Aesthetics is relevant to many aspects of computing. Here, we are mostly concerned of the superficial visual appearances and their technological bases.
Permacomputing Aesthetics: Potential and Limits of Constraints in Computational Art, Design and Culture · Ninth Computing within Limits 2023
Permacomputing is a nascent concept and a community of practice centred around design principles that embrace limits and constraints as a positive thing in computational culture, and on creativity with scarce computational resources. As a result, permacomputing aims to provide a countervoice to digital practices that promote maximisation, hyper-consumption and waste. It seeks to encourage practices as an applied critique of contemporary computer technology that privileges maximalist aesthetics where more pixels, more frame rate, more computation and more power equals more potential at any cost and without any consequences. We believe that such a critical practice can be relevant to artists, designers and cultural practitioners working with computer and network technology who are interested in engaging with environmental issues. This is particularly relevant given the tendency in art, design and cultural production to rely on tools and techniques designed to maximise productivity and mass consumption. In this paper, we argue for the potential of permacomputing as a rich framework for exploring creative design constraints building on a long history of applying constraints in art, design and cultural practices. Because of the need to reconfigure the modes of production and organisation within computational practices, this calls for a different understanding of aesthetics, one that goes beyond the formal evaluation of how things look, but addresses how aesthetics can also be systems of relations, sensing and making sense that are already present in the process of making. We will also discuss the challenges faced by permacomputing practitioners, such as the complicated link with retro-computing, post-digital culture and nostalgia, as well as the problem of constraints in relation to the aesthetisation of poverty, and more generally what it means to work with self-imposed limits in a more privileged socioeconomic context.
ELI5 : What exactly is Aesthetic Visual Analysis?
I am a designer and I recently read about Netflix using an image discovery tool called AVA to generate frames from the content on their platform…
Physicality: the new age of UI
There’s a lot of rumors of a big impending UI redesign from Apple. Let’s imagine what’s (or what could be) next for the design of iPhones, Macs and iPads.
Why we’re still obsessed with 90s aesthetics in 2026
Decoding the visual cycle: how tactile 90s aesthetics bridge the gap between sterile tech and human emotion in 2026.
Aesthetics
Aesthetics[a] is the branch of philosophy that studies beauty, taste, and related phenomena. In a broad sense, it includes the philosophy of art, which examines the nature of art, artistic creativity, the meanings of artworks, and audience appreciation.
aesthetic-computer/at at main · whistlegraph/aesthetic-computer
Contribute to whistlegraph/aesthetic-computer development by creating an account on GitHub.
Feeling of Computing
Feeling of Computing is an online community with a welcoming, cooperative, and revolutionary spirit. We are unified in the belief that the computer is tragically less humane than it could be. There’s a world of possibilities that get more beautiful the further away from the norm you go. We’re here to explore this world together, to discuss ideas about theory and practice, and to champion and support our members’ research and development efforts to reimagine the computer.
Stop settling for overused fonts
Visual font discovery for designers. Explore fonts by similarity, vibe, use case, and popularity.
Computer Plant Life
"Thе Commodore РЕТ offers you а safe passage through the primeval swamр of computerization," says the ad copy accompanying this uncredited illustration in a June 1981 issue of Personal Computer World: That image and ad copy offers a perfect example of how most retro tech illustration works: Visualize the hell
toward a new aesthetic
Lately I’ve been thinking about what being online looks like. The actual look of it. The aesthetic. As I continue to think and write and talk about escaping...
toward a new aesthetic
Lately I’ve been thinking about what being online looks like. The actual look of it. The aesthetic. As I continue to think and write and talk about escaping...
Interface Realisms: The Interface as Aesthetic Form
Until now, digital arts have largely been understood to belong in traditional genres or forms of art: we are said to have electronic literature, net.art, or electronic, techno music. Sometimes interesting discussions have arisen concerning the very ontology of digital art, and questions such as whether net.art should be seen within the tradition of the visual arts or as a form of literature connecting it to the different traditions and questions regulating these arts.[1] While it is not my intent to disconnect digital art from traditional art, or to argue for the irrelevance of the traditional forms of art, I will in the following establish the interface as an aesthetic and critical framework for digital art.
On power, aesthetics, materiality and change in data visualization
Notes from the Information+ Conference at MIT/Northeastern University, Boston.
Designer Desktops
Modern, inspirational quote desktop wallpapers and iPhone/iPad backgrounds made by graphic designers.
Say precisely what you mean.
The words designers use when they know what they’re looking at.
