- The use of information and aesthetics shapes the way in which we form our thoughts and opinions about society and the way in which we interpret and understand the world. Aesthetic journalism works on this premise but incorporates the imagination to turn a mirror to society with the intention of also revealing the lens through which we view the world.
- We know what aesthetic journalism is when we see it, but it can't be succinctly defined.
- Aesthetic Journalism reveals, to define it thwarts it's function to reveal.
Definition of information: Data that we receive through experience, media and power structures
Definition aesthetics: Style, visual material, visual experience, formal decisions, ordering of symbols, arrangement of the sensible
Case studies of artists working with information, aesthetics and the imagination:
- Natalie Almada - started with statistics on the drug war and presented it with silent scenes of a cemetery where drug lords are buried. She doesn't dictate to audiences how they should feel about it.
- Jill Magid - took an organized system and revealed the human behind it. She appropriated the codes of reality / truth and inverted them, blurring the lines between fiction and non-fiction.
Where should aesthetic journalism live:
(Depends on the intent)
- The space has to be questioning
- It must exist between the coded space and the space without a context
- Public space, more every day spaces
- Reclaims the design of the infrastructure
- Not location oriented - books/ internet
- Documentation - for the more ephemeral
Where can we find aesthetic journalism:
- Gallery
- Media
- Museums
- Public spaces
- Film festivals
- Art festivals
- Publications
- Online
