THE ETHICS OF RELATION IN THE NEW MODERNITY OF DIGITAL ART AND CULTURE

Cipriani Gerald

Визуальная культура / Visual Culture

Gerald CIPRIANI

| The Ethics of Relation in the New Modernity of Digital Art and Culture |

Gerald CIPRIANI

National University of Ireland University Road, Galway, Ireland H91 TK33 Head of School of History and Philosophy, PhD Honorary Professor To the UNESCO Chair in Comparative Studies of Spiritual Traditions, their Specific Cultures and Interreligious Dialogue

(St. Petersburg/Moscow) D.S.Likhachev Russian Research Institute of Cultural and Natural Heritage, Russia

ORCID: 0000-0002-5234-2040 E-mail: gerald. cipriani@nuigalway.ie

THE ETHICS OF RELATION IN THE NEW MODERNITY OF DIGITAL ART AND CULTURE*

One of the most significant cultural phenomena that our ever fast developing technology has created is the production of virtual configurations in whatever fields of aesthetic experience. The phenomenon has created a new sort of modernity; an unprecedented set of conditions that makes increasingly large sections of the population experience whatever configurations within the confines of its present temporality or just now, as the Latin etymology of the word "modern" suggests (modo).

Computer technology for example has led to the digitalisation not only of art but also culture as a whole, begetting thus a shift towards formalistic sense-perception whereby the paradigm of origin and authenticity loses its relevance if not its meaning. The aesthetic formalism of this new modernity has as a result reshaped the rock-solid relational pattern of reality-

I

shall begin with a famous quote from German philosopher Martin Heidegger:

All distances in time and space are shrinking. ...Yet the frantic abolition of all distances brings no nearness; for nearness does not consist in shortness of distance. What is least remote from us in point of distance, by virtue of its picture on film or its sound on radio, can remain far from us. What is incalculably far from us in point of distance can be near to us. ...Everything gets lumped together into uniform distanceless (Heidegger, 1971, p. 165).

representation-percipient. This essay will discuss the resulting ethical implications of aesthetic experience in the age of digital reproduction.

Key words: technology, virtuality, digital reproduction, ethical experience, modernity, globalisation, Heidegger, aesthetics.

* The original version of this revised text was presented as a keynote address on the occasion of the 2020 NKUST International Conference on Cultural and Creative Industries, National Kaohsiung University of Science and Technology, Taiwan (20 November). Some ideas were also initially sketched in "The Integrity of the Person at the Age of Virtual Productivity" on the occasion of the 2005 International Congress of Philosophy held at the Catholic University of Portugal, Braga (17-19 November).

That "everything gets lumped together into uniform distanceless" because the generalised usage of digital technology has created an illusion of nearness, is precisely where ethical problems arise: How should we understand that to which we relate? What Heidegger subsequently stresses is the unsettling and even terrifying nature of such experiences. The new modern configurations whether visual or acoustic reveal themselves like everything else, except that "despite all conquest of distances the nearness of things remains absent" (ibid.).

In today's world whose increasingly relational dimension becomes all the more apparent in the light of a pandemic that spreads in no time across the globe, digitally accessing configurations

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Gerald CIPRIANI

| The Ethics of Relation in the New Modernity of Digital Art and Culture |

whether artistic or documentary is no longer a possibility; it is a fact that has in some parts of the world so much pervaded our everyday life that we are losing sight of that to which the configurations relate. True, such a statement may expose us to accusations of unduly overstressing the phenomenon. The point I am trying to make though is that in the new modernity of digital art and culture, it has become increasingly irrelevant for some - not everyone - to experience what Heidegger calls the "nearness" of things, persons, or whatever entities, precisely because, as paradoxical as it may seem, our societies have developed techniques that shrink distances. In truth, the phenomenon is not paradoxical; the crux of the matter is that by developing digital technologies, societies have ignored the impact that temporality has on our ability to be attentive to that or to whom we relate. In other words, the very notion of authenticity is becoming anachronistic, irrelevant, and in the worst case meaningless.

