Mario Costa (born 7 December 1936, in

Torre del Greco Torre del Greco (; nap, Torre d' 'o Grieco; "Greek man's Tower") is a ''comune'' in the Metropolitan City of Naples in Italy, with a population of c. 85,000 . The locals are sometimes called ''Corallini'' because of the once plentiful cora ...

) is an Italian philosopher. He is known for his studies of the consequences of new

technology Technology is the application of knowledge to reach practical goals in a specifiable and Reproducibility, reproducible way. The word ''technology'' may also mean the product of such an endeavor. The use of technology is widely prevalent in me ...

art Art is a diverse range of human activity, and resulting product, that involves creative or imaginative talent expressive of technical proficiency, beauty, emotional power, or conceptual ideas. There is no generally agreed definition of wha ...

and

aesthetics Aesthetics, or esthetics, is a branch of philosophy that deals with the nature of beauty and taste, as well as the philosophy of art (its own area of philosophy that comes out of aesthetics). It examines aesthetic values, often expressed t ...

, which introduced a new theoretical perspective through concepts such as the "communication aesthetics", the "technological sublime", the "communication block", and the "aesthetics of flux".

Early life and education

Career

Costa has had an extensive academic career. He has been Professor of Aesthetics at the

University of Salerno The University of Salerno ( it, Università degli Studi di Salerno, UNISA) is a university located in Fisciano and in Baronissi, Italy. Its main campus is located in Fisciano while the Faculty of Medicine is located in Baronissi. It is organize ...

and has taught Methodology and History of Literary Criticism at the

University of Naples The University of Naples Federico II ( it, Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II) is a public university in Naples, Italy. Founded in 1224, it is the oldest public non-sectarian university in the world, and is now organized into 26 depar ...

, and Ethics and Aesthetics of Communication at the

University of Nice Sophia-Antipolis A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. Universities typically offer both undergraduate and postgraduate programs. In the United States, t ...

. He has authored some twenty books and numerous essays, published in Europe and America. In 1985, he founded

Artmedia Artmedia was one of the first scientific projects concerning the relationship between art, technology, philosophy and aesthetics. It was founded in 1985 at the University of Salerno. For over two decades, until 2009, dozens of projects, studies, e ...

, the Laboratory of the Aesthetics of Media and Communication, at the University of Salerno, Department of Philosophy. As a director of Artmedia, he developed an intense activity of promotion of neo-technological art and contributed by arranging many conferences and events in Naples, Paris, Köln, Toronto, Tel Aviv and São Paulo.

Thought

His theoretical work followed two main paths of research: 1) the socio-political and philosophical interpretation of the 20th-century artistic

avant-garde The avant-garde (; In 'advance guard' or ' vanguard', literally 'fore-guard') is a person or work that is experimental, radical, or unorthodox with respect to art, culture, or society.John Picchione, The New Avant-garde in Italy: Theoretical ...

, and 2) the development of a philosophy of technique, through the analysis of the changes introduced by new technology into art and aesthetics. * Following the first research path, since the 1960s, he provided philosophical and aesthetic interpretations of several avant-garde movements, in art and literature. Particularly relevant are his works on

Marcel Duchamp Henri-Robert-Marcel Duchamp (, , ; 28 July 1887 – 2 October 1968) was a French painter, sculptor, chess player, and writer whose work is associated with Cubism, Dada, and conceptual art. Duchamp is commonly regarded, along with Pablo Picasso ...

Lettrism Lettrism is a French avant-garde movement, established in Paris in the mid-1940s by Romanian immigrant Isidore Isou. In a body of work totaling hundreds of volumes, Isou and the Lettrists have applied their theories to all areas of art and culture ...

, ''Schématisme'', and the functions of modern

art criticism Art criticism is the discussion or evaluation of visual art. Art critics usually criticize art in the context of aesthetics or the theory of beauty. A goal of art criticism is the pursuit of a rational basis for art appreciation but it is que ...

. * Regarding the second path, his work was mainly concerned with a) the social and ethical consequences of technological communication, and b) the changes in the meaning of the 'aesthetic' and the 'artistic' due to the effects of new electro-

electronic Electronic may refer to: *Electronics, the science of how to control electric energy in semiconductor * ''Electronics'' (magazine), a defunct American trade journal *Electronic storage, the storage of data using an electronic device *Electronic co ...

and digital technologies. This led him to suggest a radical change in this theoretical field, which was based on notions such as the "technological sublime" and the "aesthetics of flux".

The technological sublime

In the early 1980s, Costa started an investigation on

media Media may refer to: Communication * Media (communication), tools used to deliver information or data ** Advertising media, various media, content, buying and placement for advertising ** Broadcast media, communications delivered over mass e ...

and

communication Communication (from la, communicare, meaning "to share" or "to be in relation with") is usually defined as the transmission of information. The term may also refer to the message communicated through such transmissions or the field of inqui ...

technologies Technology is the application of knowledge to reach practical goals in a specifiable and reproducible way. The word ''technology'' may also mean the product of such an endeavor. The use of technology is widely prevalent in medicine, science, ...

whose first result was the ''aesthetics of communication'', a theory which conceptualizes the possibility of an aesthetics of

simultaneity Simultaneity may refer to: * Relativity of simultaneity, a concept in special relativity. * Simultaneity (music), more than one complete musical texture occurring at the same time, rather than in succession * Simultaneity, a concept in Endogeneit ...

at a

distance Distance is a numerical or occasionally qualitative measurement of how far apart objects or points are. In physics or everyday usage, distance may refer to a physical length or an estimation based on other criteria (e.g. "two counties over"). ...

