QCAD: re-routing disinterest

The focus of this research was to re-work the proposition, within eighteenth century aesthetic thought onwards, of disinterestedness as the precondition of subjective judgement about the beautiful. This through a certain history of the distance from labour, expressed via an aesthetic strategy of coquetry,
using methods of montage and re-edit, and presented in print and other forms of publication.

Beginning by examining the origins and development of the presumption of disinterestedness as the definitive requirement of universally valid aesthetic judgements, the contention was that, though firmly located within the tradition of eighteenth century Western European philosophy of aesthetics, an exploration of the historical inception and social effects of this conceptual construction would provide critical purchase on more contemporary notions of aesthetic autonomy, critical distance, and more general ideas of taste and value.

To this extent the research was conceptually driven, with an initial evaluative process carried out via hypothesis, setting out to unearth the layers of history, economy and representation involved in the formation of the theoretical construction. It then proceeded by a more practical and material analysis of disinterestedness, conducted through inter-disciplinary methods, to test both theoretical findings, socio-cultural functions and formal manifestations. Though grounded in a philosophical issue, the research was situated at the intersection of art, philosophy, design, technology, print and publishing; as such it was carried out spanning both theoretical and creative domains through an exploratory methodology, within a materially experimental heuristic framework.

In this way, and distinctively in this field, the practical workings of this aesthetic protocol were interrogated and re-imagined through creative production itself, across various forms of media and cultural output, generating effective creative strategies for engaging with the concept’s social workings and implications.

This material re-routing applied distance testing as its operating principle through the methods of montage and re-edit, employing various techniques of redaction, interruption, and repetition across a diverse range of reproductive mechanical and technological media. Reaching from the theoretical into the material, this testing process was initially carried out through the consideration of forms of print and publication, engaging with printmaking, design and typography. It was then extended into a wider range of digital and audio-visual material.

By expanding the realms of examination in this way, testing the effects of the concept of disinterestedness in a broader set of aesthetic, historical and social representations, this critically engaged, practice-based, research was seen to be adding new understanding of how the conceptual formulation of aesthetic disinterestedness operates within these fields.

Through these investigations the project provided possibilities to interrupt the practical mechanisms of this aesthetic protocol, ways to generate innovative cultural forms, as evidence of the inquiry. As such, the ultimate outcome of disinterest re-routed in this way – in its materiality – was a conclusion made manifest in the obdurate form of a collection of leaflets issued through the QCAD imaginary, as impersonal collective subjectivity.