So! Now that we have discussed, viewed, listened, and participated, and now that we have had the experience of meeting and hearing all of our esteemed visitors, let’s ask one final time:
WHAT DOES IT MEAN: “NEW MEDIA???”
(BTW: the above image is the first image that comes up in a google image search for “what is new media.”)
This has been an awesome journey, thanks to all of you for your great thinking and working.
There will be more!
The margin has been released.
</julia>
14 responses so far ↓
1 Lauren // May 9, 2008 at 3:56 pm
I have thought a lot about new media throughout the span of this course and think I am ready to take a stab at this question “what is new media”. A common thread between all of the artists who came to lecture is that their art is based in technology or methods that has not been widely accepted as “art” in the past. NPR does radio broadcasting, CAE deals with science, Paul Demarinis deals with electronics, Nao used hypnosis, and Paperrad makes internet animations. Each of these fields has its own place in our society that is separate from the art world, each serves a distinct particular purpose. I think what makes these groups artists, and not just radio broadcasters or electronic technicians is that each group uses their tools in a new way, breaking boundaries and integrating their skills into an art context. Mind you this is not conventional art to be observed, all of the work we talked about required the viewer to participate. For FMemory, without listeners with radios there would have been no piece, for Singing in the rain, without people walking with umbrellas there would be no piece, for Paperrad without people clicking around the website there would be no piece. All of this work requires the viewer to interact with and engage with the piece for the work to exist. So new media is not quite technology, not quite art. It occupies a user friendly space somewhere inbetween that is still waiting to be defined.
2 sara k // May 12, 2008 at 3:01 pm
New Media. Similar to new food, new clothes, new friends, or new house. Youve just got some new variables to arrange. Maybe a more meaningful term would be new mediation, because nothings really that new, its just a change in the way we are using the media. Like if you get a new house, and there are no spoons you adjust and figure out that you can use a ladel for a spoon if you need to have soup.
What I maybe know is that the hype surrounding the term new media feels like a lot of pond scum covering up a huge trout that is chilling at the bottom of the art pond.
Trout dont talk so much, they just swim around and and get thier food because that is what they need. They need nourishment (work). The nourishment is making art, not talking about themselves as artists. Talking about themselves as artists (stiff collar formal i am artist with paint on my pants i have muse and gallery and museum) actually just dilutes the nourishing little crappies that they eat.
New Media. Similar to new food, new clothes, new friends, or new house. Youve just got some new variables to arrange. Maybe a more meaningful term would be new mediation, because nothings really that new, its just a change in the way we are using the media. Like if you get a new house, and there are no spoons you adjust and figure out that you can use a ladel for a spoon if you need to have soup.
What I maybe know is that the hype surrounding the term new media feels like a lot of pond scum covering up a huge trout that is chilling at the bottom of the art pond. Trout dont talk so much, they just swim around and and get thier food because that is what they need. They need nourishment. The nourishment is making art, not talking about themselves as artists. Talking about themselves as artists (stiff collar formal i am artist with paint on my pants i have muse and gallery and museum) actually just dilutes the nourishing little crappies that they eat.
new media is about not spell checking, it is about whatever and scribbles. new media is about painting on computer screens and computing on embroidery. that doesnt even make sense but it doesnt matter becuase this is a blog about new media and its okay to call attention to that becuase parts that dont make sense mean everything and nothing. more seriously, or less seriously, new media is a move away from linear thinking and a movement to work towards integrated thinking and making. problem solving (paperrad problem solvers?!) away from A and B makes AB and toward maybe half of A and one quarter of B don’t really make anything that is on this keyboard. not begining and ending or black an white and instead all the middle and all grey.
Paper Rads humor, Nao Bustamante’s self reflexive narcisim, Paul Demarinis’s integration of science and history to make art, steve Kurtz’s crazy scientist as artist persona, and Michael Trigilio’s DIY radio are all great examples of new media in the art life today. Each artists practice is new media becuase they have taken individual initiative, questioned the powers that be (like radio, science, art, narcisism etc), and very importantly, they work autonomously without needing support from the big cahuna- but have no qualms about using the cahuna’s support if it makes practical sense, and usually it does becuase the cahuna has money, and everybody needs money.
3 ben // May 12, 2008 at 9:38 pm
As the picture above suggests, New Media has a lot to do with the commoditization of new technologies, and more importantly the commoditization of the media associated with new technologies.
The term media originates from the Latin medius, or middle, and in the 17th century media took on the meaning of “intermediate agency,” a meaning that I would say is more or less accurate today. There is generally little distinction between media as a form of technology (such as a television broadcast), and media as ownership, as in the television station and the corporation that controls what is actually broadcast.
At its best, art that addresses New Media issues strives to separate media as technology and media as ownership. Pirate radio is an excellent example of this: here the technology of radio broadcasting has been removed from its corporate, regulated form, and become a medium for truly free artistic expression.
