Decay, Role and Relevance of Materiality and Disgust in Post-Digital Contemporary Art by Rosa Davis Abstract The research for this essay focuses on how decay, role of materiality and disgust as concepts exist in post-Digital contemporary art. I will explore these themes using examples of artworks and evidence to support my claims. The aim is to establish the fundamental relationship between the viewer and the work of art as it originates from material and manifests in our senses. Decay as Life and Death Decay as an artform can be used to represent life and death. Claire Lieberman has said: Erotic desire, power, obsession, fear--no materials are so liberally laced with these qualities as gold and food. There is, not surprisingly, an obvious relationship between the two, not the least of which is their commutable value. The worth of one, a traditional material in art, lies in its incorruptibility. The other, equally potent, is subject to inevitable disintegration. Claire Lieberman, “That Food Thing You Do”, Sculpture, 1 Dec. 2000: 46. The evidence explains that food as a material can represent many things such as desire, power, etc. but food is unique due to its nature to disintegrate. As Claire Lieberman notes, ‘food ignites awareness of the presence of life and the shadow of death’. Lieberman, “That Food Thing You Do”, 46. I believe that the quote is suggesting that food represents life and death because of certain qualities such as its ability to ripen and decay as mentioned in the first source. Fig. 1: William Pope. L, Polis or The Garden or Human Nature in Action, 2006, 15 large wooden tables (each 30 x 48 x 96”) with arranged sprouting or moulding red, white, blue, and black onions, The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. Other examples of decay as an artform include Pope. L’s ‘Polis or The Garden or Human Nature in Action’ (2006). This artwork uses perishable food as an agricultural metaphor to conclude that everyone is the same under their skin. We all live under the same natural life cycle and abide by the same laws of mother nature. Using perishable materials also underlines the fact that things do decay and create something anew, decay carries renewal. It is also important to note that since Pope. L's work is about social constructs surrounding race, transporting food directly from daily life and recontextualising the uncontrollable material creates a metaphor for the anarchic momentum of life, which in his experience has been simultaneously banal and extreme. Gay Outlaw is another example of a contemporary practitioner that has been influenced by the ‘post-digital’ culture, especially in relation with their methods and techniques. Gay Outlaw works with food in art due to her chef background. She uses pastry to create sizable architectural forms. In doing so she copes with the material’s spongy resistance to large scale and the sticky, sloppy texture fighting elegance. Outlaw sacrifices a lot of control with her working process and material choice but considers ‘the poetry of temporary materials as a reference to the temporariness of life.’ Gay Outlaw, interview with Claire Lieberman, Sculpture, 22 Nov. 1999: 19 no.10 46-53. Therefore, it is evident that decay in post-digital contemporary art relates to the importance of role and relevance of materiality. Role and relevance of materiality, as an aesthetic concept, has evolved from the digital-era’s purely visual aspects of art and birthed a new way of exploring context and communication. Christina Murdoch Mills has described this phenomenon: Materiality in works of art extends beyond the simple fact of physical matter to broadly encompass all relevant information related to the work’s physical existence; the work’s production date and provenance, its history and condition, the artist’s personal history as it pertains to the origin of the work and the work’s place in the canon of art history are all relevant to the aesthetic experience. Christina Murdoch Mills, "Materiality as the Basis for the Aesthetic Experience in Contemporary Art," Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers 1289 (2009): 1. Fig. 2: Bill Viola, The Crossing, 1996, Two-channel colour video installation, with four channels of sound; 10 min., 57 sec.; performer: Phil Esposito, 16 foot x 27 foot 6 inches x 57 foot (4.9 x 8.4 x 17.4 m) overall, Guggenheim Museum, New York. This is illustrated in the installation work of video artist Bill Viola. Because it is a temporal form, video art, as with other forms of moving pictures, emphasizes time as a setting. Mills, “Materiality as the Basis for the Aesthetic Experience in Contemporary Art," 31. Decay represents time in a more physical sense in terms of life and death because of the natural life cycle found within food materials. Absence of Sensory Art in the Digital Age Designing multisensory experiences has always fascinated artists, but especially now in the post-Digital era. The important impact of this is that it has shifted the role of the audience from being a passive to an active player in the midst of art. This role change means that an interaction between both artwork and audience has been developed for the senses.  