Aesthetics (BA) 2026/27 – Aesthetics of Communication and Information
In the information age, any attempt to extract expressive orders out of complexity and construct reality as a meaningful whole must confront with the modes of technology. Thinkers have begun to entertain the possibility (real or fictitious, desirable or dystopian) of mechanizing meaning production since the 1950s, in a wide counter-movement to the idealist, romantic and vitalist conceptions emerged from the European crisis. More recently, however, the atmosphere around symbolic technology and technological symbolism has taken a distinctive anti-rationalist turn: magic, religion and myth reappear side by side with algorithms and large language models, casting a new light on the problems of autonomy, means/ends and meaning-making. The course will explore what is communication in light of information technology and the socio-technical imaginaries of the late 20th century. We will use texts by Umberto Eco, Max Bense, Federico Campagna, James Bridle, Erik Davis and more as a gateway to discuss today’s symbolic economies and their instantiations, like platforms, infrastructures, data centers, digital media.