Regarding the discussion about the appropriateness of the term "new
media," I found myself confronted with similar questions last year
when I had to name "The Rose Goldsen Archive of New Media Art" for
the Cornell Library. In discussions with artists, curators, critics,
and archivists, I came to acknowledge the importance of a broad
generic term, which is generally recognized, to serve as the umbrella
signifier of this emergent and open-ended archive. To clarify the
context of the archive, I penned a short explanation that attempts to
contextualize the signifier "new" of "new media," which includes this
statement: "Emphasizing multimedia and networked artworks that
reflect digital extensions of twentieth-century developments in
cinema, video, installation, photography, and sound." As with any
such clarification, this one reflects local circumstances (such as
the user and collection mission of the Cornell library, relations to
other curatorial and academic units on the campus) as well as
international precedents which participating artists and
institutional collaborators seem to recognize. Because the Archive
was founded to promote digital materials, while also housing a broad
range of manuscripts, books, and video, the digital is paramount but
not exclusive to "new media" in this case.
But as Steve suggests, this also falls within the historical comfort
zone of "Expanded Cinema." Not necessarily restricted to the
electronic media, it could involve artistic experimentations
(therefore something of the "new") of media-tion writ large (by which
I don't necessarily mean "re-mediation"). In a lot of my writing
and research, I also am fascinated how technologically and
computationally based networks and artworks have strong corollaries
as well in historical theorizations and representations of procedures
of seriality, analogy, coding, feedback, condensation, sublimation,
and computing, some of which stem from modern developments in modern
intellectual contexts (such as philosophy and psychoanalysis) while
many have their roots in early modern and baroque concepts to which
I'm drawn that only recently have found "materialization." This also
makes me quite comfortable with Charlie's inclusion of Haacke's
Condensation Cube while cozying up comfortably with Steve's
consideration of "new media" as something of thought-in-movement.
Tim
--
Timothy Murray
Professor of Comparative Literature and English
Director of Graduate Studies in Film and Video
Curator, The Rose Goldsen Archive of New Media Art, Cornell Library
Co-Curator, CTHEORY Multimedia: http://ctheorymultimedia.cornell.edu
285 Goldwin Smith Hall
Cornell University
Ithaca, New York 14853
office: 607-255-4012
e-mail: [log in to unmask]
|