Media Aesthetics in the Age of Technological Generation : Focusing on Memory, Impulse, and Value

Abstract

This paper argues that generative artificial intelligence constitutes a media condition that cannot be reduced to technological reproduction or technological editing. Whereas reproduction distributed identical copies and editing dynamically rearranged existing data, technological generation organizes knowledge through an asymmetrical interaction between a human agent, who sets purposes and bears judgment and responsibility, and a generative system, which produces outputs conditionally from learned statistical distributions. The paper examines this transformation through the categories of memory, impulse, and value. First, drawing on Bernard Stiegler’s theory of tertiary retention, it defines the dialogic reconfiguration of memory not as an exchange between two equivalent memories but as a relational transformation of human memory triggered by probabilistic machine output. Second, it reconstructs Friedrich Schiller’s play drive as an emergent impulse composed of a generative motive and a resonant motive. Third, it reworks Walter Benjamin’s aura into Artura, a relational and processual form of aesthetic presence grounded in relational originality rather than in the material presence of an original. Artura is distinguished from digital aura, synthetic or postdigital aura, and the algorithmic sublime. Its distinctive explanatory power lies in identifying when traces of a generative process become legible, produce interpretive friction, and reorganize a viewer’s memory, sensation, and judgment. This distinction also clarifies the difference between participatory Artura, which may arise within the process of generation, and receptive Artura, which may arise for viewers who did not participate in that process. A limited analysis of Refik Anadol’s Unsupervised-Machine Hallucinations-MoMA demonstrates that immersive spectacle or algorithmic awe alone does not constitute Artura. Artura emerges only when generative conditions are critically apprehended and transformed into a new constellation of judgment. The paper concludes that media aesthetics in the age of technological generation should analyze not only generated artifacts but also the asymmetrical relations, visible frictions, and human responsibilities through which those artifacts are produced and received.