The Aesthetics of Post–Digital Imaging – Between Camera Traps and Virtual Reality

The aesthetics of post-digital imaging – Between camera traps and virtual reality creatively maps the recent developments in the field of post-digital imaging, spanning across the broad spectrum of visual production: from artistic forms of techno-ecological practice to “operational images” of ecological monitoring to some examples of virtual reality.

Addressing the condition of post-digitality as the consequence of the fact that computing technologies have become inseparable from the embodied practices of everyday life, it demonstrates how imaging born between physical space, computing technology, and the activity of its users establishes hybrid ontological coalitions.

This, in turn, results in a necessity to develop the new epistemic and ontological perspectives, capable of a better understanding the complexity of image production seen as a process rather than a set of visual objects.

The analyses offered in the book cover the novelty of visual forms born between physical reality and networked digital media: new media art, environmental protection, and ecological research, as well as some examples of virtual reality.

Therefore, different modes of the post-digital aestheticization are explored, including instances of techno-ecological art practice, consumer-generated virtual reality (360 panoramas), VR art and e-literature, and the use of camera traps in the ecological monitoring.

All types of imaging analyzed in the book have been born as hybrid entities, capable of forging ontological coalitions, bridging the disparate realities of nature, code, and data transmission.