Digitally composed configurations may incorporate in no time exotic features from other parts of the natural world, historical figures from a distant past, or symbolisms from remote cultures. But in which sense do we let these worlds speak to us? To what extent do we allow ourselves to listen to these worlds? At first glance, these issues may appear to be incidental. After all, we have been told for a variety of reasons, including political ones, that there is no authenticity that could serve as point of reference. For French philosopher Jacques Derrida, all meanings defer from some-thing and by doing so create difference (Derrida, 1967a, 1967b, 1967c) - a process that Derrida initially identified in texts but that remains indefinite and can be applied to all fields including the visual arts and culture as a whole. In the same vein, Gilles Deleuze suggested to give up notions of models to copy and instead advocated values of expression in

simulacra whereby the alleged original no longer counts. His suggestion even applied to "thought" itself; Deleuze championed what he called a philosophy without image, whereby conceptual expressive creativity would reign over traditional models of thought, and more precisely "metaphysics" in the Western world (Deleuze, 1968, 1969, 1991).1

From a formalistic perspective, there is no reason why a world only made of deferred configurations and expressive simulacra - instead of faithful representations of originals - should not be liveable. From another, economic perspective, we may equally argue that, after all, techniques including digital technology, have always been designed to increase productive efficiency, for example by allowing us to access virtually and in no time the contents of a museum, or forms and sounds that would otherwise take the craftmanship of a lifetime 7 to retrieve or create. Indeed, at first glance and for these reasons, one can easily conceive of a liveable virtual life. This is, however, where the triviality stops.

Beyond formalistic and economic considerations, the experience of the digital world increasingly prevents actors and percipients from being receptive to the voice of the message, endangering thus the authenticity and therefore the integrity not only of the persons involved, but also of what is communicated or expressed. In the age of mechanical reproduction, Walter Benjamin famously highlighted the loss of "auratic" authenticity in artistic experience (Benjamin, 1968). The nascent disen-

1 See Gilles Deleuze's idea of "la pensée sans image" [lit. "thought without image," trans. as "thought without model"] in particular in Logique du sens [Logic of sense] (1969); Différence et répétition [Difference and repetition] (1968); Quest-ce que la philosophie? [What is philosophy?] with Félix Guattari (1991).

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| The Ethics of Relation in the New Modernity of Digital Art and Culture |

chantment is now inexorably magnifying. The relationship between the self and its perceptual correlative must remain ethical to be meaningful at all.

It is at this critical point that the new modernity of the here and now in the age of digital productivity fails to bring about the conditions for such relational ethics. Of course, the kind of perceptual formalism induced by digital configurations can have different interpretive resonances. To perceive a configuration that has been digitally created with no accountability in terms of authenticity, can amount to perceiving it as such, in a disinterested way, with no concern for being attentive to the world that speaks through the configuration. We may argue that, when we perceptually experience the such-ness of things that Mahayana Buddhism holds dear, whether works of art or other entities, we are in a way liberated from the responsibility to apprehend the voice of the author or to refer to a reality conceived as original model. We may argue that digital art and culture, in so far as they induce the experience of the here and now, liberate ourselves from the constraints of the alleged illusions of the author's voice or perceived reality. However, the perceptual experience of the suchness of things in this context has of course a profound ethical and reflective dimension as the experience leads to the realisation of the fundamentals of emptiness and interrelatedness. Such is not the nature of perceptual experiences in the age of digital technologies.

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As already suggested configurations in the new modernity of digital art and culture is inducing a mode of perception of the here and now, in front of one's eyes, at the expense of referring to some original models. In Western arts and cultures such models could take different forms shaped according to the Platonic conception of imitation (mimesis

for example, the reality of a landscape or even of ideas as with the Social Realism movement that sought to depict the socio-political living conditions of workers. Other examples of allegedly authentic models of configuration comprise the sacred writings of Christianity in the Middle Ages, mythologies, or whatever objects of representation guaranteed by Albertian rules of perspective. Such steady original models and their ensuing dose of authenticity had created, at least in the Western world, a civilisational tradition and collective unconscious that could only be unnerved by the advent of digital technology. Arguably, such a revolution in art and culture is even more fundamental than that of photography, which as we know remodelled the representational and narrative nature and function of painting and drawing.

