Post-Digital Is Post- Screen

Arnheim’s Visual Thinking Applied to Art in The Expanded Digital Media Field

Abstract

If the interest in the post-digital seems to point at anything, it is that the usefulness of the digital as a discursive element in analyzing the impact of technology in society and culture is waning. Digital technologies on the other hand only grow and proliferate. This raises the question: why do we need or want to discuss matters in terms of a post- digital condition if digital media do not seem to lose ground but rather expand? I suggest we use the term post-digital to establish new points of perspective to refine the analysis of digital media and digital technologies. I look at this issue in the context of art. Here, the digital realm tends to be perceived as screen-based. To examine and understand art practices in which screens are not at the center of a work a screen-based analysis does not seem to make much sense. I try to show the limitations of the screen-based approach of the digital through Alexander Galloway’s analysis of this problem in his book The Interface Effect.