Post-Silence Aesthetics: Revisiting Identity in the Art of the Algorithmic Age

AbstractThis article examines the emergence of "post-silence aesthetics" in contemporary art—a condition wherein algorithmic mediation has fundamentally altered the relationship between human subjectivity, artistic authorship, and the experience of identity. Drawing upon recent scholarship in visual culture studies, digital aesthetics, and posthumanist theory, the article argues that the algorithmic turn has inaugurated a new aesthetic regime characterised by the dissolution of traditional authorial boundaries, the emergence of collective and anonymous production, and the transformation of aesthetic experience from individual contemplation to distributed, machine-mediated encounter. The article proposes that post-silence aesthetics is defined by a tension between the democratisation of creative tools and the homogenisation of aesthetic forms, between collective production and individual attribution, and between the abundance of algorithmic imagery and the erosion of cultural value. Ultimately, the article argues that the challenge of the algorithmic age is not to resist technological change but to reclaim intentionality, preserve diversity, and forge new modes of cultural expression within post-human creative landscapes.