BEAUTY MEMORY ENTROPY

SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

 

The Production of Denial Aesthetics

Shane Reiner-Roth, MIT

 

ABSTRACT

“In the absence of depth, everything [will become] endlessly complex.” -Mark C. Taylor

 

In my talk, I will describe a recent history of materials, tools and techniques that have fueled public denial of material realities including climate change and material scarcity. Reflecting on the aesthetic production of denial’s past will be used to outline strategies for future development.

Consider the World's Fair House exhibition, sponsored by Formica for the 1964 World’s Fair. It presented consumers with, at first sight, a familiar living room setting, but upon further inspection, the materials on display - such as wood, marble, and stone - revealed themselves to be plastic, paper-thin imitations. In the wake of natural material depletion, consumers were offered signs that there was no depletion to speak of. Indoor ski resorts and AstroTurf are the latest bits of testimony to the state - and denial of - the Anthropocene.

As we lose natural resources, we are likely to regain them as weightless images. The positivist use of new (and often environmentally harmful) techniques for producing old and familiar aesthetics has framed the conception of the Anthropocene for a vast majority of people as well as the actual state of the Anthropocene for close observers. The proponents of denial aesthetics have greatly benefitted from the public’s general inability to neatly define ‘nature’ and ‘innovation’ today, so it is therefore up to this public to question their deeply held beliefs concerning these terms and recognize the consequences of their desire for denial aesthetic production.

In initially elaborating on this research, I will illustrate how future endeavors in climate change alleviation might similarly be undone by technologies of productive denial, and how this trend in aesthetic production itself can potentially be undone.

 

 

BIO

Shane Reiner-Roth is a writer and designer. By cross-referencing the studies of art history, architecture, material science, and materiality, his work examines the methods by which built environments communicate their values and historical allegiances to a general audience. His projects and essays have been featured in journals including Mas Context, Lunch, Clog, Lobby, Pidgin, Offramp, Dear Architecture, Soiled, Thresholds, and Log. He is currently a research fellow at The Massachusetts Institute of Technology.