Tribal Aesthetics

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Definition

All aesthetics are tribal, but there's no certain universal sense that that thing is great. It is locally valued - the same in digital ecosystems - things are locally valued.

Convertibility of the human and nature (Simondon, 1958: 245)

Object-relations arise precisely from the “constitutive incompleteness of the individual”. In the beginning, or in nature, the individual or creature is incomplete.

“The technical object understood according to its essence – the technical object such that it has been invented, conceived and desired, and taken up by a human subject – becomes the support and the symbol of that relation we want to call trans-individual”.

If each product has a lifetime of a few years (and development time of longer) and we use a new computer every two years, we’re collectively part of those computers we threw away, because we co-produced with them. they are our interfaces, our spacesuits, our hands. our skin we have shed for newer, shinier cyborg skin.

Add up the years that we have spent evolving complex functionality and environmental adaption items internally and its number is in the millions. add up the time we’ve spent in externalizing functionalities and evolving abilities separately, letting demand, advertising and market conditions carve out a machine or external object’s ability to reproduce,

A vehicle itself is a prosthetic device, as a snail has a shell a car is a prosthetic that gives one superhuman speed. but we are used to these things - they are really quite incredible. To be superheroes in our own lives - to have the ability to choose our own external prosthesis, as a young graduate upgrades their external vehicle prosthetic as money is raised, and in doing so appears more attractive to the opposite gender. But if an interface or prosthetic device is not updated in relation to others, the prosthetic will turn against the wearer.

Old clothing, when not trendy, makes one appear out-of-date. Mullets cause derision and amusement. Large cell phones are called ‘bricks’ and draw grins of amusement.

There exists a finite amount of value that can exist, and once the value is replaced by the next prosthetic, woe be to they who do not upgrade, be it clothing or computers. in some countries, men with older cell phones are ashamed to be seen with them.

In Freud's Civilization and Its Discontents, his words suggest "a possible future in which the magnificence of humans as prosthetic gods is tempered by the ill-fitting and troublesome nature of their auxiliary organs (Freud, 11).

Records are 4th dimensional. You're getting a chance to be here while still being in another place in a another time.

Additional Reading