AESTHETIC SYSTEM #2: TECHNO SURREALISM
Designed way of seeing.
For years, I’ve been building Aesthetic Systems to inform my work. This series is where I publish them. A collection of visual worlds, not just vibes, with their own logics, constraints, and figures that carry tone and meaning on sight.
Aesthetic System: a set of rules that govern what kind of images can exist, how they look, how they circulate, and what they make possible.
What it is
Techno Surrealism is an aesthetic system built from (mainly) AI-generated imagery, uncanny visual narratives, and soft-CGI aesthetics. It operates in the space between realism and fabrication, producing images that feel both hyper-detailed and emotionally detached. The system presents technology not as a tool, but as a co-author, shaping atmosphere, logic, and meaning.
Rather than illustrating reality, Techno Surrealism constructs synthetic worlds that feel plausible, unfamiliar, and subtly destabilising.
Conditions of emergence
Techno Surrealism emerges from widespread access to generative tools, real-time rendering, and image synthesis. It assumes a culture fluent in artificial imagery, one that no longer treats “fake” as a failure, but as an aesthetic position.
This is a Nestea ad from 1999 Link
Visual logic
The system is held together by a set of organising principles:
Image source: AI-generated visuals, CGI renders, synthetic composites
Aesthetic tone: uncanny, emotionally distant
Environments: liminal spaces, impossible architecture, disproportions, artificial landscapes
Lighting: AI veneer, pixelation, bright contrasts, exaggerated
Detail: excessive precision paired with wrongness
Human presence: stylised, idealised, or slightly off
Together, these elements create a visual grammar that feels advanced, controlled, and disorienting.
What the system produces
When activated, Techno Surrealism produces:
Visually striking synthetic worlds
Narratives without clear authorship or association
Emotional ambiguity
A sense of technological omnipresence
Images that feel “future-coded” without being utopian
The output is immersive, impressive, and slightly alienating (by design).
What it’s useful for
Techno Surrealism is effective in contexts where innovation, disruption, and futurity need to be communicated without optimism:
Tech and AI branding
Fashion and beauty campaigns exploring artificiality
Music and visual projects with digital identities
Speculative or conceptual storytelling
Brands positioning themselves as post-human, post-natural, or post-authentic
System relations
Adjacent systems: Digital maximalism, space aesthetics, post-internet surrealism
Shared mechanics: simulation, artificial realism, emotional distance
Contrast system: Skeuomorphism
Classic!