One form of new media that is has yet to breech the mainstream is a genre called ‘New Media Art’, which “encompasses artworks created with new media technologies, including digital art, computer graphics, computer animation, virtual art, Internet art, interactive art technologies, computer robotics, and art as biotechnology.” (Wikipedia, 2011) The term differentiates itself by its resulting cultural objects and social events, which can be seen in opposition to those deriving from old visual arts (i.e. traditional painting, sculpture, etc.). Furthermore, New Media Art depends on telecommunications, mass media and digital modes of delivery. (Wikipedia, 2011) To understand the positioning of New Media Art in the wider field of art and communications, I turn to the book Media, New Media, Postmedia by Domenico Quaranta (2011), which I found provided an extremely lucid and comprehensive analysis of this “multidisciplinary arena,” and the “post-media condition” in which it exists.
According to Quaranta, ‘New Media Art’ came about as a cultural niche in the Sixties and Seventies, and became more established in the Eighties and Nineties, during which time New Media Art found its own means of production and distribution. The phenomenon picked up steam with the development of web and consumer technologies--including digital computing and network technologies--during the mid-Nineties, as well as the new approach artists took to the medium, particularly by the net.art movement.[1] This “niche realm for enthusiasts” soon became a “vital artistic subculture” characterized by its isolation from the contemporary art market and it self-referential qualities. (Varnelis, 2008) Historian Kazys Varnelis claims this is in part due to the artists’ fascination with ‘hacking’ the medium, and in part caused by its marginalization by established art institutions. (Varnelis, 2008) New Media Art in this period was defined by artists such as Ira Greenberg, Vuk Cosic, Alexei Shulgin and Heath Bunting, who were inspired by avant-garde art movements of the twentieth century, while “emulating the graphic and programming demos of 1980s hacker culture.” (Varnelis, 2008)
Fig 7.0 – New Media Art, Aging, Heath Bunting,
In the last decade, computers have become more ubiquitous and of widespread use in society. As could be expected, there has been exponential growth in technology-based art, which has subsequently expanded the realm of New Media Art from a subculture into the periphery of the mainstream, further complicating the definition of the term, for New Media Art was not art for arts sake, rather, it began to share “the system of values of the contemporary art world.” (Quaranta, 2011) Accordingly, it was no longer considered “creative research on a given medium,” but was thought to also serve as a “powerful statement on the world we are living in.” (Quaranta, 2011)
Today, New Media Art is typically classified as such when it is “produced, exhibited and discussed in a specific ‘art world.’” (Quaranta, 2011) As the definition provided earlier would suggest, this ‘art world’ is that of new technologies and media, distinguished from ‘old’ technology and media as being digital in nature. However, Quaranta is resolute in the idea that New Media Art does cannot simply be defined by its medium, or neatly fit within a new genre in contemporary art. Instead, he asks that we view it as an incubator that exists in the intersection between art and science--or more specifically, technology—for the New Media Art world must:
Act as an incubator for the other, more solid art worlds, creating the ideal situation for the development of advanced, risky, financially unsustainable or aesthetically challenging work, and subsequently enriching those arenas that, not out of conservatism but due to their very characteristics. The New Media Art world can potentially generate the energy that powers the other art worlds, giving their respective “ideas of art” a radical evolution.
The emphasis here seems to be on creating work without paying heed to financial gain or being affected by (art) market forces, for the benefit of the development of the craft and the rapid evolution of this highly influential art form, which has recently begun to penetrate the mainstream without the general public’s awareness. For example, a digital installation by Marco Brambilla in the elevators of the Standard Hotel in New York City, called ‘Civilization,’ inspired the musician, Kanye West’s, music video, ‘Power,’ which has received nearly 20 million views on YouTube. Brambilla’s work highlights the expansion of the definition of New Media Art, as it is remarkably more advanced than simple ‘Internet Art.’ New works demonstrate that this is not a genre comprised of homogeneous practices. More accurately, it is a complex field that is spurred by the art system, scientific and industrial research and politico-cultural media activism. (Quaranta, 2011) In the convergence of these three elements, we find artists who with varying degrees of training and technologically know-how, as well as artistic means of production.
In some cases, existing technology is used in new ways, as with the Animated Graphic Interchange Format (ANI-GIF.com), which now has become an art form all to its own (the 2012 ANI GIF BIENNIAL, will be the first large-scale, real-world exhibition of GIFs). Simulated reality is another popular medium, as was demonstrated at the 2010 Amber Festival, ‘Data City,’ hosted by the amber Art and Technology Platform project (conceived and run by BIS - Body Process Arts Association). Artists gathered in at the Istanbul Modern in Turkey to show off art leveraging cutting edge technology including data-capture and representation. The common thread between the works was interactivity, leading many artists to remain posted by their installation so that they would be readily available to answer questions by viewers, who were now more aptly deemed participants.