Digital technology has remodelled the ethics of relation in art and culture. Again, the phe- 8 nomenon may be more palpable among civilisations that had steadily developed from and around conceptions of original models of sorts. The issue is not the gradual loss of original models, but rather the ethical implications that a disregard for notions of authenticity can have in the digital world. When Heidegger evokes the world of Greek temples being revealed to the one who perceive them firsthand, or the world of a peasant woman being disclosed through Van Gogh's painting of her pair of shoes, or that of a poem through Conrad Ferdinand Meyer's "The Roman Fountain" (Der Römische Brunnen, 1882), he is doing no more than to stress the nature of authenticity in particular experiences (Heidegger, 1971). And what is now becoming a fundamental paradigm shift in our mode of being finds its source in our increasing inability to take the time to experience such authenticity. The conditions in the age of digital technology, far from inviting us to learn how to dwell with the object of experience, thwart us in being naturally attentive to

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Gerald CIPRIANI

| The Ethics of Relation in the New Modernity of Digital Art and Culture |

the world that speaks to us and becomes visible when we perceive it. In the age of digital technology attentiveness has become a challenge if not an anachronism.

The ability to dwell with the object of experience also and obviously suggests that any authenticity involved implies a degree of subjectivity. There is no such a thing as authentic objects of experience per se. Taking artistic configurations as example, we may certainly argue that historical, political, psychological dimensions, or even the artist's intention, are irrelevant to the work of art in itself; they do not pertain to the authenticity of the work. In other words, such dimensions look like they are subordinate to the work (parergon rcapsyov). They seem accessory to what is perceived as the work in-itself (ergon spyov).

Yet, as Derrida showed in La Vérité en peinture (The truth in painting), the outside of the work's relationship to what is believed to be its authenticity involves a great deal of subjectivity (Der-rida, 1978). This is an undeniable fact that offers a valid challenge to what we naturally, culturally and traditionally consider and assume to be authentic. And this is not to suggest any conception of subjective relativism that would make authenticity irrelevant because of its perspectival, motivated, and il-lusionary dimension. The authenticity of the intentional object of consciousness is experienced as such in a movement of unrelating ("deconstructing") to what becomes outside of itself as perceived by the subject. To radicalise subjective relativism would lead to bad nihilism - or "passive" nihilism as Nietzsche would have it (Nietzsche, 1968, § 2223) - just as advocating objective authenticism

would lead to groundless if not dangerous ideology.

Thus, in the age of the new modernity of digital art and culture the problem is not the elements of relational subjectivity or illusionary ob-

jectivity involved in experiencing a configuration in its authentic dimension. The issue is rather the growing impossibility to undergo such an experience in a technological environment whereby, as Heidegger points out, "[e]verything gets lumped together into uniform distanceless"; and the digital world is a case in point.

Why is it so important to be attentive to the authenticity of what is perceived, be it art, culture or whatever entity in the world? Because it enacts our awareness of the fact that such authenticity, far from being an irrelevant or meaningless illusion, exists through that to which it relates. Even more, to perceive the authenticity of things is to attend to the relational nature of the world, as paradoxical as it may seem for some. Hence, a configuration owes its authenticity to the field within which it is perceived and from which it springs out. Such a field is not necessarily physical as in the case of a muse- 9 um or a gallery space; it can be more abstract such as the intention of the artist, the cultural context, the spirit of the time, the historicity of the epoch, institutional conditions, or whatever differential determinations. An artefactual environment that ignores or even obliterates the fundamental of such a field in perceptual experiences opens the door for an ethical void.

3

Japanese philosopher Nishida Kitaro defines this paradigm of fields with the word for "place" (basho Mffi) (Nishida, 2011 [1927], 49-102).2 Such "place" is the universal and necessary condition for the perceptual experience of things in

2 Nishida Kitaro, "From the Acting to the Seeing" (ftK'b^fab^&'b®^: Hataraku mono kara miru mono he, 1927). This work starts a fundamental reflection on what will become Nishida's most celebrated concept, i.e. "place" (basho

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their authenticity to be possible at all; in other words, for things to be meaningfully perceived as such. We may argue that one of the characteristics of digital art and culture is precisely to induce percipients to perceive the suchness of configurations, to perceive them as such. There is, however, an essential difference. To perceive the authenticity of things by attending to the world or place from which they emerge is no formalistic perception of what is here and now, seemingly distanceless, in the blink of an eye.

