Holger Lund (2017): „Make It Real and Get Dirty!“ [english version]

Author: Holger Lund
Full Title: Make It Real and Get Dirty! On the Development of Post-digital Aesthetics in Music Video
Published: June 2017
Language: English
Pages: 10

For the original german version, see Lund (2015): „Make It Real & Get Dirty! Zur Entwicklung postdigitaler Ästhetiken im Musikvideo.“

Citation: Lund, Holger (2017): „Make It Real and Get Dirty! On the Development of Post-digital Aesthetics in Music Video.“ Kulle, Daniel/Lund, Cornelia/Schmidt, Oliver/Ziegenhagen, David (eds.): Post-digital Culture, http://www.post-digital-culture.org/hlund-eng.

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Abstract

Under the imperativist title “Make It Real and Get Dirty!” the analysis considers the development of several strategies of post-digital aesthetics in music video. A first look will be taken at examples for an interrelation between post-digitality and realness—the latter term here used to describe a material, tangible reality.

Then an attempt will be made to more closely define the semantic range of the post-digital, before finally the development of post-digital aesthetics in music video is followed from a historical viewpoint based on a choice of various characteristic videos.

Digitality forces entities to disassemble, since they have to be fed into binary digital code. The integrity of any entity is necessarily shattered to allow for digital processing and representation. How to respond to this process? Several aesthetic strategies have been developed within the post-digital like a) a return to analog synthesizers and a bric-a-brac aesthetic in both music and video, b) the simulation of analogicity by digital means, for example by digital simulations of analog synthesizers or bric-a-brac aesthetics, c) the creation of “handmade-digital” hybrids, and d) a phenomenon that could be labeled hyper-digitality. Here, digitality is exposed very openly and points to the inadequacies attached to the digital.

What is the result of these strategies? Often enough a paradox attempt to achieve an unfragmented, true and real analogicity through the means of digitality, which, of course, fragments truth and realness by default. But that is not everything . . .

About the Author

Holger Lund works as an art and design researcher and as a curator. After deputizing the position of chair of design theory at the University of Pforzheim from 2008 to 2011, he began his duties as professor of media art, applied art, and design studies at the Ravensburg University of Cooperative Education. Since 2004 he has collaborated with Cornelia Lund to lead the media art platform fluctuating images (Berlin). His research focuses on media art, design research and music visualization. Publications: Audio.Visual – On Visual Music and Related Media (2009), Design der Zukunft (2014), both together with Cornelia Lund, and The New People. Musik als Seismograph (2014). In addition he runs the music label Global Pop First Wave, dedicated to pop history, especially Turkish and other non-western pop music of the 1960s and 1970s.