VIRTUAL ISTANBUL HERITAGE(S)

Abstract

According to Bridle, new media art and its concomitant aesthetics are “collectively intelligent, distributed, and crowdsourced, composed of many loosely connected small parts. It is an attempt to understand both how technology shapes what we do and how we mentally perceive these things. New media aesthetics covers a broad field, and its mode of framing makes it difficult to define its theoretical foundations and narrative. It is not necessary for it to be supported or explained by any fundamental theory” (Paul & Levy, 2015, pp. 29-30). The fact that these artworks do not allow concretization of a particular art object but make use of different materials makes it impossible to read them through the classic medium typology, their aesthetics being as flexible and dynamic as their medium (Arol, 2023, p. 101). new media art, as well as the aforementioned multimodal characteristic, the viewer/participant is a fundamental element in completion of the work. Due to the contribution of the audience/participant, new media art aesthetics is described by Meikle (2002) as an “unfinished” aesthetic. (as cited in Stalcup, 2016, p. 151). More than half the global population became city dwellers at the beginning of the twenty-first century, an era which is increasingly characterized by urban concerns. As Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) have revolutionized information flow such that urbanization has been forced into a relationship with globalization and neo-liberal economics. Aesthetics of new media art play a central role in relation to lived experiences associated with large-scale industrial modernization patterns in urban and domestic spaces where new media are employed as part of the social fabric. It can be said that the origins of new media art stem from postmodern urban life.