Digital Minimalism, Kitsch, and Pop This integration of technological media into contemporary art practice, and capacity for emulation of traditional media creates a point of divergence in which uses of digital representation (such as the pixel in visual art, and the glitch in sound) raise cultural and formal issues. Regarding the pixel, once the necessity for representation in using the “visible” pixel is no longer evident, the pixel itself becomes a cultural referent. The use of digital self-referentiality comes from a maturation of a mass technoculture into historical time, as well as a representational disappearance of the necessity of the pixel. Once the pixel is absent in digital mass media, it continues on to enter the realm of kitsch, or retro-hip culture. Pac-Man’s stairstep circular form, Space Invaders’ blocky villains and Super Mario Brothers’ gridded protagonist are echoes of a bygone era of the childhoods and distant histories of an entire culture who have not lived without personal computing, or even the Internet. The pixel, in this case, is a site for (false) nostalgia, a ludic symbol that sets it in a time before the current Millennial terror. In so doing, the pixel becomes a playful symbol of kitsch of the 80s era of Tron, Matthew Broderick and WarGames; symbolic of, as Baudrillard would herald, of war itself becoming a video game.2 Digital Minimalism as Formal Strategy Another possibility for the use of visible digital representation can be a pure reflection on digital form and culture. In taking this approach, the artist is drawn toward a Greenbergian collapse toward pure form in terms of the pixel, which has already been realized.3 After this point, the key difference between the use of basic forms in terms of the self-reflexive nature of the pixel in contrast to the Modernist conception of Minimalism in form and representation has to be made. The minimal practice becomes a reflection on the artist’s native technoculture, and a meditation on why they continue to use digital forms of representation. This doubling of cultural self-reflexivity upon meditation sets Digital Minimalism apart from its Modernist counterpart as containing elements of both High Modernism (formalism) and the Postmodern (self-reflexivity) with no unexpected contradictions. The digitally minimal is a dialectic that places the artist between the two poles of the binary, or black and white, as the poles of the continuum from which representational potentials arise. The 0 and the 1 are likewise the foundations on which all digital culture are built, and the space in between represents the sublime analogue space from which humanity inscribes its identity. For this author, this self-reflexivity relates to the fundamental question as to why the artist chooses any medium or genre, foregrounding this or that cultural theme or formal component. This author suggests that it may be a reflection of the identity of the artist, reflecting the native milieu and habitus. This also follows with the use of Digital Minimalism as cultural choice, rather than merely an aesthetic strategy. In this way, this author may be sympathetic to artists like Rothko, who looked at Minimalism as a spiritual or sublime form, but still reserve the ability to look at the digitally minimal as a form of cultural reflection. Again, the double strategy of the analytical paired with the formal/reflective allows for simultaneous aspects of this approach within both the Postmodern and High Modernism. Politics of Digital Minimalism The critical form of Digital Minimalism is highly political, as it is based on the idea of exploring the extant and historical, and uses the minimum amount of code and/or technology possible for the concept. It questions the notion of progress that is based upon the infinite progression of technologies into ever-expanding forms, jamming more and more processing power into the box while demanding endless capital to maintain that flow of “progress”. It challenges the notion of technological determinism that defines the form of artworks as dependent on the “state of the art”, and invalidating works using previous, “obsolete” forms of media in terms of what is currently “the next big thing”. Digital Minimalism is aloof to the upgrade; it prefers the technically small to the large, and it prefers investigating the extant and the historical. One of its goals is not that of Luddism, but careful consideration and reflection upon culture and the representational forms it creates. Therefore, Digital Minimalism aims to squeeze every last bit of potential out of extant technology, and every bit of meaning and reflection from between the 1 and the 0 it can when taken in its critical form. Conclusion From all of these cursory forays into my thoughts on the nature of Digital Minimalism, it should be clear that it does not stand for one thing, but describes a range of practices and strategies. Conversely, these come from observations regarding the integration of digital techniques into contemporary art practice and the nature of the digital in art and culture when there is a rough transparence between many traditional and digital media. Digital Minimalism can be pop, formal, transcendent or political, but its context and intent is related to a reflection upon its art-historical and cultural roots. It is within this context that this author hopes that a clearer definition has been drawn regarding the nature of Digital Minimalism, its sources, and functions. |
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