However, there are many pitfalls: New Media is too often a catchall term that looks good on grant applications, but has little bearing on artistic content. I would argue that any artistic endeavor carried out today could be billed New Media, no matter whether it embraces technology or spurns it. Given the pervasiveness of technology in any place in the world that can afford “art,” the use (or non-use) of technology in such a situation could be read as a critical artistic choice.
Ultimately, I feel like the term New Media is not specific enough. It could just as easily refer to Blu-ray DVDs as to internet-based artwork. It is hard for me to fathom why a large group of non-conformist and counterculture artists are content to subscribe to a vague and clichéd umbrella term that is in no way their own.
4 matt // May 12, 2008 at 11:10 pm
First off, I want to say that I didn’t read any of the other posts yet, since I think that this is a question that has to come from our Selves (with a capital s).
I think we touched upon on what new media is very briefly at the beginning of the semester. For me, new media is all about the many to many aspect that makes everyone not only a consumer of culture but also a producer. With new media, we have the option of participating that is not possible in our “old” media of painting, sculpture, etc. All of the work we saw invites and needs participation by the user/viewer. NPR obviously relies on the participation of others; CAE functions by engaging patrons in its projects; DeMarinis invites participation of outsiders to hear his pieces; Neo’s performances rely on the audience’s own performing; and Paper Rad’s turns our own cultural constructions back at us.
Work is put into the catch-all “new media” genre when its medium pushes us to rethink our engagement with the piece. Technology has enabled work like this in a critical way, but technology is not what makes new media. Rather, the new-ness comes out of the reliance on a no-longer passive audience. New technologies are inextricably tied into the cultural situation they arose from, and our post-modern society latched onto its new technology as an avenue for its new modes of expression.
While one could argue that all work has always been constructed by audience members on their own through viewing, the passivity of just viewing is not allowed and not possible with new media. New media craves participation- without it, it might as well be conceptual. Even if we are not active producers of youtube videos, soundart, etc, the fact that we so easily have the tool to be creators changes the rules of the game, and empowers us all to be artists of/in the new media age.
Go Team!
5 noah // May 13, 2008 at 3:06 pm
I have observed a strange and interesting phenomenon that has pervaded my class experiences this year: in many cases, particularly those related to creative output, I seem to have come out of a class with the opposite conclusion to that of the class’ intent. I came out of my melody module feeling pretty strongly that as any musical idea could apparently be argued as a melody, the idea that there was an objective definition of a melody was pretty stupid. After six months of counterpoint class, I was pretty sure functional counterpoint in atonal music, for all intents and purposes, does not exist.
After a semester of studying new media, I can’t help but feel that as a premise, new media isn’t really real. All the work that comprises it is real, and a great deal of it is extremely compelling, but it may just be work from other fields that shares enough commonalities to have a circle drawn around it. The only definitive traits we have nailed down for defining new media are a tendency towards interdisciplinary activities, by which The Rite of Spring can be considered new media, and the incorporation of technology into artwork, by which Da Vinci could be considered a new media artist. This may come off as a bit semantic, but I think semantics are part and parcel of a conversation analyzing categories and genres in art – it is an inherently semantic discussion.
I have to acknowledge the possibility that new media is indeed real, and simply isn’t possible to rigidly define (as are many real things). However, at least for my purposes, I find that if I can’t define something completely, I don’t need to consider in terms of definition (think artistic/analytical agnosticism). It is also possible that the new media terminology, even if it is impossible to define entirely, is necessary to describe a body of art that may or may not be difficult to describe in another way. If this is the case, the term may indeed be valid even without a true meaning or definition.
Now only one question remains: what is the ultimate question?
6 Hannah Vaughan // May 16, 2008 at 7:02 pm
want an ultimate question noah? what is your ultimate concern?
(this may be simplifying but..) I think the ultimate concern of the New Media artists we have see this year is to use technological media in a critical way. Through the use of technology, they both criticize the media they are using, the establishment behind that medium and look to in some way bring us into a different relation with a media we think we know. Pushing us to critically examine the media all around us. I will explain.
NPR uses radio (a semi-antiquated form of technology), pirate radio to be exact, to criticize the censorship and corporatization of mainstream radio. They let people talk, anybody who wants to. Sometimes NPR radio is not so great, but people are able to say what they want, whatever they want. And it is only accessible to the small community that it serves on a once a week basis. It is not owned by Clear Channel, which by the way owns everything. “Reaches 45% of all people ages 18-49 in the U.S. on daily basis” http://www.clearchannel.com/Radio/PressRelease.aspx?PressReleaseID=1563&p=hidden scary shit.
