Aesthetics is one of the most well studied within the terrain of Humanities. Indeed, there are many projects and works which examine in-detail the Aesthetics, the interplays between body, systems, forms and nature, as well as specific concepts such as beauty, etc.
Tracing the history of Aesthetics through time we can find many perspectives and school of thoughts, from Plato and Aristotle's kalon to Kant's Aesthetics and Eco-Aesthetics, all studying the interplays between beauty, forms, bodies and nature. However, due to the rapid technological change and thoughts about our future as humans, the rise of new narratives such as posthumanism, cyborg aesthetics, robotic aesthetics, digital art (crypto art, etc.), are found within the terrain of Humanities.
Posthuman Aesthetics could definitely be a field in progress as the future of/in Art is an open debate. There are many interdisciplinary perspectives which study the boundaries between physical bodies and technologically advanced ones in order to envisage more on the ontological content of them (e.g. the shape, colors, elasticity, movement, form, mechanics and functionality, purpose, etc.). Th e questions that we have to raise are the start for thinking about the future of Aesthetics and Art in today's world. Some questions could be the below:
How about the body, system and nature of beauty in posthuman art?
How about the similarities and differences with the art of the past?
Which are the specific characteristics that shape and construct the theory of Posthuman Aesthetics? Are there any specific ones or shall we have to seek for new narratives within this branch? Why do we have to specify Posthuman Aesthetics from other sub-branches of Aesthetics and how about the interplays between cyborg, robotic, etc. aesthetics?
Can we define an interplay with Digital Art and Algorithms? Is Posthuman Aesthetics connected with Big Data?
All these questions set the basis for re-thinking Aesthetics and try to figure out the binaries. We have to think beyond our binaries if we wish to think about our future. How about the future of Art in outer space and who will define art there? Will any artist create art there? And what kind of art and Aesthetics will be shaped by? The answers seem easily could defeat and answered. The problem that is profound at the moment is that we need to be precise and work more closely with the concepts in praxis. It means that we have to figure out firstly the concepts and then try to set the basis of Posthuman Aesthetics which is not a separate field of research, but it connects the past with the future.
Working on the beauty of robotic or digital art means that we have firstly understand the concept of beauty as a classical idea (kalon) and then try to adopt this knowledge to our study case. For instance, a robot which can create art or play an instrument is an example of how a machine can act and re-act to its external world. It is not an absolute example of mimicry but a step of examining other to humans forms and their capabilities to extend human habits. The question here is not for who will play or create the best artwork but to explore AI's abilities to create art, what kind of art and for which purposes. All the examples of machine art are artistic ones as humans have created them. But, how about the future of robotic art if a robot can create a robotic artwork? Will all concepts and perspectives be "vanished" then? And how about the future of human art then?
The aim here is to explore more closely the boundaries of past with the present and presuppose some of our ethics in order to examine carefully the field of Posthuman Aesthetics as referred earlier it is a branch which is constantly in progress and with no general framework so far. The future is ahead us and we have a huge ground to explore. Let's see the future through our eyes and embodied experience to set the theory and praxis of posthumanism in art and aesthetics.
'Touch' the Future.
A Kinship of Human and More-than-Human World in Progress
...Senses, Embodied Experience, Mind, Cognition, Feelings, Anxieties, Life, Death, Imagination, Reality, Cyborg, Post-, Eco-, Citizen, Bio-, Humans, More-than-Human, Aesthetics, Systems, Nature, Bodies, Assemblages....
How about speculative future in Art?
How about the future of Art and the Art of future?
How about our biocosmic, artistic perception in a more-than-human world?
Why? Why not?
Harmony and balance are the key-words to enter both bio- and techno-spheres (in separation and no) and explore species' boundaries which shape larger boundaries (those of both spheres). How about other spheres and dimensions?