I find myself continually returning to these tweet from one of my favorite cultural theorists Mat Dryhurst(also a musician & partner/collaborator with Holly Herndon).
While speculating on what radical new design and aesthetic trends are next-which, I’m sure is a very lucrative niche for some consultant out there-I wanted to approach the question through a lens of negation.
Looking back at futuristic visions from the past, it seems clear that not only did almost all of them miss the mark but through their creation and existence, they continue to influence how we envision what the future might look like. As a result, much of the speculative or ‘radical’ design is a pastiche of past visions of the future.
Thus by calling out what the radical aesthetics of the future won‘t be, maybe we can start to understand where the whitespace might exist…
The future of aesthetics:
Won’t be stuck on the grid.
Won’t be composed rectilinear objects or parts.
Won’t use commercial fonts.
Won’t be based on English or follow English reading conventions(left to right, top to bottom).
Won’t be intended for humans, but instead to help bots and sensors.
Won’t exist at all.
Won’t be focused on the metropolis.
The images detached from every aspect of life fuse in a common stream in which the unity of this life can no longer be reestablished. Reality considered partially unfolds, in its own general unity, as a pseudo-world apart, an object of mere contemplation. The specialization of images of the world is completed in the world of the autonomous image, where the liar has lied to himself. The spectacle in general, as the concrete inversion of life, is the autonomous movement of the non-living.
Guy Debord, Society of the Spectacle.
