Dec
7
Week 11 Render ghosts and the ‘new aesthetic’.
December 7, 2011 | 8 Comments
At the risk of sounding like a 1970s kids TV show, this notion of render ghosts caught my eye in a direct feed on my Lifestream from booktwo.org. There, James Bridle is talking about the bleeding into the physical world of digital imagery – The New Aesthetic: Waving at the Machines. Bridle starts out by showing pictures of Render Ghosts; that is the created figures who appear in the imagined futures of envisioned new buildings, on hoardings or perhaps digital architectural representations. As Bridle points out these ghosts inhabit a ‘notional space in which we imagine a possible future’.
Further to this he shows examples of how digital imagery has come into the real world, though such examples as ‘pixelated’ art or architecture.
Beyond this he starts to look at how digital technology can record or watch the world, through, for instance, online satellite pictures that distort or make alien our perception of the world, or to look at how we re-enact reality through the virtual, such as digital re-enactment where footage is not available.
Bridle’s main point is the bleeding into reality of the digital and seems to me to encapsulate elements of the posthuman, also linking back to my posthuman pedagogy of the monstrous or uncanny in exopedagogy. Buildings represented as pixels change our aesthetics to something which embodies the not real. The Render Ghosts are uncanny in that they represent possible people from a possible future but they also represent ideal visions of our world where the ghosts are families, young people, professionals, socialising and living out possible lives in public or private spaces. As such they represent a ‘world coming into being’ (Bridle) and this made me think about exopedagogy as an ‘education out of bounds’, Sian’s ideas on digital spaces and learning as uncanny, and Edwards’ suggestion that posthuman pedagogy might conceivably be, rather than a relationship between subject and object, a ‘gathering’ (to my mind a term which has it’s own uncanny connotations).
At the beginning of creating our Lifestreams, Anna and I discussed the process as writing or as aggregation and, last week, Grace agreed with the view in my blog that our Lifestreams were perhaps only to be made sense of in retrospect. As such our Lifestreams would then be a posthuman pedagogy, a gathering or coming into being, and perhaps a notional representation of ourselves as render ghosts.
8 Comments so far
Hi Carol, I really value your posts and I’ve relied so much during this course on coming to your site to help make sense of what I’ve been reading and thinking about. You have a great way of clarifying ideas and introducing apposite and enlightening examples. The same with your Tweets! It’s the end of the course and I’m going to miss this aspect of the experience. Many thanks for all you have shared! The idea of Render Ghosts makes so much sense in Dubai where so many of the buildings and ideas of buildings seem to have evolved from digital images. They are all too often dismissed in the West as “Disneyland” or “Duvegas” but this course has helped me see that they are really forms of digital crossover. We were supposed to get an iPod Building that revolved. Instead, we have some amazing buildings that look like pixilated images or pieces of digital hardware. Once again, you’ve given me a boost and my final assignment seems a little less daunting.
Hi Neil
Thanks for those very nice comments – I’ve actually very much enjoyed your posts (really great use of graphics made them great to view) and twitter chat – I think you had a good Scottish term for that but cant remember it right now! Do keep in touch on twitter as it would be interesting to hear what you’re up to. Next term I’m doing the online assessment module.
I love that term Duvegas! Good luck with your assessment…I have to get on with mine post haste as I’m away over New Year..eek!