Aesthetics of streaming

Along with the multiplication of technical means and physical supports (ranging from the vinyl record up to Compact Disc and DVD), the new millennium also brought a less expensive and faster fruition pathway, namely the listening and visual streaming (both on demand and live) of an ever growing, web accessible music database (providing contents in various formats such as Real Audio, Real Video, Windows Media Audio, Windows Media Video, Quicktime, Adobe Flash Video etc.). What impact does the increasingly frequent and widespread use of these interfaces have on the aesthetic, metaphysical and social field? How did the diffusion of streaming change our ways to experience contemporary and past works of art, as well as music traditions and practices based on improvisation? The present issue of Aisthesis, co-organized and sustained by the research group “Mind and Naturalism: from the aesthetic Mind to the symbolic Mind” of the “Lettere e Filosofia” Department at the University of Florence and by the Labex GREAM (“Groupe de Recherches Experimentales sur l’Acte Musical”) at the University of Strasbourg, addresses these questions.