For Nishida in Art and Morality (Geijutsu to dotoku S^iM^) the experience of the such-ness of things is fundamentally ethical and best embodied in the experience of the beautiful (bi (Nishida, 1973). The experience is certainly "selfless" but by no means formalistic nor disregarding the world of the configuration that emerges from its "place." The point here is that the suchness of things and its perceptual correlative of selflessness as formulated in Mahayana and Zen Buddhism is ethically fundamentally different from formalistic perceptions in the new modernity of digital art and culture. Of course, there are examples of Western philosophers who stressed aspects akin to "selflessness" in the perceptual experience of the "such-ness" of beauty or art, only to mention eighteenth century Immanuel Kant's idea of "disinterestedness" Gleichgültigkeit (Kant, 1793) or nineteenth century Arthur Schopenhauer's "will-lessness" Willenlosigkeit (Schopenhauer, 1818).3

3 Immanuel Kant on the "disinterestedness" of aesthetic judgements: "...taste in the beautiful may be said to be the one and only disinterested and free delight; for, with it, no interest, whether of sense or reason, extorts approval." (The Critique of Aesthetic Judgment, 2008; Kritik der Urteilskraft, 1793), I.I.5; See Arthur Schopenhauer on the experience of the beautiful: "...when we enter the state of pure contemplation, we are raised for the moment above all willing, above all desires and cares; we are, so to speak, rid of ourselves." (The World

We may wonder what the relevance of referring to such historical figures' somehow old-fashioned conceptions of the beautiful is when it comes to understanding modes of experience of digital art and culture in the twenty-first century. Indeed, the forms of beauty, or I should say "aesthetic meaning," have changed, in some cases because of the technological mutations of the media used, in other cases because of thematic shifts due to cultural transformations that champion the sensational, the disruptive, the eventful, the unfamiliar, or the unexpected.4 The relevance of referring to thinkers who, in one way or another, provided an ethically oriented understanding of the "suchness" of the beautiful when experienced "selflessly," is to highlight the necessarily ethical character of any authentically meaningful perceptual experience of configurations in art and culture.

I will at this point use a wording inspired 10 not only by Nishida but also other thinkers from different cultural horizons, to express the ethical character of the relationship between percipient and perceived world, be it made of natural entities, persons, or aesthetic configurations. Whether Nishida (watakushi to nanji or other twentieth

century philosophers such as Martin Buber (Ich und Du)6 and Gabriel Marcel (Je et Toi)1 such rela-

as Will and Representation, 1969; Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung, 1818), Vol. I, § 68.

4 The Young British Artists, for instance, epitomise the sensation-oriented trend in contemporary late capitalist culture. See Norman Rosenthal et al., Sensation: Young British Artists from the Saatchi Collection (1998).

5 Nishida Nitaro, I and Thou Watakushi to nanji, 1932), pp. 341-427. For a detailed study on the original text and its French translation see Jacynthe Tremblay (trans.), "Je et tu," in L'éveil à soi (2003), pp. 95-144.

6 Martin Buber, I and Thou (1971); Ich und Du (1923).

7 The whole of Marcel's philosophy from Journal

métaphysique (1927) on is articulated around the ethical

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tionship had to be understood as "I and Thou." The relationship is that of attentiveness to that which speaks to us. For Nishida, all entities or systems are self-determined precisely by undergoing a process of emplacement enabled by that to which they relate (Nishida, 2018 [1923], p.3).8 In the case of inter-personal or inter-cultural relationships, "I and Thou" translates into reciprocal selflessness in the form of emplacing availability that precisely allows for reciprocal self-determination. The relationship between "I and Thou" is therefore necessarily non-hierarchical and complementary, which, in the setting of the art and culture, could be that between author and interpreter, or work of art and its audience, or more generally configuration and percipient. The issue is that the new modernity of digital art and culture and its formalism of the here and now prevent such an authentically mutually determining relationship to take place.

