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Back in October I spoke at Web Directions South, in Sydney, Australia. Here’s the video:

I’d always intended to talk about The New Aesthetic, but up until about the day before I didn’t really know how. The original title of the talk was “The Robot-Readable World”, but this didn’t really sit right with me; it’s one aspect of NA, for sure, but there was something else I wanted to emphasise: the human aspects and emotions of NA, and the becoming-human of the machines.

So the talk became “Waving at the machines”, a 50-minute, 120-slide vector through the idea, an idea that still seems massive and nebulous, but which it is possible to fire a laser through and illuminate some motes. I’m not sure I managed to phrase the camouflage stuff quite right, and the need for an ending always feels like a cop-out, but nevertheless, I cover many of the bases. (Web Directions have also transcribed the entire talk, should you be so crazy as to attempt to read it.)

For those of you who haven’t come across the New Aesthetic before, it began here, it continues here, I’ve been interviewed about it here, and here are a few responses.

The adventure continues; Kevin Slavin, Aaron Straup Cope, Ben Terrett, Joanne McNeil, and myself will be interrogating the concept at SXSW next year, and no doubt it will be covered elsewhere before then.

Huge thanks to everyone at Web Directions, particularly to Maxine Sherrin for all her help and patience, to Hunting With Pixels for the video, and to everyone who attended.