Fig 7.1 – Liquid Grid, Frieder Weiss
For instance, ‘Liquid Grid’, by Grid Frieder Weiss, required individuals or groups to approach a blank wall. Their movement was detected by motion sensors and reinterpreted by a computer, which sent signals to a light projection that created patterns of light in response to participants’ every move. Quaranta points out the similarity between this and works of art such as “TFT Tennis, a typical artifact of the world of New Media Art,” as well as other “modalities of play made popular by the Nintendo Wii, based on physical movement.” (Quaranta, 2011)
Another piece with a game-like element, titled, ‘Open Walls Junior - Istanbul 2010+Ruhr 2010’ by Akrylonumerik Collective, required a group of artists, located around the globe to work together in real-time to create a work of art. The artists, each equipped with a digitally projected canvas and virtual paintbrushes, simultaneously contributed to the piece, sometimes pausing to observe another’s progress and then respond. Both works clearly demonstrate the capacity for New Media Art to deconstruct traditional modes of viewing contemporary art, for it calls into question the notions of authorship, production, exhibition and preservation of art. Furthermore, it continues the progress made by postmodernism to break down the borders between high and low culture, and in the case of ‘Open Walls Junior,’ incorporate gaming, a global phenomenon and product of new media not typically associated with contemporary art.
Fig 7.2 – Open Walls Junior - Istanbul 2010+Ruhr 2010, Akrylonumerik Collective
Despite the varying complexity and levels of interactivity these works possess, New Media Arts—from the early pioneers to the rookie trailblazers—hold one thing in common: each has a “self-referential relationship” with new technologies, which is Quaranta attributes to “finding oneself inside an epoch-making transformation determined by technological development.” (Quaranta, 2011) Despite its growing development and influence on culture, the art world continues to find difficulty with these art forms, sometimes viewing them as a “vacuous celebration of technology,” while video game and technologies industries simply regard these works as “unsustainable ideas.” New Media Art therefore remains in limbo between art and technology.
From its perch between art and science, New Media Art strongly influencing artistic means of production. According to Bourriaud in his work Postproduction, the contemporary artist appropriates cultural objects from the “proliferating chaos of global culture in the information age” and incorporates them into new contexts. (Bourriaud, 2002) In its completion, the work is the termination point of the “creative process” or a “finished product” to be contemplated, but a “site of navigation, a portal, a generator of activities.” (Bourriaud, 2002) This was made possible in the context of ‘altermodernity,’ or what Bourriaud considered, a “socio-cultural context characterized by globalization, travel and increasing opportunities for communication.” (Bourriaud, 2009) Within this context, art could be created that was free from media determinism, an idea was developed in his work, The Radicant, in which he used the term “radicant art” to imply the end of “the medium-specific, the abandonment of any tendency to exclude certain fields through the realm of art.” (Bourriaud, 2009) Radicant art could also be viewed as ‘post-media art,’ a term defined by Peter Weibel, for his 2005 show entitled “Postmedia Condition.”
To Weibel, post-media art is “the art that comes after the affirmation of the media; and given that the impact of the media is universal and computers can now simulate all other media, all contemporary art is postmedia,” as he explains:
This media experience has become the norm for all aesthetic experience. Hence in art there is no longer anything beyond the media. No-one can escape from the media. There is no longer any painting outside and beyond the media experience. There is no longer any sculpture outside and beyond the media experience. There is no longer any photography outside and beyond the media experience (Quaranta, 2011)
The works which fall in this category do not exist in isolation, but act as “nodes in a network of meaning” which function in networked culture much as media functions in the networked information environment. However, despite the overlap in new media and New Media Art that has become characteristic of the post-media condition, New Media Art is rarely, if ever, incorporated into marketing strategies to promote museums, which are dedicated to art, and reliant upon marketing. This could be due to the technical aspects of new media and the ‘radical’, borderline nature of New Media Art, which continues to intimidate consumers and marketers. In Quaranta’s words:
It is no simple matter to find the technological expertise and intellectual courage required to exhibit a work of this kind. Its very production would have been unthinkable outside a context that fosters research not directed at the immediate creation of an artifact. The installation in itself is inaccessible to the art market, though the highly performative and relational nature of the piece could occasion its circulation in documentary form, as prints and videos. These elements also foster an interpretation of the world that goes beyond the traditional ‘art and technologies’ paradigm. (Quaranta, 2011)
It is this fact, which has motivated several forward-thinking and progressive organizations--including Rhizome (New York City), Intel (Santa Clara, CA) and Gray Area Foundation for the Arts (San Francisco)--to create labs focused on demystifying new media, making it a more accessible, and promoting its development and preservation.
