Radical Aesthetics and the Digital Self: Embodied Onto-Phenomenology in the Age of Digital Mediation
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper |
|---|---|
| Topics | Philosophy of mind |
| Key points | Argues that digital media do not weaken embodiment but reorganize it, proposing a framework of "radical aesthetics" in which embodied, affective sense-making (aisthesis) is the primary condition of reality's appearance. Contends that images and interfaces actively configure the world by modulating sensorimotor coupling, entraining affect through feedback loops, and pre-structuring perception via algorithmic anticipation, yielding a differently real rather than diminished reality. |
Abstract
Digital media have been repeatedly described as disembodying, virtualizing, or abstracting human experience. This article rejects that premise. It argues that the digital does not weaken embodiment but reorganizes it at a fundamental level. Drawing on embodied simulation and phenomenology, I propose a framework of radical aesthetics in which aisthesis—embodied, affective sense-making—is the primary condition of reality’s appearance. From this perspective, images and interfaces do not represent the world; they actively configure it. Digital environments modulate sensorimotor coupling, entrain affect through feedback loops, and pre-structure perception via algorithmic anticipation. What emerges is not a diminished reality, but a differently real—one governed less by resistance than by structured responsiveness. The digital self is thus not a disincarnate projection but an embodied process of aesthetic subjectivation shaped by regimes of visibility and recognition. To understand digital culture today, we must abandon the myth of disembodiment and confront mediation as the very ground of experience.
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