2026, Vol.77, No.

The Journal of Aesthetics and Science of Art 2024 KCI Impact Factor : 0.62

pISSN : 1229-0246
https://journal.kci.go.kr/ksasa

This paper examines how the contemporary technological environment, dominated by platform capitalism and social media, reconfigures the conditions of human communication, perception, and action. It critically analyzes how the connectivity and openness once promised by these media technologies are distorted in algorithmically driven, closed architectures, through which the attention and behavior of users are transformed into data that intensifies regimes of predictability and control. The study then reinterprets these technological conditions in the context of the Anthropocene and explores the possibility of a Neganthropocenic transformation with the concept of negentropy as a response to the acceleration of automation and entropic processes. In particular, it foregrounds the notions of the amateur and the time of intermittency as forms of negentropic practice, arguing that amateur modes of engagement — unsubsumed by the logics of efficiency and professionalization — can appropriate and modulate technologies in alternative ways to generate unpredictability and diversity. Furthermore, this paper interprets contemporary media art as a field of amateur performativity and contends that such artistic practices acquire their contemporary relevance and significance by opening new possibilities for communication and freedom in the era of platform capitalism.

Discourses on the crisis or “death” of cinema have existed since the dawn of film history, persisted throughout the 20th century, and continue in various forms to this day in 2025. Louis Lumière, one of the founders of cinema, remarked shortly after making his invention that “cinema is an invention without a future.” This essay posits three major conflicts that have persisted throughout the history of cinema. One concerns the mode of film viewing, another that of film production, and the last the tension between technological innovation and aesthetic justification. The first deals with the issue of a movie theater, the second with that of computer graphics and digital images, and the last the challenges posed internally to cinema by the development of cutting-edge technologies such as artificial intelligence films. These issues can be considered by introducing three conceptual pairs, that is, cinematographic system versus kinetoscopic system, cinema made by shooting versus cinema made by drawing, and technical invention versus aesthetic invention. By carefully applying these categories to the future of cinema while fully considering its historical development, they may provide meaningful implications for the current situation, which is confusing due to complex phenomena and distracting discussions.

In the 2025 Title Match exhibition Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries vs. Hong Jin-Hwon: No Middle Ground, the two participating artists presented their works in ways that were so distinct that there seemed to be “no middle ground” between them. This paper analyzes how each artist generates disagreement and returns the act of thinking to individual viewers, focusing on the works included in the exhibition. According to Jacques Rancière, politics is not a process of harmonious decision making among members of society, but a performative field that arises when those without a share claim their share from those who possess it, thereby reconstructing common sense. According to Rancière, political art, therefore, is not an art of activism that provides correct answers for the direction society should take. Rather, it should question existing ethical and representational regimes and create disagreement. YHCHI arranged works to be viewed one at a time, in a fixed sequence determined by the artists, thereby directing the flow of spectatorship while maintaining a divided attitude toward each issue in the works and encouraging autonomous interpretation by individual viewers. Hong Jin-Hwon, on the other hand, not only juxtaposed photographs in parallel but also layered multiple events in his videos, prompting viewers to actively associate disparate images and events. The two artists share a common ground in that they do not propose a single correct answer but instead raise questions and return the act of thought to the viewer.