deliberately mixing up processes of making things discrete, calculable, indexed

and automated in unorthodox ways. In doing so, they form part of an epistemological
asterism of practices, experiences and mediations that follows the primacy of the
computal as normative. That is, the appearance of these terms can be interpreted
collectively as endeavours to elucidate the trajectories of ubiquitous digitalization;
they collectively form new patterns which can help us begin to map and historicize
the varieties of computal societies.46

Here, under “computal societies”, Berry describes a digitally shaped society,

whose practices, experiences and mediations are given by the paradigm of
discretization and calculability. Conventions and aesthetics of the digital are
rubbing off on the analogue world. This happens partly consciously, in the use of
“modern” styles and tools. It also happens unconsciously, within ourselves. We see
a book, a photo, a screen, a film, a telephone, a building, not detached from digital
properties, functions and interactions. Furthermore, the digital logic of calculation
also penetrates the analogue world in a concrete way – e.g.architecturally.
Increasingly often, the analogue world is not only stylistically digital but is
explicitly shaped by digital, algorithmic specifications. For example, sections of
airports, warehouses or delivery services can simply be regarded as the physical
representation of an algorithm (this permeation is sometimes reflected by the name
"New Aesthetic", and is discussed in more detail in Chapter 2.4). Our environment
is thus digitally viewed and digitally shaped. It is accordingly both an aesthetic and
a logical imprint, as David Berry notes:

Rather, surfaces themselves become thin machinery, containing not just the
possibility of a hermeneutic encounter but also an agency drawn from computation
itself. These surfaces point towards and suggest the very veneer of computation
networked across the terrain of everyday life, directed towards control and
surveillance. The postdigital is, then, both an aesthetic and a logic that informs the
re-presentation of space and time within an epoch that is afterdigital, but which
remains profoundly computational and organized through a constellation of
techniques and technologies to order things to stand by.47

46 Berry, David M.: ‘Thinking Postdigital Aesthetics: Art, Computation and Design’,
in: Postdigital Aesthetics. Art, Computation and Design, David M. Berry and Michael Dieter,
London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015 (= Nr. 24), pp. 1–11.
47 Berry, David M.: ‘The Postdigital Constellation’, in: Postdigital Aesthetics. Art, Computation and Design,
David M. Berry and Michael Dieter, London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015 (= Nr. 24), pp. 44-57.

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 The essential aspect here remains the ability to compute. This is reflected in the
editing capacity and manipulability of contents. We experience in this an effect
of digital “affordance”48 – i.e.a digital, offer-orientated character. The perceptual
psychological affordance concept describes the stimulative nature of an object,
i.e.the actions and interactions that a user could and would perform with the object,
based on the object's properties. This approach can be transferred to digital
implications, as Justin Hodgson postulates:

[…] The changes to textuality via computationality did not stop with typographical
play or manipulation of format. Rather, the combination of increased affordances
of manipulation (Marinetti in a machine) and new functions for engagement
(the promises of hyperlinks and algorithmic augmentation) brought textuality
alive in unprecedented ways — dramatically altering the range (and impact) of
ekphrastic practices (whether put to rhetorical ends or not).49

That we can interact with them and change them have become the overriding
characteristics of digital media and content. So: they are no longer rigid objects and
content: they are containers incorporating a range of manipulation and selection.
It can now be argued that this invitation to interact is, increasingly, deeply rooted
in our perception. In this way, the screen has taken on a new, formative role as an
interaction tool.

2.2.3 Post-Screen
An essential component that has been shaped by digitalization is the handling
of content through the presentation on a screen. Content has been displayed on
screens for a long time now, and, with the advent of television, this display has also
become a mass medium and a socially established mainstream.50 However, advanced
digitalization has changed how screens are used to present and represent in a more
comprehensive, multi-layered form. These are no longer merely a playback device
for produced, fixed content. Rather, the screen and the digital surface have become