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To understand the ethical implications of perceptual experiences in the new modernity of digital art and culture, let us contrast them in more detail with the authentic perception of the suchness of things, so to speak. At first glance both look like identical at a formalistic level, that is, as far as the

fundamental of Je-Toi. The following quote, among many others, reflects the spirit of his thought : "...l'intersubjectif est en réalité intérieur au sujet lui-même, que chacun est pour lui- même un nous, qu'il ne peut être soi qu'en étant plusieurs et que la valeur n'est possible qu'à cette condition." Gabriel Marcel, Présence et immortalité (2001 [1959]), p. 159. 8 E.g., see Nishida Kitaro, "Place, ¿ffi," in The Philosophy of the Kyoto School (Singapore: Springer, 2018) : "To say that objects, constitute a single system, and maintain themselves, however, require that we also consider both that which maintains this system itself and that within which this system is established and wherein it is situated [or: emplaced; ^Tfe^]." p.3.

formal appearance is concerned and regardless of whether the perception involves being attentive to the "place" of the configuration (e.g., the represented original model, the voice of the artist, the cultural context, the historicity, and so on). However, we soon realise that the digital aesthetics of the here and now engenders a type of "unavailability" - indisponibilité in Marcel's term (Marcel, 1940), in the sense that the configuration does not induce the percipient to make him or herself available to the "place" of such a configuration.9

Moreover, the seemingly distanceless and instant digital perception can hardly been seen to generate any awakening to the relational dimension of things, including self-awakening - jikaku S, in Nishida's term (Nishida, 1917), as in the case of the experience of the suchness of beauty.10 The perceptual experience of a digitally produced configuration for which the percipient has neither time nor space to be attentive to the "place" of the com-ing-into-view of such configuration, is bound to ignore the relational nature of things in their authenticity. Thus, what we see being developed are perceptual attitudes that amount to self-centeredness, or to use a more barbaric technical term, intro-subjectivity.

9 Gabriel Marcel made the concept of "availability" (disponibilité) key to his ethical phenomenology of inter-personal relationships. See in particular Marcel, "Appartenance et Disponibilité" [Belonging and availability], in Du refus à l 'invocation [lit. "From refusal to invocation", trans. as "Creative fidelity"] (1940).

10 "Self-awakening" (jikaku S^) is conceived by Nishida as the place, location, field or topos of nothingness. See for example Nishida Kitaro, "Intuition and Reflection in Self-Awakening"

( ê^^^i^SÎft^K^: Jikaku ni okeru chokkan to hansei, 1978 [1917]), pp.1-350. Also, Jacynthe Tremblay offers a selection of Nishida's texts around the concept of jikaku in Nishida Kitaro, L'éveil à soi, trans. Jacynthe Tremblay (2003).

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| The Ethics of Relation in the New Modernity of Digital Art and Culture |

The non-ethical nature of the aesthetics of the here and now that characterises aspects of the new modernity of digital art and culture is perhaps the most profound albeit anticipating message behind Andy Warhol's serial paintings. The series discloses a mode of visual consumption that averts being attentive to the history, the world and therefore the "place" of what or who is configured, for example in his Marilyn Monroe (1967). The series is a signpost: soon will come the time when the usage of techniques of reconfiguration will have exponentially increased to such an extent that the world in its entirety will be experienced as Warhol's Marilyn Monroe, flat as a pancake, as a "suchness" without ethics whereby the need to relate authentically to persons and communities as well as cultures and histories will become anachronistic.

That digital technology contributes in part to the ethical uprooting of configurations is of course a universal phenomenon, but whose symptoms and effects vary depending not only on the geographical location but also on the economic, historical, and cultural circumstances. Neo-liberal economies are factually more prone to use digital technologies for obvious financial reasons; technologies across different parts of the world have developed unevenly throughout history; and the impact of the development and perception of digital configurations may arguably differ in the context of the Western tradition of thought based on reality-representation-percipient and that of cultures of Buddhist inspirations that cherish the suchness of things.

