BENTON
The Meme Aesthetic in the Uncertain Present Of The Built Environment Alexis Benton, M.Arch
...And the crowd goes wild. 1
In
the Politics of Aesthetics, Jacques Ranciere argues that the invention of abstraction in modern art extends beyond the innate flatness of the page, signaling an aesthetic shift that took form during the twentieth century in art and also in the way the world was perceived.2 Looking at the twenty-first century, it is easy to argue life has “flattened” further with personal technologies acting as mediating devices between people and their environments. However, digital technologies and the resulting changes in communication and data consumption have had the opposite effect, acting as the physical environment’s lovingly chaotic pageant mom. Through analyzing this aesthetic shift, the idiosyncrasies of this new reality unveil its distinctly qualitative multiplicities towards an exponentially accelerating postmodernism. I will define this third wave of aesthetic experience by breaking down the qualities of this new aesthetic media (memes) and will begin to form a set of considerations which respond to their media with enthusiastic indifference. Thinking 1 Ryan Scavnicky “Ask your prof to explain their research agenda.” Instagram, October 20, 2019. https://www.instagram.com/p/B31-BAnp25j/ 2
Rancière, Jacques. 2004. The Politics of Aesthetics: The Distribution of the Sensible. London: Continuum.
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