Digital enhancement technologies produce an upgraded normality stripped of flaws

Evidence

Auto-Tune is in many ways the sonic equivalent of digital airbrushing, and the (over) use of the two technologies (alongside the increasing prevalence of cosmetic surgery) result in a look and feel that is hyperbolically enhanced rather than conspicuously artificial. If anything is the signature of 21st century consumer culture, is this feeling of a digitally upgraded normality – a perverse yet ultra-banal normality, from which all flaws have been erased. — Mark Fisher, Ghosts of My Life, 453

Categorization

• XREF: Complements the treatment of hyperreal simulation and the numinous in chapter 21; also relates to airbrushing vs ‘flawless’ aesthetic debates elsewhere. — connects to: Grey music embodies unresolved doubt rather than black depression; Sample-triggered sorrow can seep into club pop from outside its lyrics — Mark Fisher, Ghosts of My Life: Writings on…, 464; Some digital filters create audible artifacts that precede the signal — David M. Howard, Jamie Angus, Acoustics and Psychoacoustics, 2414 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Digitalization reduces the sensory continuum to standardized discrete units manipulable by logic #expands (0.80) — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 208
• Some digital filters create audible artifacts that precede the signal #complicates (0.75) — David M. Howard, Jamie Angus, Acoustics and Psychoacoustics, 2414