CAE used science and scientific technology to reveal the specialization and expertization of our food. CAE used the same scientific technology they were criticizing to enable people how to test their own food for genetically modified genes. The changed the way the public viewed their vegetables while enlightening them about a political and social situation that had been kept from them.
Paul Demarinis in his own way subverted the use of technology by criticizing the discarding, and specialization of technology. Through his combinations, and subversions of past technology he provided a new light through which to see the piles of discarded technology.
One of the most fascinating and tricky new media artists, Nao Bustamante, used the medium of her own body, and video to critique video and the production of new forms of media (in 2057) and the ‘pain art’ of blood letting of her contemporary Performance artists. Nao used almost antiquated computer and video technology to critique the project of keeping media art for five hundred years. And she used fake blood to critique the high horse from which blood-letting performance artists were injuring themselves for art.
And last, but of course not least, Jaccob Ciocci of Paper Rad used internet ‘trash’ to perform a stylized critique of the internet past and present. And to question to acceleration and appropriation of internet culture.
7 anna // May 16, 2008 at 7:46 pm
New Media …Well we have been through a many a discussions haven’t we…
At this point what I know new media to be:
Well, it isn’t media necessarily…Its actually people doing things with media. Whereas media implies a “means of mass communication” implicating it as this huge amorphous, devilish, inpenetrable blob of technology. We so often let media take over…let it surprise us and fascinate us with its amazing inventions…It is exists as if no human touch were involved, just wires.
I guess what I am getting at is this notion of “new” media is really meant to imply “subversion” of media and debunking the traditional way that media is considered. There perhaps is nothing “new” about this tradition. I think that artists for a long time have been redefining art and more particularly, redefining their medium and challenging its limits.
I think this is the same notion disguised for the 21st century.
8 max // May 17, 2008 at 12:22 pm
God….the question “what is new media” is surely a duanting one. I agree with everything that everybody has said, I too struggle to figure out this question. A written post cannot unfortunately articulate my feelings on the matter. SO here is my final post. p.s. turn the sound on.
http://www.songsofthehumpbackwhale.com/AFINALPOST.htm
Thanks for everybody and Julia most of all, for an awesome lecture series. We’re so lucky to have met all these wonderful new media artists.
9 Louie // May 17, 2008 at 2:17 pm
I agree with what everyone has said. I also sense that there is a collective exhaustion in talking about this issue. I wonder if this exhaustion comes from our general over saturation with defining new media, or whether what we have discovered is that we are frustrated with the fact that we know so little.
I think it is pretty much fare to say that what we are currently doing is testing the limits of our mediums in ways that are similar to the ways that artists have been doing forever. However, I am also interested in a question that came up a little bit earlier in the course:
How to think about the scope of 20th century technological change and history in thinking about the grand scope of human society as a whole. Does this rapid technological arms race that we have experienced in the last century matter, and does the reallyreally rapid technological treadmill that we have been climbing since the computer age require special attention? I believe that though we are probably repeating patterns of boundary pushing that artists have been doing for centuries, there is something to say for the different permutations of media that we are dealing with that are distinct from the permutations of media that artists were dealing with in the past. Part of the reason that we have difficulty defining this issues, I think, is just because we know so little yet. Our environments are mediated in so many different ways, and given that we are only beginning to become conscious of this issues, but have yet to understand exactly how this is true in every way, leads us into dark alley after dark alley, in which we sometimes find answers and have beautiful moments, while other times we don’t, and we fail. Failure is probably good too though. All I am saying I guess is that I feel confused and a little bit humbled by what is happening in our world, and the artists who have come this semester who are thinking critically about this have left me feeling simultaneously empowered and humbled.
Thanks Julia for all your hard work and thanks class for great fun.
excalaberrr
10 john // May 18, 2008 at 8:05 am
What made the most lasting impression from our class discussions were the increasing influence of the institutions in art. At the same time, a lot of the freedom and power of creation and distribution has been given to the masses in the form of the internet. Net art, youtube, photo sites, etc. all allow anyone to become an artist and show themselves. At the same time, the institutions have a unique power to declare and to Make the artist into whatever. Artists become important, relevant, or new because institutions tell us that they are. There is so much art that so many people make, but they cannot price their own work with as much credibility as the institutions can. They cannot call their own YouTube videos “art” with as much credibility as the museums can. New media too seems to be so blurry that almost anything that has a new idea or a new medium Can be called New Media, especially in the context of all the visitors we’ve had this year. But really it seems New Media is what has been outlined for us by the institutions.
11 logan // May 18, 2008 at 12:29 pm
I think the idea of “new media” as we now know it is very much rooted in the emergence of video art in the 1960s. Video art, just like computer art, was all about deconstructing technologies that up to that point were inaccessible to the hands of creative people. Artists Like Nam June Paik, Vito Acconci, and John Baldessari used new low-cost video tapes and effects to try to re-examine the technologies outside a limiting realm of commercial viability. Indeed the term “new media” was used to describe the work being done then, however now we just call it “video art”.
