TECHOLOGICAL PROGRESS AND OBSOLESCENCE

Text topic: Visual Art as a Mass Communication Medium

Text author: Дивна Вуксановић

The text refers to specific forms of representation of visuality and visual works of art in new social media, or more precisely on Facebook, currently the most popular net of the type. Refering to characteristic examples from the actual media practice, the author demonstrates two types of conditionality connected to “transfer” of visual information from the classic media and institutional environment of museum and gallery exhibitions to the domains of syber space and social net communications.The first conditionality is defined by the technology as such, i.e. the structure and specific forms of communication or the expected users behaviour on the Facebook; the other is marked by digital and multimedia approach to aesthetics and, more often than not, by the aesthetic dilettantism of users’ expression on the net. In this sense, the technology eases and democratizes the aesthetic expression of the Facebook users, but in the same time threats to impoverish the aesthetic dimension of transfer and exchange of visual messages in this media, and reduce it to “obsolescence” of expression, kitsch and trash aesthetics, with final result in general degradation of aesthetic taste visible on the Facebook social network.