Black Gold: Digitally-Simulated Environments and the Material Aesthetics of Oil

Abstract

Sensory embeddedness (with an emphasis on environmental interdependency) has played an important part in ecological art practice. In the emergence of process- or systems-based art, and its indebtedness to early cybernetics, there is a focus on the interplay between artwork and spectator and the world or umwelt that emerges from their co-existence. This article will examine how this emphasis on embeddedness has translated into digital and new media aesthetics using John Gerrard’s digital simulation, Western Flag (Spindletop, Texas) 2017, as an example. I argue that this genre of ecological digital art can be situated as a bodily practice within the wider framework of an environmental narrative. Moreover, there is an integral performativity in new media artworks that can contribute to a deeper understanding of the anthropogenically-driven environmental crisis.