Jerel Johnson

In Manifesto for a Theory of the ‘New Aesthetic’ Curt Cloninger makes a case for attending to the aesthetic experiences machines make available to us when images are a product of their systems or processes.

Visitors to the site are greeted by two large machine-made images. These images are generated from airport security body scanners. Within this visual field, I offer the user two buttons. One is labeled “Entangled in a network” and the other is “Show an entanglement.” The buttons and images oscillate in and out of focus — calling attention to the sussability cloninger describes in his manifesto.

When the user selects “Entangled in a network” the scanner images fade and my analysis of the manifesto is displayed in 36 pixel white Helvetica Bold set over a blue sky. As the user scrolls down to read the text the landscape is revealed to be a texture from Google Maps—another deeply iconic ‘New Aesthetic’ system. Once the text has been read, it can be closed to return to the body scanner images or you can download a poster I made with an abridged version of Cloninger’s manifesto on it.

“Show an entanglement” launches a theoretical or artistic reference from the Cloninger’s text within a small window that sits atop the body scan images. The randomly (one must resist teleology after all) loaded references are curated by me to highlight the academic heft Cloninger hopes to impart. That they are pop-ups, among the most loathed, web design patterns, is significant. I wanted to call attention to the intellectual history and context that the manifesto circulates in while at the same time repeating Cloninger’s predicament of proximity that I was sympathetic to. It is an entanglement after all.

Visit Analysis of a Manifesto