always been one of the trend setters in the domain if indian urban fine arts. looking at shibu’s work at the 1x1 gallery stall at the 2011 art summit, one can clearly see that the ‘mark’ is coming back to ‘action’. rough finish and gestural marks were the dominant in their return (and maybe making such a visible return only after his early college days, even though they sometimes surfaced in his water colours). Then Shibu is not the only one. Having been through his ‘digital’ period, Sudershan Shetty has been very strongly ‘analogue’ in his aesthetics, and in works Baiju Parthan and Riyaz Komu showed at the show TECH-CUT-EDGE REVELATIONS, one can see that experiments are gathering pace and roots.
In a sense this was bound to happen. the smoothened out digital finish was very attractive till it was very new....then slowly it made its journey form being attractive to being the norm. it pervaded the ‘high’ and the ‘low’, ‘Art’ and ‘Kitch’, (and if one goes by the current Devi Art show ‘Vernacular in the Contemporary’) the aesthetics of the digital have entered how urban India wants to see craft’. In such a context, boredom is but expected. it is but obvious that as fashion trends change...coolness will take a new meaning and it seems the meaning is being found in the craziness of noise, rather than in the mirror of sleekness.
So what was the multi-culturalism story all about. Nothing much actually, beginning with the need of euro-america to expand markets, fulled by the collapse of the cold war economy, a neo orientalist fantasy developed that convinced many that the entire world is in the same plane. maybe this led to a certain sanitation of the surface, this sanitized surface was the allegedly new global surface. equally at ease in Delhi and London. the local context suddenly became the ‘noise’ to be eliminated. globally we are now witnessing a return of the local, and all the noise....is just coming back.
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