ABSTRACT
The second part of this book looks in more depth and detail at the particular aesthetic character of the digital genres introduced and historically contextualised in Part I. As we have seen, a tradition of popular amusement relates the new forms to an aesthetic that turns upon modes of spectacle and sensation. However, as the latest expressions of this tradition these genres are quite distinctive. The manner in which they continue this tendency to spectacle is subject both to the enabling powers of the digital technology that supports them and to certain moulding pressures operative within the encompassing visual culture of which they are a part. The aesthetic character of this culture is itself rather particular – indeed, many of its defining characteristics or traits manifest a marked resemblance to those of the spectacle tradition itself. It is a culture that, in a growing number of its practices and expressions, endorses form over content, the ephemeral and superficial over permanence and depth, and the image itself over the image as referent.