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Interestingly, the ethical problems highlighted in the case of unenlightened usage of digital technology find echoes in the project or practice of some quarters of contemporary Western cultural

theories. In the name of overcoming the risk of being coerced by the authorial intention behind a work of art, French litterateur Rolland Barthes argued for the author to "die" so that the literary text could free itself from the constraint of authoritative interpretation (Barthes, 1970, 1973). Thus, the literary work of art had to become "scriptible" (writ-erly) as opposed to "lisible" (readerly), so that the reader could creatively experience its "significance" as it was disclosed through "intertextuality" as opposed to being imposed by the author's inten-tion.11 And vice versa, by freely enjoying his or her subjectivity the reader could restrain from imposing his or her interpreting authority on the text. In other words, neither the author of the configuration nor the interpreter should be "constrained" by any ethical attentiveness towards each other. Any notion of authenticity in the voice of the author or the act of interpretation was basically equated with co- 12 ercion, and the result was self-centred or intro-subjective aestheticism.

For those familiar with Japanese culture, suffice is to read Barthes' L 'Empire des signes (Barthes, 1970) where he uses his experience of Japan as source of inspiration.12 This is where lies the junction with digital configurations. Barthes' endeavour was by no means to try to attend to the world being revealed to him through its own emplacement; rather, Japanese culture becomes a flat pancake that mirrors his desires and pleases his writerly experience. From a creative point-of-view there is of course nothing wrong with this; the problem arises when the call becomes a dogma, in other words when the practice remains ethically unenlightened. From a cultural perspective, we may call this ethically unenlightened attitude and

11 See Roland Barthes, S/Z (1970); and Le Plaisir du texte [The pleasure of the text] (1973).

12 Roland Barthes, L 'Empire des signes [The empire of

signs] (1970).

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| The Ethics of Relation in the New Modernity of Digital Art and Culture |

practice a casual formalism of the here and now, which has given rise to a new modern subjectivity that can be exemplified in the digital world. As already suggested, the "unavailability" begotten by digitally produced configurations amounts to not being attentive to the "place" within which they become visible. And the ensuing aesthetic transformations begotten by the digital revolution go beyond mere issues of sensory-appearance and have potentially profound existential consequences. Indeed, such aesthetic transformations may affect our very mode of being whereby matters of authenticity and related conceptions such as integrity and trust fade away.

From an inter-personal perspective - because we should not forget that artistic and cultural experience is an affair of persons, as literary theorist E.D. Hirsch would have it (Hirsch, 1967)13 -the mutation may be unnerving. As long as we remain human beings biologically and genetically constituted as such, the experience of art and culture is that of humanly transmitting and receiving messages in various forms, in distinct ways, and with various impacts. But to think of art and culture in terms of affair of persons inexorably calls for attentiveness, which again brings us to what constitutes the guarantor of liveable human relationships, that is, authenticity.

To be attentive to an artistic or cultural configuration is to attend not only to its formal appearance, but to the voice that speaks through such configuration, its author as a person, its history, its world made of particular social, political, educational, and spritual values among others; in other words, the "place" within which the configuration comes into view. Still, why is attentiveness and therefore availability, not only in art and culture but also in society at large as well as with regard to

13 E.D. Hirsch, Validity in Interpretation (1967).

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the natural environment, so critical for keeping the prospect of a liveable world alive? Simply because the one who authentically attends or makes him or herself available to some-one or some-thing, that is, in a free spirit of trust and integrity, is creatively awakened to the fundamental of relation between the boundless entities that make up our ever-evolving world.

To conclude

Digital technology is a formidable tool not only for reproducing or reiterating such entities, but also for creatively reconfiguring them. Digital art and culture provide plenty of evidence of this matter of fact. If the question could be limited to this formalistic dimension, we would be no doubt heading towards a wonderful world. But such is not the case. Let us replace Warhol's images of Marilyn Monroe and their painting and printing techniques 13 by those of a sweet potato and digital technology.

