Per un design more-than-human: la condizione digitale e l’estetica post-antropocentrica

The essay deals with the theme of the more-than-human by combining two complementary perspectives: on the one hand, the shift of design interest from mankind to the planet, through the emergence of post-anthropocentric thinking, in transition towards a more- than-human perception; on the other hand, the post-digital aesthetics that derives from it, understood as a consequence of a renewed awareness of the human being towards the ecosystem in which it is immersed. These two reflections intertwine and situate the more-than-human theme in a new hypersensitive horizon of contemporary design, in line with post-human philosophies and in convergence with the digital turn that leads us to the multiple non-human agencies. Indeed, the contemporary techno-biological condition reflects, on the one hand, the sensitive inclusion of the non-human and, on the other hand, reveals itself in all its indecipherability as something that escapes our grasp. The hypersensitive more-than-human gaze turns to a horizon that is not only global, but planetary, and looks at the co-evolutionary relationships human-nature-technology in a perspective of pluriverse awareness. With the aim of stimulating the debate and outlining the renewed aesthetic directions of a post-anthropocentric design culture, the contribution makes visible the hybrid and dialogic system between human and non-human entities, in the re-evaluation of this mixture. In digital artefacts, the executive technology dictates the image, in an aesthetic fruition without depth, readable already from the surface. The beauty of the digital is immediately consumable, in an artistic act that we could define as apparition: digital beauty is antithetical to natural beauty. Within this new condition, in which the most relevant phenomenon is the process of "naturalisation" of technology, a critical thinking capable of investing our factuality towards the transformation processes of the world appears necessary. This is an aesthetic of doing that derives from a thought 'other' than contemporary techno- determinism; an aesthetic that is reflected in a concept of beauty that is the opposite of the smoothness of the digital. Far from the repetition of the same, post-anthropocentric beauty presupposes vulnerability, and exposes its wounds, as a 'moment of truth of seeing'.