Before it became a trend among galleries to engage in the digital and technology, The New Museum in New York City recognized new media as fundamental to development in both contemporary arts and communication, and established Rhizome, a new-media organization affiliated with the New Museum, which deems itself “an online resource for people who are interested in New Media Art, the intersection of new technologies and contemporary art.” (Rhizome, 2011) Since it opened in 1999, Rhizome has been working to “demystify the Internet for tech-shy artists and audiences, has paved the way in recent years for an expansion of the definition of media art.” (In 2005, the mission statement was changed to read: “dedicated to the creation, presentation, preservation, and critique of emerging artistic practices that engage technology.”) (Rhizome, 2011)
Through open platforms for exchange and collaboration, the website serves to encourage and expand the communities around these practices. Programs include commissions, exhibitions, events, discussion, archives and portfolios. The group also supports artists working at the “furthest reaches of technological experimentation” as well as those responding to the broader aesthetic and political implications of new tools and media, drawing attention to artists, their work, their perspectives and the complex interrelationships between technology, art and culture. (Carlin, 2008) Meanwhile, the New Museum provides an actual physical space for new-media curatorial endeavors, which “reflect new attitudes and the constantly evolving relationship between the arts and new forms of media.” (Carlin, 2008)
Fig 7.3 New Museum, New York City
Similar attitudes toward the marriage of art and technology are being reflected in surprising partnerships, such as the recent collaboration between the software giant, Intel, and the subversive magazine, Vice. In 2010, these unlikely bedfellows spawned The Creators Project, a global network dedicated to the “celebration of creativity, culture and technology,“ which “supports leading and emerging artists worldwide who are using technology to push the bounds of creative expression.” (Creators Project, 2011) In 2010, as part of this initiative, it showcased more than 90 of the most innovative thinkers in art, music, design, and film, by highlighting their works through documentaries on thecreatorsproject.com and through a traveling event series. (Creators Project, 2011) The same year, The Creators Project partnered with The Coachella Arts and Music Festival to “radically reinvent the music festival into a next-generation experience for music fans” by collaborating with select headlining acts and curating a series of major art installations on the grounds. (Creators Project, 2011) This will be accomplished through:
Integrating state-of-the-art technology and visual art into Coachella, and bringing that experience online, the partnership will add yet another layer of creative expression to the world's premier music event.” A diverse group of artists, musicians, filmmakers and designers will use cutting edge technology to realize their visions, including videos, art installations, web content and events. (Creators Project, 2011)
This project shows how an institution (in this case, Vice Magazine) has extended its brand and product offering through a partnership with a tech company, which has created a new way of experiencing both brands and simultaneously widened their audience through the marriage of art and technology.
Fig 7.4 – Creators Project, Art Installation
Other organizations view new media art as a way to create social consciousness through digital culture. According to its website, the Gray Area Foundation for the Arts (GAFFTA) is focused on bringing together top creative coders, data artists and designers to “create experiments that build social consciousness through digital culture….aimed at the production, research, and dissemination of digital culture where art, science, technology, and society intersect.” (GAFFTA, 2011) True to the spirit of New Media Art, the foundation brings “diverse communities together to incubate ideas,” and to support and showcase the projects they create. (GAFFTA, 2011) Its activities include hosting classes, workshops, seminars, and symposia taught and attended “by the very people that are transforming today’s digital age.” (GAFFTA, 2011) All this is done with the aim to “make digital culture (data, social tools, open source codes) accessible, substantive, and inspiring by humanizing technology through creative and social digital experiments.” Through exhibitions that showcase art, design, sound and technology, the foundation hopes to “unlock unexpected innovation.”
Fig 7.5 – ‘Milieux Sonores’, Gray Area Foundation for the Arts, 2011
In its upcoming exhibition, ‘Milieux Sonores’, the foundation will focus on the “artistic and musical designs of sound spaces, on working with sound and the visualization of imaginary space.” (GAFFTA, 2011) This work presents five different artistic approaches, “each of which either creates, in its own unique way, a world of sounds and a space for a framework of sounds or transforms and redefines space through sound.” (GAFFTA, 2011) These so called ‘flowspaces’ cause us to think about our environment, and how combinations in light and sound can manipulate our perceptions. It is interesting that such cutting-edge and engaging installations rarely find life within museum walls.
To Joline Blais and Jon Ippolito, founders of Still Water,
a new media program promoting networked art and culture, “art that comes into being ‘at the edge of art’ is an irreplaceable source of dynamism, a force that evolves the very idea of art at the root of the contemporary art world.” It is exactly this “borderline” status of New Media Art, which is working to garner it public attention, interest and praise. (Quaranta, 2011) Subsequently, this “paradigm shifting genre,” is proving itself necessary to the growth and evolution of contemporary art. (Quaranta, 2011). Perhaps by incorporating these works in museum exhibitions, or by partnering with artists to create opportunities for visitors to interact with works of art, and the museum, it would add a sense of dynamism to institutions attempting to attract new audiences, and in particular, digital natives who expect and prefer to engage in interactive media.
