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AESTHETICS3

Marcelo Baldin
In AESTHETICS

From Surface to Substance

The word “aesthetics” is not superficial — we are the ones who made it so.

Originally, aesthetics derives from the Greek aisthesis, meaning “perception through the senses.” It goes beyond what is merely visible, encompassing that which reveals meaning, interiority, and the very reason for something’s existence.

By reducing “aesthetics” to superficial procedures or a thin layer of appearance — whether in the body, in objects, or in environments — we neglect the fact that every form expresses a content. Form, therefore, is the language of the interior.

If we use the word only to describe what is superficial, it is our own vision that becomes limited.
Aesthetics is not confined to vanity; it represents the visible manifestation of the invisible.

At the same time, even without using the term “aesthetics,” behavior that focuses solely on the outward aspect of appearance reveals a lack of inner meaning: the greater the effort to seem something, the less substance there often is.

Therefore, if we are concerned with aesthetics, it is essential first to care for the content — because the exterior inevitably reflects the interior.

For Kant, aesthetics is not vanity: it is the experience of harmony between our perception and the form of an object — something that awakens in us a sense of fitness that does not depend on ornament or fashion.

For Schopenhauer, aesthetics is not superficial: it is precisely what frees us from the superficiality of desire and connects us to something deeper.

In essence, aesthetics is not an accessory to life but a mirror of who we are.
When reduced to the veneer of appearances, it loses its purpose; when cultivated from within, it becomes an authentic expression of meaning. Kant reminds us that true beauty is a harmony that needs no ornament, while Schopenhauer shows that aesthetic contemplation draws us away from the futility of wanting and closer to what is essential.

To care for aesthetics, therefore, is above all to care for the depth it manifests — the soul — because every truly beautiful form is born from genuine substance.
Aesthetics is not confined to looks or to the way we dress, but to everything that shapes our taste and our interactions with the world.

Marcelo Baldin
In AESTHETICS

Ideation in the AI-era

Years ago, I embarked on a music project called Omega Code. We made modest progress as a group, but the project ultimately stalled. The primary reason was pragmatic: I realized that advancing to the next stage would require a disproportionate investment of time and energy—one that would threaten my livelihood. To turn it into a sustainable primary source of income, I would have had to make it the center of my professional life. I chose not to. Instead, I brought the project to a close, leaving it as a vivid memory rather than a career. I focused on Combustion Studio instead.

Despite its brevity, Omega Code became an unexpected apprenticeship. It taught me valuable lessons about the music industry, including the importance of collaboration and leadership, as well as the interplay between aesthetics and creativity. Much of our sonic experimentation was driven by visual inputs, a synesthetic approach where imagery shaped sound. Being deeply immersed in the creative field, I benefited from the contributions of many collaborators who subtly shaped the project.

One of the most surreal aspects was the global reach of our visual campaign. Before we released a single track, a series of poster designs sparked international attention. The project existed as an MVP (minimum viable product), yet people engaged as if it were a cultural artifact. We received over 500 illustrations from around the world; designers used our template to generate their own variations. The triangular motif we used triggered a brief design trend in 2009—a slight fever that seemed disproportionate to our scale.

The triangle puzzled many: Why a triangle if the name was Omega Code? Our symbol, inspired by the Christian Trinity, was less a literal reference to “omega” than an emblem of the project’s philosophical roots. As Jungian psychology might suggest, symbols carry meaning beyond logic, surfacing archetypes that resonate collectively with others.

A decade after closing Omega Code, we now find ourselves in the midst of the AI surge. Its influence reaches across disciplines. While many express concern over potential disruptions, I regard this era as an unprecedented opportunity. For the first time, ideas themselves—not just final products—are becoming effortless to manifest.

Back then, many of my conceptual ideas remained unfulfilled because they demanded budgets I didn’t have. Today, a well-crafted prompt can breathe life into concepts that once seemed unattainable. When ideas are grounded in coherent principles, aesthetics, and personal vision, AI becomes a tool to overcome what Jung called the “archetypes of the collective unconscious.”

Prototyping—once a luxury—is now accessible to anyone with curiosity. Since the early 2000s, the internet democratized creativity; today’s AI tools amplify that democratization exponentially. This is neither optimism nor pessimism; it is simply an acknowledgment of historical momentum.

