Wednesday, February 23, 2022
John Cabot University, Rome
JCU Department of Communications is hosting Valentina Tanni as a guest speaker of the event “Memesthetics: The Digital Image as a Network.”
Digital files, regardless of the content they convey, are fundamentally unstable. During their journey on the internet, they can change location, disappear, but most importantly they can be manipulated in infinite ways. This instability is particularly visible in the field of internet memes, a genre of content that seems to be the perfect embodiment of this unstoppable and unregulated mutation process. When an image enters the online public sphere it ceases to exist as a single entity: it morphs into a vast network of variations, an expanding cluster of possible versions of itself. Its cultural significance, its aesthetics, and its interpretation are thus inextricably tied up to the entire cluster, destroying the possibility of a singular vision forever.
