Polyaesthetic sights and sounds: media aesthetics in The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore, Upgrade Soul and The Vampyre of Time and Memory

Abstract

This article explores the notion of polyaesthetics as a contemporary media condition that relates to questions of production, reception and analysis of media objects. Primarily, the paper is concerned with understanding the aesthetics of digital media works that remediate existing genres of creative practice and ultimately move towards creating new digital media forms that are conditional and provisional.The three digital works that the article analyses – The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore, Upgrade Soul and The Vampyre of Time and Memory – exemplify contemporary strategies and changing patterns of creation, distribution and reception evidenced in how we create, read, listen to, engage with, play and understand contemporary digital works.