. The basic principles of this theory were stated in 1985. In the 1990s, Costa defined a more general, comprehensive, aesthetic and philosophical, theory of

new media New media describes communication technologies that enable or enhance interaction between users as well as interaction between users and content. In the middle of the 1990s, the phrase "new media" became widely used as part of a sales pitch for ...

, which he named the ''technological sublime''. He traced the history of the sublime and of its metamorphosis: the ''rhetoric sublime'' of the ancient philosophy, the ''natural sublime'' of the 18th century, the ''industrial-metropolitan sublime'' of modernity, and finally what he considers to be the latest form of the sublime, namely the ''technological sublime''. He argued that the excess from which any manifestation of the sublime comes from is represented by all the new electro-

and digital technology of image,

sound In physics, sound is a vibration that propagates as an acoustic wave, through a transmission medium such as a gas, liquid or solid. In human physiology and psychology, sound is the ''reception'' of such waves and their ''perception'' b ...

writing Writing is a medium of human communication which involves the representation of a language through a system of physically inscribed, mechanically transferred, or digitally represented symbols. Writing systems do not themselves constitute h ...

, and spaces. According to Costa, new technologies - which are developing as an exorbitant, self-operating technological system - imply on the one hand the weakening of the ''subject'' and the disappearance of the art and of all related categories (beauty, style, artistic personality, expression, etc.). On the other hand, new technologies are at the origin of a new aesthetic dimension, the ''technological sublime'', which is defined by new categories: the de-subjectivation of aesthetic production, the hyper-subject, and the suppression of the symbolic and the meaning.

Contemporary art and the aesthetics of flux

According to Costa, the whole theoretical apparatus developed by traditional

, from the 18th century, has become completely obsolete and useless to understand the present manifestations of art. The emerging techno-anthropological condition and its most significant aesthetic products need a new explanation and theory, in which the "form", ''i.e.'', the basic category of traditional aesthetics, is finally substituted by the category of "flux", which his analysis considers both from a philosophical point of view and in its diverse aesthetic manifestations. Costa extended his reflection from the "cinematographic flux" to the present "technological aesthetic fluxes", made possible by the advent of

digital technology Digital technology may refer to: * Application of digital electronics * Any significant piece of knowledge from information technology Information technology (IT) is the use of computers to create, process, store, retrieve, and exchange a ...

and

networks Network, networking and networked may refer to: Science and technology * Network theory, the study of graphs as a representation of relations between discrete objects * Network science, an academic field that studies complex networks Mathematics ...

. He concluded that technological fluxes may also highlight essential aspects of contemporary

ontology In metaphysics, ontology is the philosophical study of being, as well as related concepts such as existence, becoming, and reality. Ontology addresses questions like how entities are grouped into categories and which of these entities exi ...

, being closely tied to our experience of

time Time is the continued sequence of existence and events that occurs in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequence events, ...

and existential attitude.Costa, Mario. ''Daniel Charles: de l'esthétique technologique à la philosophie de la technique'', in ''Nouvelles Revue d'Esthetique'', 5, Paris, PUF, 2010, pp. 71–75.

Selected books

* ''Arte come soprastruttura'', Napoli, CIDED, 1972 * ''Teoria e Sociologia dell'arte'', Napoli, Guida Editori, 1974 * ''Le immagini, la folla e il resto. Il dominio dell'immagine nella società contemporanea'', Napoli, Edizioni Scientifiche Italiane, 1982 * ''Il sublime tecnologico'', Salerno, Edisud, 1990 * ''L'estetica dei media. Tecnologie e produzione artistica'', Lecce, Capone Editore, 1990 * ''Sentimento del sublime e strategie del simbolico'', Salerno, Edisud, 1996 * ''Della fotografia senza soggetto. Per una teoria dell'oggetto tecnologico'', Genova/Milano, Costa & Nolan, 1997 * ''Le sublime technologique'', Lausanne, IDERIVE, 1994 / ''O sublime tecnológico'', São Paulo, Editora Experimento, 1995 / ''Il sublime tecnologico. Piccolo trattato di estetica della tecnologia'', Roma, Castelvecchi, 1998 * ''L'estetica dei media. Avanguardie e tecnologia'', Roma, Castelvecchi, 1999 * ''L'estetica della comunicazione'', Roma, Castelvecchi, 1999 * ''Dall'estetica dell'ornamento alla computerart'', Napoli, Tempo Lungo, 2000 * ''Internet et globalisation esthétique. L'avenir de l'art et de la philosophie à l'époque des réseaux'', Paris, L'Harmattan, 2003 * ''Dimenticare l'arte. Nuovi orientamenti nella teoria e nella sperimentazione estetica'', Milano, Franco Angeli, 2005 * ''La disumanizzazione tecnologica. Il destino dell'arte nell'epoca delle nuove tecnologie'', Milano, Costa & Nolan, 2007 * ''Della fotografia senza soggetto. Per una teoria dell'oggetto estetico tecnologico'', Milano, Costa & Nolan, 2008 * ''Arte contemporanea ed estetica del flusso'', Vercelli, Mercurio Edizioni, 2010 * ''Ontologia dei media'', Milano, Postmediabooks, 2012 * ''Dopo la tecnica. Dal chopper alle similcose'', Napoli, Liguori Editore, 2015 * ''L’uomo fuori di sé, Milano'', Mimesis, 2018 * ''Ebraismo e arte contemporanea'', Milano, Mimesis, 2020 * ''Ebraismo e avanguardie'', Salerno, Edisud, 2020

References

External links

Artmedia VIII, ParisArtmedia X, Paris
{{DEFAULTSORT:Costa, Mario 1936 births 20th-century Italian philosophers 21st-century Italian philosophers Continental philosophers Living people Mass media theorists People from Torre del Greco Philosophers of art Academic staff of the University of Salerno