Even brief engagement with old Omega Code concepts recently yielded results that were unimaginable at the time—3D experiments, photographic mock-ups, and even musical sketches. Yet there remains a danger in assuming that AI will deliver finished work. As the painter Chuck Close once said, “Inspiration is for amateurs; the rest of us just show up and get to work.” Technology offers tools, not miracles; the art still requires discipline, hard work, and human intention.

Were Omega Code to arise today, it would sound and look entirely different, shaped by new tools and cultural currents. My intention in revisiting it is not nostalgia but an invitation: to emphasize ideation and hands-on creation—to remind us that tools alone do not make the artist.

”“Inspiration is for amateurs;
the rest of us just show up and get to work.”

Chuck Close

We achieved amazing results with the Omega Code project, particularly through the collaboration of talented artists who contributed to the posters. Notable individuals involved included Joshua Davis, Mike Cina, Nelson Balaban, Tom Muller, Robert Lindström, Michael Paul Young, and Motomichi Nakamura, among others. Gabriel Wickbold took the final photograph for the album cover, while Brendan Duffey, known for his work with Bruce Dickinson, Sheryl Crow, and Kendrick Lamar, handled the album’s mastering. Still, the effort required to bring this project to life was significantly greater than what is typically needed today.

One should take advantage of the zeitgeist rather than be overwhelmed by it.
There are no excuses for being idle.

Suggested Reading

– On Symbols & Archetypes:
– Carl Jung, Man and His Symbols (1964): “The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect but by the play instinct acting from inner necessity.”

– On Creativity & Labor:
– Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention, for the concept of “flow” in creative work.

– On Technology & Art:
– Walter Benjamin, The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction — for historical parallels between earlier tech shifts and AI.

– On Prototyping & Design:
– Eric Ries, The Lean Startup — for the concept of MVP as applied to art and music.

Marcelo Baldin
In AESTHETICS

Cycles of Aesthetics

From time to time, society turns to the past to draw new impulses from it. This occurs because, at certain moments, the present no longer provides inspiration or meaningful prospects for the future. When the contemporary world appears stagnant or saturated, we return to what has already proven to hold vigor and significance.

Such movements arise periodically. The avant-garde often reaches a point of saturation: its creative energy begins to wear thin, and the dominant aesthetic starts to feel excessive or even destructive. While this does not necessarily lead to “social collapse,” there is a threshold of cultural rupture beyond which cycles of revisitation and renewal emerge.

These revivals are sometimes dismissed by the intellectual elite as mere “nostalgia.” Yet they are not simply nostalgic; rather, they represent efforts to rebuild upon foundations that once proved fruitful, now reshaped with new techniques and contexts. Such movements act as attempts to recalibrate the sensibility of an age and tend to spread most visibly through the arts. The Renaissance, Classicism, Romanticism, and others were each driven by reflection on the paths already taken and by the search for both aesthetic and existential adjustment.

Before the internet, these processes unfolded slowly, often taking decades to consolidate and disseminate. Today, however, we witness constant micro-revolutions, which appear to be converging toward a larger revision of the Zeitgeist. The past few decades have brought intense disruptions across multiple fields, reflected in a fragmented and chaotic aesthetic landscape. The pursuit of the sublime, once a guiding force in the arts, has to some extent been replaced by a culture of shock. The accelerated flow of information challenges human capacities for assimilation, generating a kind of stress that verges on incompatibility with our nature.

In response, a quieter movement has begun to take shape—one oriented toward simplicity, tranquility, and reconnection with what endures. It manifests in social and intellectual practices that resist both rampant consumerism and rigid ideological demands. Frequently labeled as conservatism, this impulse in fact acquires an avant-garde quality within the current context. Wearied by impositions, many are once again seeking the sublime—through a kind of futuristic revival that combines critiques of technology with a retreat from mass-produced pop culture.

From Amusing Ourselves to Death (Neil Postman, 1985) to Digital Minimalism (Cal Newport, 2019), calls for a more frugal and meaningful life have multiplied. Yet this impulse coexists with opposing forces that invest in the bizarre and the ephemeral. We thus live in tension between utopias and dystopias, both reflected in contemporary aesthetics. The key question is what kind of fruits each tendency will ultimately bear.

In the end, aesthetics divide into two broad orientations: those that seek only the fleeting instant and those that strive for the perennial. Their results, of course, are very different. Over the long term, some currents will endure as transformative, while others will be remembered merely as passing phases—like the Lisztomania of the nineteenth century.