Likewise today the work of artists like Cory Arcangel, Javier Morales, Paperrad, Paul Demarinis, Steve Kurtz, and Nao Bustamante, all deal with deconstructing and re-examining people’s relationships to technology. And likewise I am sure that the flowing grand narrative of art history will eventually dub the works of these artists with another signifying term than “new media”.
Thus “new media” is sort of a vague, temporary catchall term for art that at the present moment is still trying to figure out how to find its context. Integral to this idea is that the art is also mirroring a new technology’s trying to find its context. I think conceptually you can say that paint and pencils were at some point new media, but I really think the relatively new (past 4 or 5 decades), relationship between corporate entities and individuals is key to the way we use the term today.
12 Gavin // May 18, 2008 at 2:50 pm
What IS new media art? This essentialist question begs an answer, but I hope we are not duped into obliging and falling into that old modernist trap.
The Margin Release lecture series covered only a small amount of this wide field; we saw a mixing, clashing and union of methods and approaches from myriad disciplines: information engineering, pirate radio communications, the history of science, art history, music, performance art, etc. At the moment, New Media artists seem to explore/search for some common disciplinary space. They face the challenge of engaging in this process without a distinct canon of knowledge to refer to despite the fact that many of the contributing disciplines are age old. If anything, a commonality is the investigation of the medium, the middle, the mediation and the mediator, a questioning of the history, purpose, motivation and materials of the interdisciplinary space of the in-between. In many regards many artists take a critical approach of art, as a discipline/ practice,/institution,/soci-cultural construct/life through art?
The new media artists today don’t simply appropriate apparatuses, codes, symbolic systems, knowledge, rituals or technologies just for the sake of being referential, they make new media art a discursive practice by turning it on its head, looking at where it comes from, the history of art and technology as institutions/disciplines/practices/socio-cultural constructs/whatever. Approach/examine/consume/regurgitate dialectically.
13 sarah // May 21, 2008 at 12:19 am
Prior to taking this class I described new media to others as the combination of the forces of video, sound, communications and visual art being used together to create/communicate. I think I was considering new media in a narrow way, thinking about it just in relation to technology and things electrical. I never considered performance art or radio to be new media.
after the experience of this class and meeting artists and seeing their projects I have defiantly gained a new perspective and developed a new definition. Now if asked about new media I think I would mention things such as collaboration, the use of many art forms in conjunction with each other, experimenting, using all disciplines of education to express an idea–science is art too. I think new media is about asking questions and testing miss matched parts and being fearless.
It also seems that new media, like other art movements is not only a product thing–it is a lifestyle as well. It seems that there is a whole community of people sharing information and supporting each other in their quest to rearrange and project.
I also feel that new media try to be accessible and reach out to people. Yes some of the work is complex and hard to understand who it was created but I think a lot of it strives to be relateable and with in the grasp of everyone–basically rejecting being high art or bringing high art into the general population.
14 cubby // May 21, 2008 at 12:09 pm
First off, I’m interested in whether “New Media” is a genre, a trend, a style, a technique, or some (what?) combination of those.
I agree with the popular here description of New Media—that it is about the critical treatment of the method of a message’s distribution. But that condition alone qualifies a lot of artwork as New Media. The paintings of Seurat, for instance, think critically about construction and the medium of painting—and thus would be New Media. What’s more relying on, ‘thinks critically about the medium it uses’ makes New Media less of a genre and more of a treatment, approach, or argument about art. This definition groups New Media with things like New Criticism—can one say that FMemory is a work of New Media in the same way one could say that a short story by Raymond Carver is a work of New Criticism?
All that’s to say I don’t think we should neglect the concept of “many to many,” –i.e. that the author and audience are both plural. While a painting is one to many, a YouTube video is many to many. This criterion greater specifies the media of New Media. I speculate that the many to many perspective has fallen by the wayside because our semester has been about speaking to individuals, single persons, as authors of their work. All of the artwork of our series fits the many of many qualification, some with more complications than others.
Nao represents the most complicated engagement with many to many. The first ‘many’ was us, her audience, and all of our perceptions and expectations of performance and video art, and also, importantly, of the Margin Release lecture series. She used herself as a medium. The second ‘many’ was also us, and all our reception of based on our perceptions. By my count, we engaged in her work of New Media from before her arrival, when she texted Julia in class to say she was getting a massage and Fufu was getting a grooming and they would be flying out on standby the next day instead. (Not that Nao planted the text, of course—just that that moment worked into the way I engaged her performance)
Defining a genre is sticky. We cling to notions of genre with all the intensity of our attachments to first-order distinctions like race and gender. Loathing towards Nao I think relates to how she dirtied the pot of our running definition of New Media and being more technological, trendy.
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