Spectacle: The use of digital technologies for mostly aesthetic and commercial purpose - wowing the viewer with technological marvel or obsessiveness about craft.
Speculation: Being self-aware of the nature of digital media, and reflecting/expressing this awareness through means of irony. Usually separated from the technical craft of creation itself.
Ugly Dynamics - this example from the video just blew my mind - both in its conceptual brilliance and incredible affect and experience.
Warburton clearly thinks of this as a combination of Speculation and Spectacle - and I could not agree more. It is incredibly self-aware, both in terms of aesthetics as well as conceptual execution (the project is filled to the brim with irony). I also think that this project reclaims spectacle as speculation - looking beyond the normal's of "simulation" and shifting the context of what we think simulation is. It's incredibly subversive - while still pushing the frontier on human experience. I'm incredibly jealous of both the technical and conceptual brilliance shown by Nikita Daikur here, never seen anything like this before.
Here's where it lies:
Drag -----/----- Acceleration
Visibility -/--------- Invisibility
Surplus -----/----- Waste
Commerce ---------/- Art
Ugly Dynamics from nikita diakur on Vimeo.