Artistic Responses to Digital Consumerism in Post-Internet Art: Visual Styles and Emotions in Jon Rafman’s “Still Life (Betamale)”

DOI

10.2991/978-2-38476-422-8_49How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Post-internet art; digital consumerism; visual semiotics; Jon Rafman; aesthetic analysis

Abstract

A central figure in post-internet art, Jon Rafman is celebrated for his incisive explorations of digital subcultures and the psychological effects of internet life, positioning him as a critical interpreter of contemporary digital aesthetics. His work frequently examines how virtual and online spaces shape human identity, behavior, and memory, making him an influential artist in capturing the anxieties and obsessions that permeate digital consumer culture. This study examines how post-internet artist Jon Rafman employs specific visual aesthetics in his artwork “Still Life (Betamale)” to critique digital consumer culture and convey associated emotions. Utilizing visual semiotics, iconographic analysis, and aesthetic theory, the research deconstructs the artwork to reveal how lo-fi aesthetics and dreamcore imagery—marked by low-resolution visuals, pixelation, and nostalgic elements—highlight themes of alienation, objectification, and information overload in the digital age. By contextualizing Rafman’s work within post-internet art and comparing it to contemporaries, the study highlights shared concerns and unique visual strategies addressing digital consumerism. The findings demonstrate that Rafman’s work profoundly illuminates the psychological and societal impacts of digital consumer culture, offering new insights into the emotional landscape of the modern digital era. This study seeks to answer: How does Jon Rafman’s visual language critique the effects of digital consumerism on individual and cultural identities in the context of post-internet art? In sum, this paper illustrates how “Still Life (Betamale)” serves both as a critique of digital consumerism and as a lens for re-examining the relationship between technology and identity. It suggests that post-internet art has the unique potential to bridge artistic expression and cultural critique by capturing the complexities and anxieties of the digital age.

Copyright

© 2025 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Huijia Yang
PY  - 2025
DA  - 2025/06/12
TI  - Artistic Responses to Digital Consumerism in Post-Internet Art: Visual Styles and Emotions in Jon Rafman’s “Still Life (Betamale)”
BT  - Proceedings of the 2025 4th International Conference on Humanities, Wisdom Education and Service Management (HWESM 2025)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 403
EP  - 412
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-2-38476-422-8_49
DO  - 10.2991/978-2-38476-422-8_49
ID  - Yang2025
ER  -