The time will come when the image of the sweet potato is so profusely recreated by digital means that it will cease to be perceived in relation to its referent, not only its flavours and smells, but also more abstractly its particular history and cultural world. The digitalised image of the sweet potato will certainly not lose any ability to signify something, but only within a system that disregards the place within which the configuration emerges. Namely, the system will obliterate the authenticity of the creative configuration understood in its ethical and therefore relational fashion. Such is the threat of the otherwise so promising reality of the new modernity of art and culture.

There is of course nothing new in this statement. Heidegger,14 Jacques Ellul,15 and Hans

14 Heidegger, Martin, 1954 [1977], "Die Frage nach der Technik", in Vorträge und Aufsätze, Pfullingen: Günther Neske; translated as "The Question concerning Technology", in The Question Concerning Technology

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Jonas16 among many others warned against the existential and ethical implications of technology. In a different way, in different circumstances and about a different theme Jean Baudrillard highlighted similar implications with reference to the first Gulf War (1990-1991). For Baudrillard the exacerbated mediatised imagery of the war became a "simulacrum" whose questionable authenticity prevented spectators from truly attending to the gruesome reality of the conflict (Baudrillard, 1991).17 Digital technology was thus sending a stern message: there is no longer any room for authenticity no matter the ethical and therefore existential implications.

For all that, pessimism must not be the way forward. There is no question of rejecting the digital world altogether, its arts and its cultures. The point is to warn against the daunting dangers at stake if we use the techniques without any concern for its ethical implications; what makes meaningful arts and cultures possible in the human context as we presently know it remains their relational authenticity in its creative form.

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| 3 (44) 2021 |

Визуальная культура / Visual Culture

Джеральд ЧИПРИАНИ

| Этика отношения в новой модерности цифрового искусства и культуры |

Джеральд ЧИПРИАНИ

Национальный университет Ирландии Юниверсити Роуд, Голуэй, Ирландия H91 TK33 Руководитель Международной научно-исследовательской группы Культуры и диалога, Факультет философии Почетный профессор кафедры ЮНЕСКО по компаративным исследованиям духовных традиций, специфики их культур и межрелигиозного диалога при Российском научно-исследовательском институте культурного и природного наследия им. Д.С. Лихачёва

Доктор философии ORCID: 0000-0002-5234-2040 E-mail: gerald. cipriani@nuigalway.ie

ЭТИКА ОТНОШЕНИЯ В НОВОЙ МОДЕРНОСТИ ЦИФРОВОГО ИСКУССТВА И КУЛЬТУРЫ*

Одним из наиболее значительных культурных феноменов, рожденных нашей развивающейся с постоянным ускорением технологии, является создание виртуальных конфигураций в ряде областей эстетического опыта. Этот феномен создал новую разновидность модерности; беспрецедентный набор условий, который заставляет испытывать самые необычные конфигурации в пределах его настоящей темпоральности, или того, что происходит прямо сейчас, в соответствии с латинской этимологией слова "modern" (ср. modo).

Компьютерная технология, к примеру, привела к цифровизации не только искусства, но и культуры в целом, обусловливая, таким образом, сдвиг к формалистическому чувственному восприятию, причем парадигма происхождения и аутентичности теряет если не смысл, то релевантность. Эстетический формализм этой новой модерности преобразовал в результате казавшийся твердым, как ска-

ла, паттерн отношений реальности - репрезентации - реципиента. Настоящая статья посвящена обсуждению этических импликаций эстетического опыта в эпоху цифровой репродукции.

Ключевые слова: технология, виртуальность, цифровая репродукция, этический опыт, глобализация, Хайдеггер, эстетика.

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* Оригинальная версия настоящего, переработанно- — го, текста, была представлена в виде ключевого доклада на Международной конференции по культурным и креативным индустриям 2020КК^Т, проведенной на базе Национального Университета науки и технологии, Тайвань, 20 ноября 2020 г.. Некоторые его положения были первоначально намечены в докладе «Целостность личности в эпоху виртуальной репродукции», представленном на Международном конгрессе философии, проведенном на базе Католического Университета Португалии, Брага, 17-19 ноября 2005 г.

Список литературы