media". I have heard many people speak about how "new media" is used by
some as a buzz phrase, to others a really exciting space to explore and to
others a space to proclaim any works they see in it as "dead" or "over".
Within new media many of us have been working with variations of how work
is displayed and how to deal with the issue of works on say floppy disk or
a jazz drive that is now deemed outmoded. I must also add that since being
a little kid I have had a life long fascination with etymology and
semiotics.
Some enjoy exploring in an area oft codified as on the trad art world's
edge while others bemoan how in this horrible economy it is so hard to
make any money doing art they love as it is digital. This is from people I
have spoken to and discussion groups in the last few years on the topic.
The issue to me is of the borders here. Where does it end as being one
thing or another? Digital photographs, blog art, paintings made from
projections from photoshop on a wall then codified as paintings only, it
is definitely not always problematic, but at times can be.
If you think of time in its long sloping chronology, a "new" media becomes
a not so new media. Nothing is wrong with this but it makes the etymology
a bit slippery when it comes to issues mentioned above to some artists as
well as curators and theorists. Video has had quite a resurgence the
last 3 or 4 years as it now can be on phones, projected , can be
triggered by gps coordinates and is great material for online exhibition
spaces. It is vital as always of course, but it is interesting to see the
newer platforms and this form meet.
I would love to hear thoughts on the "avant garde" and other codifying
terms in art in this context. When a new tool comes historically along, an
amazing array of experiments often emerge but then the tool may become a
standard usage element in culture at large and some will then begin the
debate of where the works displayed after this abstract designation has
been placed stand. Also a lot of work currently is exhibiting that plays
with aesthetics and functionality of older games, web aesthetics and
graphic capabilities. Is this a semiotically charged game of irony and
commentary as some write of some works, or is it more a fascination with a
lost meme and/or like Billy Holiday's singing (sorry for the slightly
obtuse example ) it is emboldened by working with the amazing
possibilities of what can be seen as "limitations" which becomes something
beyond these confines?
best,
Jeremy
> I don't think the question of "what is new media" is that intractable. Any
> activity that involves doing something through a means that augments human
> action, irrespective of how minor that augmentation is, is mediated. It is
> hard to imagine of any human activity that doesn't involve some form of
> augmentation. Our capacity to absorb or appropriate agency from elsewhere
> is
> part of what makes us human. In this sense all art is "media art".
> However,
> we typically use the term "media art" to indicate art forms that involve
> media that are not established as long-term conventional media within an
> area of practice. To be accurate we can refer to such mediated practice as
> "new media" so as to differentiate it from "old media". Where's the
> problem?
>
> Best
>
> Simon
>
>
> On 06/05/2011 07:39, "hight@34n118w.net" <hight@34n118w.net> wrote:
>
>> This reminds me of a discussion many of us in new media and locative
>> media
>> have been having for several years now. What is "new media"? The
>> terminology is so deeply problematic that it almost to some negates
>> itself
>> in a self destructing (yet also sustaining) mobius strip. It could be
>> anything from the printing press, sun dial or use of colored soils as
>> drawing tools to the latest new platforms and software being used to
>> make
>> anything from narratives to images and animations. Figures come and go
>> with declarations of its birth, others its death, yet others its stasis
>> or
>> perseverance.
>>
>> The connected issue emerges from the pragmatic (but also semiotic) realm
>> of exhibition and presentation. Is new media to be shown on screens in
>> the
>> traditional white space of the gallery? Is this to a degree though
>> issuing
>> it as of another aesthetic realm and still of online space? Is it to be
>> perhaps placed on flat screens embedded in walls or projected from
>> hidden
>> laptops to instead jump into the pantheon of physical exhibition in a
>> more
>> familiar construct? What is the work seen on a tiny phone screen in all
>> of this?
>>
>> Locative Media art has seen many genres within its years since the mid
>> to
>> late nineties. What makes a work a wearable not a sensor work woven into
>> clothing? What in Roland Barthes' larger discussion of metaphor as
>> being
>> many things to even stained glass or a single image as a narrative
>> denotes
>> locative narrative versus another form? Does it matter?
>>
>> What is the Avant Garde? Is it a containing space or a chosen
>> designation?
