Aesthetics of the Virtual

Reconfigures classic aesthetic concepts in relation to the novelty introduced by virtual bodies.
Arguing that the virtual body is something newnamely, an entity that from an ontological perspective has only recently entered the worldRoberto Diodato considers the implications of this kind of body for aesthetics. Virtual bodies insert themselves into the space opened up by the famous distinction in Aristotles Physics between natural and artificial beingsthey are both. They are beings that are simultaneously events; they are images that are at once internal and external; they are ontological hybrids that exist only in the interaction between logical-computational text and human bodies endowed with technological prostheses. Pursuing this line of thought, Diodato reconfigures classic aesthetic concepts such as mimesis, representation, the relation between illusion and reality, the nature of images and imagination, and the theory of sensory knowledge.

Roberto Diodato is Associate Professor of Aesthetics at the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart in Milan, Italy.

Justin L. Harmon is a teaching assistant in the Philosophy Department at the University of Kentucky.

Silvia Benso is Professor of Philosophy at the Rochester Institute of Technology.