Computational Diffusion and Art’s Radical Rematerialization
by Tanya Toft Ag
This chapter characterizes a dynamic of computational diffusion that transforms all urban surfaces, materials, architectures and infrastructures of our world. I describe how this dynamic is reflected in a conceptual shift from ‘dematerialization’ to ‘rematerialization’ in digital- and media-based art. Namely in a manner I describe as radical rematerialization, denoting how media art implements directly and operationally into the surfaces, connections and (media) architectures that ‘materialize’ (or make up) our environments and life-worlds today. Within the Nordic context, in which resistance happens through sensible redistribution rather than activism and protest, radical rematerialisation enlivens a political aesthetics in art, potentially changing (by re-materializing) how the world is organized and fabricated ‘materially’ and sensibly.