Kornbongkoch Harnpinijsak, “An Exploration of Sensory Design: How Sensory Interaction Affects Perceptual Experience in an Immersive Artwork,” Interactive Architecture Lab (2019) Web. 20 April 2022. As Claire Lieberman notes, ‘Experience, recollections, perception, and emotion emerge as forage. Food, long the artist's subject (as in still life) has now metamorphosed into object (contemporary art material). With its infinite capacity to arouse all the senses and stimulate memory.’ Lieberman, “That Food Thing You Do”, 47. This supports the argument by confirming that by engaging all the senses through food, and therefore decay, experiences and emotions are surfaced that make the viewers have unique perceptions of the artwork. By actively engaging the senses, art locates individuals within their corporeal selves and, subsequently, evokes the aesthetic experience. In this way, art provides a bridge between material and immaterial realms. Mills, “Materiality as the Basis for the Aesthetic Experience in Contemporary Art," 31. Fig. 3: Francis Bacon, Figure in a Landscape, 1945, oil, pastel and dust on canvas, 57 x 50.5”, Tate Gallery, London. Francis Bacon’s painting Figure in a Landscape contains taste, scent, and sound stimuli: The sound was presented to the visitors via headphones. The taste stimulus was delivered in form of chocolate (praline) on a plinth, in a bed of tiny chocolate bits that evoked soil. This taste depicted the painting’s dark, harsh nature and the wartime era with multiple ingredients, namely, charcoal, sea salt, cacao nibs, and smoky Lapsang souchong tea. It also aimed to reference the London-park setting and flashes of colour with burnt orange. The accompanying scent aimed to convey a sense of Hyde Park’s smell-scape: grass, soil, and earth, but also a horsey scent. The auditory stimuli referenced the colour palette, visual texture, and the place depicted in the painting. Damien Ablart, Carlos Velasco, Chi Thanh Vi, Elia Gatti, Marianna Obrist, “The How and Why Behind a Multisensory Art Display,” Interactions, 24 (6) (2017): 38-43. SRO. Web 20 April 2022. Fig. 4: Meg Webster, Butter, 1996, butter, paper, egg, molasses, cement, blood, sugar, rust on metal, chocolate, mirror, water, 12 x 12 foot, Morris-Healy Gallery, New York. Like Francis Bacon’s Figure in a Landscape, Meg Webster creates a multisensory display of art, but she uses perishable food. Meg Webster creates a huge wall that falls away over time. It is an installation of drawings using butter and materials on paper that include egg, molasses, cement, blood, and sugar. There is also rust on the metal, chocolate on a mirror and water dripping down a wall. Claire Lieberman states that: Webster guides viewers to perceive a material as directly as possible, inviting chance to impact their experience. She states: "I am interested in making one aware of the phenomenal world, trusting it, enjoying it, as opposed to presenting text or narrative. One is confronted with why this butter is on the wall. It's both globby and beautiful--the scent, texture, quality of light open exploration to discover what the material is and what it means." Lieberman, “That Food Thing You Do”, 49. By engaging the senses, the artwork locates viewers within their corporeal selves. Such experiences are, naturally, unique, and individual to each viewer. If we were to view this artwork remotely or in reproduction, we would lose a sense of scale and the experience of the presence of the work of art. I think it follows, then, that we would lose the aesthetic experience. Electronic distribution and digital image making are examples of how art in the digital culture did not stimulate all senses, often it’s just a visual. Art provides a bridge between ordinary experience that transcend the static nature of the work of art’s physicality. However, seeing an art performance as a black and white reproduction rather than in person is completely different. Looking at virtual digital images on the internet creates a second-hand, mediated experience. This digital culture impacts the nature of how art is physically manifested and perceived; perception requires that something engages the senses and provides a corporeal experience. Mills, “Materiality as the Basis for the Aesthetic Experience in Contemporary Art," 5. The Concept of Disgust A major theme within the post-Digital age is the concept of beauty and disgust because of its human-like messy nature. The object of disgust has the ability to impose on us, especially through its visual representation. This indicates that beauty and disgust have an indispensable relationship with sense experience. In contemporary examinations, disgust has a particularly elemental relation with the senses. In the Anthropology, Kant characterizes disgust as a vital sensation connected particularly with the “lower” senses of smell and taste.  