"Transesthetics" as aesthetics of informational culture and the lost identity

Abstract

Already in the first half of the twentieth century, it was obvious to T. Adorno that late-fashioned art, incorporated into mass production commercialization system, was subjected to profound anthropological shifts, changes its social functions, being changed internally. It lends itself to universal reification and is entangled in contradictions, reflecting objective antinomies. And in an effort to overcome these contradictions, it brings them to extremes, simultaneously losing daily properties – to give illusions, to turn reality into an ideal one. There was inevitably a collision in the aesthetics of the opposite tendencies – the "restoration of deliberate withdrawal from the ratio" and the opposite desire for total rationalization. But, as Adorno noted, this is just music, where even the issues of counterpoint proved the intransigence of conflicts.