You don't sound "off" at all. I agree that newness, novelty and such terms
have very problematic echoes. The point I was making was that most of what
we do is mediated and thus a form of media praxis and that there are always
some unconventional methods that seem "new". Some of these might not have a
past but, as you point out, many do - it's as if we forget our capabilities
and have to rediscover them. Our Promethean legacy, I guess.
Best
Simon
On 07/05/2011 21:12, "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/
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Yasmin_discussions mailing list
>> Yasmin_discussions@estia.media.uoa.gr
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>>
>> Yasmin URL: http://www.media.uoa.gr/yasmin
>>
>> HOW TO SUBSCRIBE: click on the link to the list you wish to subscribe to. In
>> the page that will appear ("info page"), enter e-mail address, name, and
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>> unsubscribe button on the page that will appear ("options page").
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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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