I think you hit the nail on the head with the purposeful choice of infidelities. It goes beyond photography too. For example, I like producing electronic music

I think you hit the nail on the head with the purposeful choice of infidelities. It goes beyond photography too. For example, I like producing electronic music as a hobby, and one of my favorite VSTs is RC-20 Retro Color (https://www.xlnaudio.com/products/addictive_fx/effect/rc-20_retro_color https://www.xlnaudio.com/products/addictive_fx/effect/rc-20_...) which intentionally adds tape noise, wobble, flutter, and dropouts; things that audio engineers painstakingly labored over avoiding and removing only a couple of decades ago. Yesterday's distortions and imperfections are today's character and color.