Absurd Ecologies: Computation, Aesthetics, and Crisis in an Era of Illegibility

Abstract

We live in a world of crises which appear to be, among other things, producing a semantic breakdown between populations, individuals, and their environment. Additionally, there is widespread discourse about how our global, interconnected media environment — which is to say, the internet/digital infrastructures — has impacted communication, ecologies, climate, social identity, and spatial relations. Drawing on Timothy Morton’s influential yet controversial neologism hyperobject (an object or phenomenon distributed on a massive scale) first proposed in 2013, this paper frames both the so-called Anthropocene and the digital network as hyperobjects that are transforming cultures, epistemologies, and affective relations. Through an analysis of materiality, affect, and aesthetics, this thesis focuses on strange, reactionary, and unusual online content and discusses why such content might be read as a response to the widespread effects of the Anthropocene, the illegibility of the digital network, and the strangeness of our contemporary moment. This thesis presents a set of interrelated phenomena and infrastructures that have produced an emergent ecology — a series of interconnected, dynamic, and widely distributed systems — of absurdity, which in turn has given the absurd more critical purchase in aesthetics and political maneuvering. As such, this thesis considers the validity of framing our contemporary moment as one particularly mired in the absurd, as well as the ways absurdity and novel aesthetic experiences might be leveraged productively. In addition to critical analysis, this thesis also employs a creative audiovisual practice intended to explore the written portion’s major themes.