Phenomenological interpretants as the basis of digital images classification

The genesis of the digital image is determined, on the one hand, withcomputer programming, on the other  with the field of interactivity. To classify phenomena of digital art, one should determine thedegree of viewer's aesthetic engagement. A digital image is classified according to how and to what extent the audience uses the matrixof understanding, formed on the basis of direct and sensuality cultural aesthetic standards in the act of perception. On this basis, weidentify three groups of artefacts in contemporary digital art practices. 1. Technical experiments of creation "hybrid aesthetics", integratingthe achievement of drawing, painting, sculpture, photography, film, music and even the architecture on the basis of digital technology.In this case all available spectator's perceptive codes, such as iconic, kinetic, subliminal codes qualitativeness sensations of colourand texture act as interpretants. An example could be a film made with the CGI technology (computer-generated imagery) with the useof the digital backlot technology, virtual backlot, chroma key, scanography where the technology of scanning and subsequent computerimage processing is the aesthetic appearance of the hybrid images, digital photography, painting, drawing, computer graphics, collage(of S. Pozharskaya, K. Staebler, J. Ruas, R. Wilde). 2. Technical experiments aimed at finding their own specific features of a digitalimage and at the same time  the perception areas, which are open for this specificity. Aesthetic codes, which organize the plastic imagein the traditional plastic art, are minimized. An example could be immersion video installations "Maps In Flux" (2009) and "Snowglobe"(2006) by H. Alvgren, as well as virtual installation "Osmose" (1995) by Ch. Davis, which is classic for digital art. 3. In the thirdgroup aesthetic discovery of pure virtuality are led to forms of hybrid aesthetics. Instead of digital virtual reality, the perception of whichrequires a reduction of perceptive and interpretive abilities of the viewer (otherwise, he risks being surrounded by a quasi-aestheticsimulacrum), creates a description of this reality (J.-P. Frenay's "Artificial Paradise, Inc.", 2009), or interactive installation, which conjugates directly the physical reality of a digital action through an active participant-spectator (P. Dombis's "Geometries Irrationnelles",2008; M. Benayoun's "Cosmopolis. Overwriting the City", 2005). We assume that the purest kind of a digital image will be the one inthe perception of which a minimal or basic level of sensory experience is involved.

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