>> What is a meme's lifespan? What spaces do we prescribe in physical and
>> online spaces that connote new and established exhibition spaces and the
>> lines between?
>>
>> A lot of literary magazines are being run on blogs now. The blog used to
>> have the little brother connotation for some as not a "space" as though
>> built and designed but a prefab like in architecture. Does the online
>> exhibition space have to have "rooms" and navigation to be so named?
>> What may come soon? What older paradigms and forms have shifted away if
>> any? Who decides such contexts?
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>> Dear Lanfranco
>>>
>>> Thank you for the long answer to my questions and the in-depth
>>> description
>>> of your actions, achievements and plans with LEA.
>>>
>>> What you are describing as the process with the artists looks to me ...
>>> the usual curatorial process with artists that are alive (= not dead),
>>> who
>>> are creating a new work that, as a curator, you are supporting. I don't
>>> see any difference or specificity here and it is exactly the kind of
>>> things I am doing when I curate a show.
>>>
>>> You write : "I don't think that old and traditional categories of
>>> 'exhibiting' and 'documenting' apply any longer."
>>>
>>> I do not agree with that statement. I agree that some of the boundaries
>>> are bluring or are elsewhere than where they were before, but I do
>>> think
>>> there is a difference between let say Edunia or Alba by Eduardo Kac and
>>> the documentation about those works. Likewise, there is a difference
>>> between a performance and the documentation about the performance.
>>> Those
>>> categories disappears only for some kind of
>>> digital-new-media-technoscience-artworks, not all of them. Hence
>>> remediation or transmediation do not apply on an equal basis for all
>>> "new
>>> media" artworks.
>>>
>>> But I totally agree when you write that : "The beauty of the medium
>>> (Internet) I found is that it allows to blur these boundaries - to be
>>> at
>>> the same time exhibition, catalog and archive and to leave to the
>>> viewer
>>> the perception of its structures favoring one over the other."
>>>
>>> About the other points you are raising :
>>>
>>> You write :
>>> "a) the exhibition pages and all their dissemination and visibility
>>> structures could be defined as artworks in themselves"
>>> This reminds me of the heated debate in the contemporay art field of
>>> the
>>> (physical) exhibition being the creation and the curators being
>>> (almost)
>>> artists (and sometimes considering themselves as more important than
>>> the
>>> artists and artworks themselves). Are we bringing to the
>>> digital-technosciences field this debate ?
>>> My point of view here, is that curating a show is also "designing" the
>>> presentation of the works (in French we say "scenographie" like "stage
>>> design") and this has been often (not always) not fully addressed
>>> online :
>>> the content was considered as what mattered. I think now, what Neural,
>>> You
>>> and others are doing is adressing the issue of how to design online
>>> exhibitions that are more than a list of links.
>>>
>>> About transmediation : I don't think it is exactly the same as moving a
>>> sculpture from one physical space to another. And I don't believe in
>>> the
>>> same possible experience for the audience in different media (or why
>>> would
>>> you bother to build the physical thing when the concept would be enough
>>> ?). All works are not equal in this process.
>>> I also think that we should be carefull with an "all-screen" domination
>>> that will solve all issues. But don't get me wrong, those issues are
>>> exciting, doing it well is a real challenge that I am trying to
>>> achieve.
>>>
>>> About your project with Judit Hersko, you write :
>>> "So the difficulties we are facing here are several:
>>> a) relating the previous online show to the physical space
>>> b) linking the new piece which is an outdoor piece in a different
>>> location
>>> to the internal pieces in the gallery
>>> c) transferring the new artwork in an online presence
>>> d) consider how the new context will affect the artwork itself and its
>>> development"
>>>
>>> This is exactly the agenda ! And it could be the program of a nice
>>> conference or workshop ;-) Is there anything planed at ISEA around this
>>> ?
>>>
>>> There would be much to write about your long email but I suspect I
>>> should
>>> stop here or the moderator is not going to approve my post !
>>>
>>> Best
>>> Annick
>>>
>>>
>>>
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>>
>>
>>
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>
>
> Simon Biggs
> simon@littlepig.org.uk
> http://www.littlepig.org.uk/
>
> s.biggs@eca.ac.uk
> http://www.elmcip.net/
> http://www.eca.ac.uk/circle/
>
>
> _______________________________________________
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