Special Topics · Evolution of Aesthetics in the Digital-Intelligent Age (I)

■ Aesthetic Changes and Trans-interstitial Aesthetics in China in the Digital-Intelligent Age (Wang Yichuan)

Abstract: China's modern aesthetic evolution leading to the digital-intelligent age has gone through six developmental stages: mass media-driven disinterested beauty, mass media-driven interested beauty, electronic media-driven disinterested beauty, electronic media-driven refined literary beauty, digital media-driven virtual beauty, and digital-intelligent media-driven intelligent beauty. As an aesthetic form integrated by digital and artificial intelligence technologies in the current era, intelligent beauty is essentially and structurally an alienated extraordinary beauty distinct from human-centric beauty. The overlapping and combinatorial aesthetic phenomena across diverse media and heterogeneous aesthetic attributes prevailing in the digital-intelligent era can be defined as trans-interstitial aesthetics. While abandoning unrealistic fantasies about extraordinary alienated beauty, humanity ought to continuously refine and upgrade its aesthetic capacity rooted in historical consciousness, real-life experience and spiritual judgment.

Keywords: aesthetic changes in China in the digital-intelligent age, intelligent beauty, extraordinary alienated beauty, reckoning and judgment, trans-interstitial aesthetics

■ Aesthetic Retrospection under the Trend of Digital Intelligence (Peng Feng)

Abstract: Aesthetic preferences change with the times. From the broad perspective of evolutionary theory, this article explores such changes by examining the biological, cultural, and individual factors that shape aesthetic experience, thereby providing a theoretical framework for understanding the future trajectory of aesthetics in the Age of Digital Intelligence. With regard to the influence on aesthetic preferences, biological laws constitute the constant, whereas individual strategies serve as variables, with cultural habits mediating between the two. The emergence of new popular literature and arts in the Age of Digital Intelligence has lowered the barriers to creation and dissemination, shifting aesthetic pursuits from culturally defined grand styles to more personalized individual styles, thus allowing individual aesthetic strategies to be fully manifested. Nevertheless, regardless of technological advancement, neither cultural habits nor individual strategies can penetrate biological laws, and the biological principles governing aesthetic preferences remain unchanged. Therefore, the most precious "aura" of art in the Age of Digital Intelligence still derives from irreplaceable human experiences beyond digitalization — sensation, emotion, and comprehension, which constitute the ultimate manifestation of human nature.

Keywords: Age of Digital Intelligence, Evolutionary Theory, Aesthetics, Art, Grand Styles, Individual Styles

■ Aesthetic Crisis and Perceptual Reconstruction in the Digital-Intelligent Age (Hu Youfeng)

Abstract: Digital-intelligent technologies, exemplified by generative artificial intelligence, are profoundly restructuring the field of occurrence, perceptual structure, and practical modalities of aesthetic experience, driving a deep transformation of aesthetics from traditional paradigms to digital-intelligent paradigms. Aesthetic discourse in the digital-intelligent age exhibits distinct paradoxical characteristics. Although artificial intelligence offers the potential for heterogeneity that breaks through power structures within aesthetic discourse, it has not led to diversification. Instead, it embeds aesthetic disciplining into algorithmic mechanisms in a highly concealed manner. Recursion, as the operational logic of algorithmic mechanisms, reshapes the generative and disseminative mechanisms of literature and art, while also directly giving rise to the aesthetic dilemmas of the digital-intelligent age. Recursive logic is a closed process that continuously produces differences yet returns to homogenization. It replaces sensory aesthetic experience with rational data computation, causing aesthetic subjects, under the sway of algorithmic traffic, to become trapped in highly homogenized aesthetic cocoons. Therefore, we urgently need to reexamine the role of digital-intelligent technologies in human life. By stimulating human emotional connections with the self and the external world, we should transcend aesthetic approaches aimed at finding "optimal" solutions. On three levels-cognition, reflection, and practice — we must cultivate the ability to identify and resist algorithmic disciplining, thereby rediscovering the heterogeneity and creativity of aesthetic experience and achieving the perceptual reconstruction of the aesthetic subject.

