“Toward a process philosophy for digital aesthetics” presented by Barker
Symposium:
Session Title:
- Transformative Creativity - Participatory Practices I
Presentation Title:
- Toward a process philosophy for digital aesthetics
Presenter(s):
Venue(s):
Abstract:
Abstract
The creativity of the world is the throbbing emotion of the past hurling itself into new transcendent fact. It is the flying dart of which Lucretius speaks, hurled beyond the bounds of the world. _Alfred North Whitehead, Adventure of Ideas
When Whitehead writes about the creativity of the world he is not discussing human creativity. Rather he is directing our thoughts toward the actual creativity of every moment of the world. He is indicating that each instant in time – and everything that exists in that instant – is a new creation; the world is a process of continual becoming (Whitehead 1978: 18-22). So when Whitehead talks about the ‘past hurling itself into new transcendent fact’ (Whitehead 1967: 177), he is proposing that the transcendent fact, which, in his terms, is the becoming of the present moment, takes form as the past transfers information to the present. This is what Whitehead terms prehension, the present’s grasping of information from the past in order to use this information in its own becoming. This is the essence of process and the way in which we may begin to think about a philosophy of the interactive event and, more generally, a process philosophy for digital aesthetics.