48 “Affordances are an object’s properties that show the possible actions users can take with it, thereby suggesting
how they may interact with that object. For instance, a button can look as if it needs to be turned or pushed.
The characteristics of the button which make it look “turnable” or “pushable” together form its affordances.
Psychologist James Gibson coined “affordance” in 1977, referring to all action possibilities depending on users’
physical capabilities. So, a chair not only “affords” being “sat on”, but also “thrown”, “stood on”, etc. However, in
human-computer interaction (HCI) expert Don Norman […] defined as perceivable action possibilities—i.e.,only
actions users consider possible. Thus, an object’s affordances depend on users' physical capabilities and their
goals and past experiences. A chair only affords “sitting”, because past experience supports that action. Don
Norman’s definition of affordances as perceivable action possibilities soon became the predominant one in HCI and
UX design.” What are Affordances?,
online: https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/topics/affordances (Retrieved: 4.4.2020).
49 Hodgson, Justin: Post-Digital Rhetoric and the New Aesthetic.
Columbus: The Ohio State University Press, 2019, p. 6.
50 Also, using screens has a long tradition in art–for example, by Nam June Paik.

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an interface for communication, processing and interaction.51 We no longer see a
screen and the content displayed on it as content to be received, but rather as an
(interaction) surface, with which we can design, retrieve, edit, share, retouch and
communicate content ourselves. The integrity of the surface of content has given way
to the interactivity of the user interface. The focus of the screen has become possible
interaction.
Josephine Bosma concludes “post-digital” must be followed by “post-screen.” 52 53
Two consequences are conceivable here, parallel to the considerations about
post-digital: first, abandoning the screen or changing the way it is used. However,
forms of presentation that manage without a screen can be explicitly influenced
in their aesthetics by the contemporary use of a screen. This applies, for example,
to the Brush Stroke works of the artist Elisa Giardina Papa, which transfer digital
Photoshop tools into the analogue exhibition context. The non-use of a screen is
consequently no anachronistic step backwards since it is done in the knowledge of
the interface's potential. Second, the handling of a screen display can be regarded
differently. If the surface displays of desktop programs are embedded, for example,
in classic formats such as feature films, this reflects the fact that even a closed
format such as a Hollywood film is viewed on the screen through the users' eyes.
This is especially true for content that is received via streaming with a browser. Our
passive view has given way to an active user role. 54
David Berry thematizes the focus on the interface in the postdigital turn,
questioning the lasting role of the screen:

The postdigital, as an aesthetic, gestures towards a relation produced by digital

surfaces in a bewildering number of different places and contexts. This interface-
centricity is not necessarily screenic, however, and represents the current
emerging asterism that is formed around notions of art, computation and design.
In this conception, the postdigital is not purely a digital formation or artefact
– it can also be the concepts, networks and frameworks of digitality that are
represented (e. g. voxels, glitch, off-internet media, neo-analogue, ‘non-digital’
media, post-internet art). Nonetheless, the interesting aspect is the implicit notion
of surfaces as theatres of action and performance – such as through data visualization,
interactivity or material design – above and beyond a depth model, which highlights
the machinery of computation.55
51 Manovich, Lev: The Language of New Media, Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press (Leonardo), 2002.
52 “What is not directly visible is also less likely to be seen. Additional issues for art in the context of digital media
seem to be the visual impermeability or the spatial dispersion of specific works and practices. What I mean with
visual impermeability is the presence of somehow ‘hidden’ structures, like network technologies, code and software
processes, and even indirect influences of the Internet or of computer technology, in specific works of art.”
Bosma, Josephine: ‘Post-Digital is Post-Screen: Arnheim’s Visual Thinking applied to Art in the Expanded Digital
Media Field’, in: A Peer-Reviewed Journal About Post-Digital Research Vol 3 No 1 (2014).
online: https://aprja.net/article/view/116091 (Retrieved 20.7.2019).
53 Bosma, Josephine: ‘Post-Screen - Fehlerhafte Interpretationen des Digitalen in der Kunst’,
in : Kunstforum International [‘Post-Screen– Erroneous Interpretation of the Digital in Art’, in: Artforum International]
Nr 243 (2016), pp 56ff.
54 Manovich, Lev: The Language of New Media, Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press (Leonardo), 2002, pp. 94ff.
55 Berry, David M.: ‘The Postdigital Constellation’, in: Postdigital Aesthetics. Art, Computation and Design,
David M. Berry and Michael Dieter, London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015 (= Nr. 24), p. 44.

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