Keywords: digital-intelligent technology, aesthetics, algorithm, recursion, subjectivity

■ Algorithms Toward Aesthetics: On Three Aesthetic Categories of Artificial Intelligence Arts (Meng Jun)

Abstract: As a new art form AI art has created new artistic paradigms, propelling art history into a revolutionary new phase. This article examines the unique aesthetic dimensions of AI-generated art, which are deeply intertwined with technology and encompass three levels: first, optimization, where iterative algorithmic refinement drives the evolution of AI art, with human standards keeping the measure of reference; second, reasoning, as AI art production relies on algorithmic deductive logic, with large models predicting and generating works accordingly; and third, emergence,where AI functions as contemporary digital alchemy — quant triggers aesthetic mutations, and the emergent aesthetic potential makes ideal human-machine collaborative systems possible. AI art will inevitably tend toward greater precision and logic, while the randomness and unpredictability inherent in emergence hold the aesthetic promise that will expand AI’s aesthetic potential.

Keywords: artificial intelligence arts, aesthetic, category, algorithm, emergence

Criticism and Contention

■ Where is Creation? — Analysis of the "Simulation" of AI’s Intervention in Art (Lu Chunhong)

Abstract: Reflecting on the contrast between ancient and modern thought, the confusion arising from AI's involvement in art regarding how to approach artistic creation stems from a misinterpretation of the concept of "simulation." By stripping away the superficial entanglement of "reproduction" and "simulation" and restoring the identity of the original of AI-generated art, it becomes evident that the underlying issue revealed through the entanglement of connotations of "creation" is the relationship between "technique" and "art" in AI art. Once it is clarified how art under the backdrop of modern thought manifests the creative quality of "art" through the emotional transition from "technique" to "art," and how art under the backdrop of ancient thought demonstrates the mimetic nature of "technique" through the rational shift from "art" to "technique," it means that AI art also contains elements of creation within its simulation. However, this relationship between simulation and creation is neither the absence of "creation" in the ancient world nor the inherent tension between the two in modern thought. In other words, against the backdrop of the separation between "human" and "machine," the shadowy "creation" precisely emerges alongside the simulation of "machine intelligence."

Keywords: AI art, original, reproduction, simulation, creation

Theoretical Explorations

■ Misplaced Landscape: The Formation of "Image" as a Modern Aesthetic Identity (Han Wei)

Abstract: "Image" (Yixiang) is one of the categories that is most vibrant with modern vitality in traditional Chinese aesthetics. Its continued presence is the result of complicated interactions between tradition and modernity, China and the West. In the early 20th century, "image" entered academic discourse as an incompletely translated equivalent to "idea" in philosophy and psychology. It gradually accomplished its transformation from "idea" to "image," thereby highlighting its figurative connotations and making it possible to connect with traditional culture. Beyond the impetus from empiricist philosophy and modern psychology, another driving force in the modernization of image is literary practice. Modern writers' misplaced adaptation of Imagism helped retain the formal aspect of "image." This process allowed "image," as a general term for artistic imagery, to initially appear in academic perspectives and creative concepts as "literary image," and provided the initial impetus for the subsequent emergence of "pan-image." From the perspective of disciplinary construction, "image" is also a byproduct of the development of the academic system and discursive system of modern aesthetics. The shift in modern Chinese aesthetics from focusing on universal Western aesthetic categories to constructing an indigenous discursive system of image aesthetics is the result of academic discursive choices. The development of "image" can be seen as a microcosm of the evolution of modern Chinese aesthetic discourse.

