The Aesthetisphere:

The Aesthetics of a World Culture Fusion

By Dani E. Day

(Aesthetisphere is the term I use to describe the following)

The world is at our fingertips. We enter a keyword in the search engine of choice and an abundance of images and texts floods our screens. The impact this has on our minds and our sense of aesthetics is phenomenal. The twentieth century impact of media, movies and international news has changed and evolved the way people view themselves, their culture, communities and art. This evolution has reached epidemic proportions in the twenty-first century with the increased contact and availability of information and ideas presented via the Internet. This accessible atmosphere of world-cultural influences has created a fusion of ideas and cultures, thoughts and techniques and has opened a gaping hole for the world to vividly witness the global effects on the aesthetisphere.

The cultural context of any given image is merely a click away from the image itself if not embedded in the image or vise verse. The information attached via "link" at the bottom, side or top of a computer screen can connect the viewer from New England to Brazil and back via Australia's Outback! The only limitation is that of the viewer. If there is no question asked, the information is not given. If the question is posed, the information is available. The obligation to use the information in a logical sense is left to the imagination of the viewer. Is creation then a new implication for re-assimilation of information?

Can an artist go beyond the confines of time and space via cyberspace? Is the element of global culture at the inlet of oceanic abundance? The answer to these questions can be found with a simple search. An Internet search of global art can give the answers the seeker wants to find. Pick any link and the viewer is transported to anywhere they want to explore. If the viewer is extremely cunning or at very least multi-lingual, the expansion of possibilities opens even further. The unrelenting availability, deemed effective as long as the server of choice continues to function, is the paradox that instigates this phenomenon and perpetuates the effect. Would this aesthetisphere exist if the power grid of information were switched off? ...MORE