Grant Petrey

I aim to explore affect and subjectivity within the context of a culture of hyper-mediation, and the unfolding manifestations of digital culture and technology. The potential of expanded new media practice within moving image, and the exploration of the role and language of affect, will form the foundation of this practice based thesis within fine art media practice. Considering temporality and mediation will be central to exploring the role of affect within this context.

I intend to utilise the historical legacy of modernist artist moving image practice by acknowledging the strategies used in the endeavour to work towards a political aesthetic, via formal reflexivity and a rejection of narrative. I will produce work that engages with how new media formats within hyper-mediated cultural interactions may shape and influence subjectivity within digitalised and post-human culture.

Considering the role of affect and engaging with research into how it is defined has been important. The role of affect and gaining an understanding of its relationship to aesthetics and as part of a strategy to deconstruct the narratives of what constitute our ontology has been pursued. This materialist approach to much post structuralist writing has been complicated or added to with an engagement with devlopments in speculative philosophy in relation to Quentin Meillassoux. My reading has led me to consider the virtual and virtuality and the flows of power in relation to affect.

Considering ideas around the virtual that are proposed by Deleuze and also Baudrillard has been important, and to recognise the similarities and differences within their conception of the virtual and philosophical critique.