Well, I'll interject once again regarding the use of 'new media' -
because perhaps, after
getting the score from Jeremy and the YASMIN list, I'd better inform
Eduardo and Raquel,
my co-collaborators, to change the name of http://newmediafix.net to
something else. :' )
The strongest curatorial position I've heard recently was Steve Dietz'
introductory comments at the
press conference at the ZeroONe Biennale. He said that artists aren't
making objects
or making performances or installations, they are busy creating
"platforms". These were platforms
with which to engage audiences. And I guess that the reason this seems
to fit with this
lists' discussion of terminology is that it points out a radical shift
in the arts from the need to name.
The good thing about the "term" new media is that it doesn't refer to
either one type of art or one
type of technology but is a huge catchall term for all kinds of
'newness'. "new" does not bother me!
New is good. New is like saying, "I'm aware that art isn't made on an
easel only anymore."
Not only does it not mean "electronic". (I've always liked 'electronic
media' and 'electronic art')
But all kinds of technology based arts can be called 'new media' from
Charlotte Moorman's radical
brassieres to Wolf Vostell's destruction of televisions,
Art-by-Telephone, or an interactive web-based
multimedia exhibition...ahem...the "real content" for which may lie
else where.
Aren't we splitting hairs? I mean, what is a web-based work, the
network, the text, the picture? Is it
textual, visual, spatial?
My two bits,
Molly
On Sat, May 7, 2011 at 1:12 PM, richard brown <rb@mimetics.com> wrote:
> Today's new media is tomorrow's old media - cdrom was once new media, as
> once were interactive video discs!
> In the 80's I knew a London company called New Media, so for me its a really
> retro sounding term and I flinch every time I hear it!
>
> The problem is the "new" - its a buy me marketing term alongside "improved".
> Trendy media might be a better term!
>
> Static electricity art could be new media art because no-one is working in
> that field, even though the science dates back to Amber and the Greeks.
>
> So we need terms for describing practices that use technology or science as
> media, but lets leave off with the new, its sloppy, lazy, dated and smacks
> of hype - name that media, rather than describe it as new, as if its
> something unique, special and to be acquired, like the latest must-have
> product.
>
> Apologies for sounding off, but the term really bugs me!
>
> Best,
> Richard
>
> On 06/05/2011 12:05, Simon Biggs wrote:
>>
>> 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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>
> --
> Richard Brown
>
> art&design: mimetics.com
> i-lighting: mimelight.com
>
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--
******************************
Molly Beth Hankwitz, Ph.D.
***********************
Mailing address:
3288 21st Street, #28
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Tel: 415 283 7757
************************
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http://www.othercinema.com
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