Keywords: image, aesthetic category, modern evolution, discursive system

A Probe into Literary and Artistic Creation

■ Remaining Apart Yet Inseparable: Two Worlds of the Teochew People and Their Meaningful Bond — On Dear You (Xu Yanzhuan)

Abstract: With Qiaopi (overseas remittance letters) as its narrative core, Dear You breaks the binary opposition between "successful people's stories" and "narratives of hardship and toil" in traditional overseas Chinese literature. By depicting the fates of left-behind family members, emigrants to Southeast Asia and overseas Chinese, the film vividly illustrates the diasporic experience and the spirit of "remaining apart yet inseparable" among the Teochew people. Supported by Qiaopi as material carrier, maternal fortitude as emotional bond, and faith in loyalty, family and nation as spiritual linkage, the film reveals how scattered individual practices form a stable social order. Eventually, personal affections are elevated to a cultural totem, realizing the trans-temporal inheritance of Chinese education and the trans-cultural communication of traditional Chinese culture.

Keywords: Dear You, Diaspora, Teochew people, Qiaopi, trans-cultural communication

Diverse and Extensive Art Phenomena

■ Cultural Subjectivity Construction in the Cross-Cultural Communication of Online Chinese Literature: Problems and Strategies (Liu Shuangxi)

Abstract: Viewed through the lens of cultural subjectivity, a review of over two decades of online Chinese literature's overseas dissemination reveals a structural upgrade: from the spontaneous circulation of individual texts to a consciously cultivated ecological system. Online Chinese literature holds unique value in driving the qualitative leap of Chinese literary subjectivity, enabling the dynamic revitalization of traditional culture, and shaping a multifaceted national image. However, its further cross-cultural growth is constrained by three core obstacles: cultural discount in expressive forms, value disjuncture in audience reception, and the dilution of cultural subjectivity in content production. To make high-quality dissemination go forward, it is essential to uphold a value stance rooted in cultural subjectivity, build an integrated multi-modal communication framework, and adopt a new paradigm of cross-cultural exchange and collaborative meaning-making. Through reciprocal engagement, equal dialogue and mutual recognition of values can be realized across heterogeneous cultures.

Keywords: online literature, cross-cultural communication, cultural subjectivity, multimodality, meaning negotiation

■ The Homeland of Sound: On the Dialect Challenge in the Modern Transformation of Local Chinese Opera (Lin WeiRan)

Abstract: Dialect constitutes the phonetic foundation upon which the vocal styles of local Chinese opera are built. Its tonal cadence, expressive nuances, together with the cultural connotations embedded in the local language, endow each operatic genre with an irreplaceable artistic identity. However, against the backdrop of the promotion of Mandarin, increased population mobility, and generational shifts in audiences, dialect is rapidly transforming from the most stable marker of local operatic identity into its most prominent obstacle to wider reception. In response to this dialect challenge, local opera troupes have adopted strategies such as increased reliance on surtitles, phonological standardization, and dialectal amalgamation—measures that, while effective to a degree, fall short of a fundamental solution. In fact, the dialect dilemma faced by local opera is the result of multiple interacting factors, not a mere linguistic or technical issue. The modern transformation of local opera should adhere to the principle of active preservation: maintaining the primacy of vocal styles while staying rooted in phonetic authenticity. At the same time, it should leverage new media and other platforms to re-cultivate dialectal aesthetic appreciation among broader audiences and reconstruct local cultural identity. Only by preserving its local roots can local opera successfully navigate its modern transformation and achieve sustainable development.

Keywords: local Chinese opera; dialect; modern transformation; vocal style; cultural identity

Interview with Renowned Experts

■ Upholding the Essence of Animation and Preserving the Charm of Brushwork: An Interview with Animation Artist Chang Guangxi (Interviewed by Wang Xiaozhu)

An Interview with Animation Artist Chang Guangxi

Inside Front Cover

Chinese Literary and Art Critics: Xie Youshun

Inside Back Cover

Recommendation of Literary and Art Critics Associations in Sub-Provincial Cities: Jinan Literary and Art Critics Association

Back Cover

New Book Recommendation: Essentials of Chinese Literature and Art Criticism Volume II