contained in the essence and reception of these elements, as James Bridle puts

it:

New Aesthetic is concerned with everything that is not visible in these images and
quotes, but that is inseparable from them, and without which they would not exist.115

The central issue is, therefore, the visibility and invisibility of the digital, a matter
of sensitizing the gaze, to recognize how we look at the analogue through a digital-
influenced perspective, and how we already experience our analogue world as
being shaped by digital influences. Christiane Paul and Malcolm Levy describe
this interplay, the two sides of which are mutually dependent, as follows:

The New Aesthetic seems to be a twofold operation: first, the confluence and
convergence of digital technologies in various materialities; and second, the ways
in which this merger has changed our relationship with these materialities and our
representation as subjects. The New Aesthetic captures the embeddedness of the
digital in the objects, images and structures we encounter on a daily basis and the
way we understand ourselves in relation to them. It captures the process of seeing
like, and being seen through, digital devices.116

These aspects of the merging and blending of the virtual and the physical and
also of the digital with analogue can be extended here to all the observations
portrayed and should be understood as a quintessence of these statements. This
concentration on the process of perception in the digital context is, for one thing, an
observational process, but it is also, as is sometimes implied, an active procedure
and the conscious assumption of critical observation. At this point, there is a
possible range of ways as to how these insights and works can be actively used.
This can happen in various contexts – and one of them is art.
From Chapter 4 onwards, I will relate the currents, perspectives and insights
presented here to my own creative activity. These ideas represent a larger
framework and leitmotif, upon which my work has been very concretely oriented
in the past ten years and, indirectly, earlier. I understand my compositional
work as a tool with which to describe and explore the dividing line between the
analogue and digital worlds. My pieces deal with this altered viewpoint, or rather,
a guided redirection of the eye. As previously described, the perceptual change of
perspective is to be actively brought about or revealed by creative resources. To
draw attention to this circumstance, or to make the invisible of the digital visible,
are the objectives of my works.
Before this, in the following chapter, I will review my basic working methods in the
context of artistic research. I see my compositional approach as an explorative tool

115 Bridle, James: ‘The New Aesthetic and its Politics’, 2013.
online: https://booktwo.org/notebook/new-aesthetic-politics/ (Retrieved: 20.1.2020)
116 Paul, Christiane and Levy, Malcolm: ‘Genealogies of the New Aesthetic’,
in: Postdigital Aesthetics. Art, Computation and Design, David M. Berry and Michael Dieter,
London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015 (= Nr. 24), p.27.

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with which to make post-digital aspects perceptible and palpable. Since I design
techniques, tools and experimental settings for this purpose, it is appropriate to
place my work into the discourse of artistic research. In the attempt not only to illust-
rate the postdigital but to make it perceptible, I design settings that allow an open
outcome or an open interpretation, motivated by an explorative character, with the
aim of making digitality and its consequences tangible, criticizable and sensually
experienceable. Through these research approaches, it is hoped to achieve an
insight that can complement theoretical considerations. In these compositions,
I also try to learn something: about myself, technology and human interaction,
the next step being to give the same opportunity to the audience. Therefore, I
understand a composition as a framework: a staked-out, defined setting: a chance
to learn, within these set parameters. This research is my driving force behind
creating an individual setting for each piece anew: focusing upon an area of which
I myself have only a premonition of how it will precisely behave.

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3. METHODS OF ARTISTIC RESEARCH
The definition of objectives and the creation process of most of my work is based
on the design of a setting, experiment or trial. In many cases, I begin a piece by
formulating a scenario within which I want to investigate, observe or provoke certain
events and interactions. Alternatively, my pieces begin with a hypothesis or state-
ment that I want to test or illustrate through the work, or to enable it as an experience.
Intuition and subjectivity still play an equally important role in the working process,
but this takes place within the fixed framework of a setting, often reminiscent of
experimental set-ups. These settings frequently contain technical (digital) tools. It
is then a goal to either fathom the effects, mechanisms and implications of these
technical tools or, based on a hypothesis, to illustrate or make them palpable.
Even if the approaches are not strict experimental setups such as in a physical
experiment, the selection of the setting, and thus the content to be reflected upon,
plays an essential role in the conception, execution, variation and evaluation of the
pieces. Consequently, two very different methods (of intuition and formalization)
meet here, and I try to structure them in the compositional process. Accordingly,
the interplay of selected technical features on the one hand and intuitive aspects
on the other can be found in these pieces both in the content and in the process
of creation.
Thus, the form of my artistic practice also touches significantly on the question
of in which way, with which methodology and with which defined objectives
composition can generate knowledge and insight or to make impacts and factors
of the (technical) world experienceable. I would therefore like to look at my artistic
practice and the approaches used from the perspective of artistic research, thereby
attempting to classify the procedure and define the desired objectives as a search
for (sensual) insight. Accordingly, I will next present basic characteristics of artistic
research (Chapter 3.1), followed by a description (Chapter 3.2) of how I approached
the development of the pieces and how this methodology can be reconciled with
core ideas of artistic research. This is therefore the methodological basis for
implementing the described contents from Chapter 4 onwards. Here I will focus
on the concrete realizations – the finished compositions, their classification and
the context in which they were created.

3.1 Artistic Research

The concept of "artistic research" has become a lively and controversial topic of
discussion in recent years. The structure of this work cannot reflect the whole
debate in its entirety. In the following, however, the basic outlines and most
important basic questions will be briefly presented (for a detailed overview see 117
118
). The categorization of artistic research, which is currently under development,

117 Mersch, Dieter and Ott, Michaela (Hg.): Kunst und Wissenschaft [ Art and Science ],
Munich: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 2007.
118 Bippus, Elke (Pub.): Kunst des Forschens: Praxis eines ästhetischen Denkens
[ The Art of Research: The Practice of Aesthetic Thinking], Zürich: Diaphanes, 2012 (= Nr. 4).

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