Compared to the “higher” class of senses (touch, sight, and hearing), smell and taste do not contribute to the cognition of objects, but are more related with producing pleasure:  “…the idea obtained from them is more a representation of enjoyment.” Immanuel Kant, “Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View,” Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy, trans. Robert B. Louden (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006) 46. The evidence explains that smell and taste are two of the senses primarily connected to disgust. This is vital when considering food and decay art because as soon as it starts to perish our bodies have a sensory reaction that cause us to feel disgust. Paul Rozin refers to such food-related emotion as “core disgust,” and defines it as “[r]evulsion at the prospect of (oral) incorporation of an offensive object.” Paul Rozin et al., “Body, Psyche, and Culture: The relationship Between Disgust and Morality,” Psychology and Developing Societies, 9 (1997): 107. Fig. 5: Jake & Dinos Chapman, DNA Zygotic, 1997, fiberglass, resin, paint, wigs and trainers, 190 x 90 x 90 cm, Victoria Miro Gallery, London. The Chapman Brothers’ sculpture DNA Zygotic (1997) depicts mutated children’s bodies to explore the issues of genetic damage and forces us to reflect on its experimental possibility. Mojca Kuplen, “Disgust and Ugliness: A Kantian Perspective,” Contemporary Aesthetics, 2011. To be repulsed by the Chapman Brother’s DNA Zygotic, is to be disgusted through the association of thinking how the object feels, smells or tastes. In this circumstance, the visual case presupposes that the imaginative working of other senses is necessary. The idea that the sculpture of visual disgust is contaminated is brought in by linking it with other senses. Therefore, the theme of beauty and disgust within post-digital art activates all senses in the body, creating a multisensory viewer experience. Aesthetic properties in general, as well as disgust, are related to sensuous experience, yet disgust is an experience that, contrary to pure aesthetic beauty (and ugliness), is essentially connected to the cognitive ideas of contamination and putrefaction. Kuplen, M. “Disgust and Ugliness: A Kantian Perspective.” Conclusion In this paper, I have discussed a decay as a theme, sensory art, and the nature of disgust in relation to the post-digital age. I have referenced multisensory artworks such as William Pope. L’s Polis or The Garden or Human Nature in Action and Meg Webster’s Butter, etc. I can provide a solid explanation of how sensory interaction affects perceptual experience in artwork that contains themes such as decay and disgust. In the future I can only see these themes in relation to senses becoming more popular within creative industries because art galleries and museums would be provided with new opportunities to engage their audience. I believe touch, taste and smell stimulation will become more accessible through new technologies, although this contradiction of ‘post-digital’ could be the end of this movement. Bibliography Albert, Damien, Velasco, Carlos, Vi, Chi T., Gatti, Elia, Obrist, Marianna, “The How and Why Behind a Multisensory Art Display,” Interactions, 24 (6) (2017): 38-43. SRO. Web 20 April 2022. http://sro.sussex.ac.uk/id/eprint/71031/3/Accepted%20-%20Final%20version.pdf Harnpinijsak, Kornbongkoch. “An Exploration of Sensory Design: How Sensory Interaction Affects Perceptual Experience in an Immersive Artwork,” Interactive Architecture Lab (2019) Web. 20 April 2022. http://www.interactivearchitecture.org/an-exploration-of-sensory-design-how-sensory-interaction-affects-perceptual-experience-in-an-immersive-artwork.html Kant, Immanuel. “Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View.” Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy. Trans. Robert B. Louden. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Print. Kuplen, M. “Disgust and Ugliness: a Kantian Perspective.” Contemporary Aesthetics. 2011. Web. 20 April 2022. https://www.contempaesthetics.org/newvolume/pages/article.php?articleID=615 Lieberman, Claire. “That Food Thing You Do.” Sculpture, 1 Dec. 2000: 46. Print. Mills, Christina Murdoch. "Materiality as the Basis for the Aesthetic Experience in Contemporary Art" Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers 1289 (2009): 1. https://scholarworks.umt.edu/etd/1289 Web. 19 April 2022. Outlaw, Gay. Interview with Claire Lieberman. Sculpture, 22 Nov. 1999: 19 no.10 46-53. Rozin, Paul, et al. “Body, Psyche, and Culture: The relationship Between Disgust and Morality.” Psychology and Developing Societies. 9 (1997): 107. ISSN: 0971-3336. Web. 20 April 2022. Fig. 1: William Pope. L, Polis or The Garden or Human Nature in Action, 2006, 15 large wooden tables (each 30 x 48 x 96”) with arranged sprouting or moulding red, white, blue, and black onions, The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. Fig. 2: Bill Viola, The Crossing, 1996, Two-channel colour video installation, with four channels of sound; 10 min., 57 sec.; performer: Phil Esposito, 16 foot x 27 foot 6 inches x 57 foot (4.9 x 8.4 x 17.4 m) overall, Guggenheim Museum, New York. Fig. 3: Francis Bacon, Figure in a Landscape, 1945, oil, pastel and dust on canvas, 57 x 50.5”, Tate Gallery, London. Fig. 4: Meg Webster, Butter, 1996, butter, paper, egg, molasses, cement, blood, sugar, rust on metal, chocolate, mirror, water, 12 x 12 foot, Morris-Healy Gallery, New York. Fig. 5: Jake & Dinos Chapman, DNA Zygotic, 1997, fiberglass, resin, paint, wigs and trainers, 190 x 90 x 90 cm, Victoria Miro Gallery, London.