Well, my understanding of historical/museological practice until
recently is that there has been a need (at least since the roots of the
modern museum were laid those hundreds of years ago) to locate art
within a context. Of course this also has much to do with the
communicative practice of art from the curatorial perspective (and I
defer to Steve and Christiane on this), but humanity likes to classify
art, at least in the proto/modern/post era.

This practice isn't going to change, and I'm researching that New Media
is, in fact, the 3rd Wave Avant-Garde, so what I'm looking at is the
mode of how New Media (some of which is NOT interactive, by the way)
emerges within society from a representational sense. I can talk all I
want about what it is or isn't, but that's pretty immaterial. What's
most interesting is how this genre seems to be emerging as a cultural
artifact.

Therefore, in considering that there is a greater integration/acceptance
of many forms of New Media, it doesn't seem to be limited to genre
standing, but it does not have the coherence of a 1st/2nd Wave
'Movement'. We are not congregating and declaring our 'movements', but
there is clearly a New Media community that shares a loose set of
modalities or principles or interests; call it what you will. Perhaps
the conception of a 'Movement' is as nebulous in the Network Era as
TAZ's are to the nation-state. This does not say that Burning Man, NV
is much different than Cairo, Ohio (actually, BM is much larger), but
they operate on entirely different rules.

They're both communities with different compacts, and perhaps due to the
social environment that it exists in, New Media may be a movement that
operates upon diffuse, distributed social compacts.

Patrick Lichty
Editor-In-Chief
Intelligent Agent Magazine
http://www.intelligentagent.com
1556 Clough Street, #28
Bowling Green, OH 43402
225 288 5813
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"It is better to die on your feet
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-----Original Message-----
From: Curating digital art - www.newmedia.sunderland.ac.uk/crumb/
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Goebel, Johannes
E.
Sent: Sunday, September 05, 2004 12:12 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Definitions

I never quite understood the term "new media", but we certainly are
using it and have to continue to use it. The question is if we need to
use it in a "scientific" sense or more in a "political" (not implying
that a scientific definition is done in a political vacuum). Having
worked in an environment where art historians met "media artists", and
works in/of "new media" were exhibited and produced (ZKM Karlsruhe), I
came to the perspective that "new media" is a definition after the fact,
more a tool for words than a tool for art (maybe that is the prerogative
of people not creating the art but creating environments where such art
can be supported, produced and exhibited).

"New media" seems to be a label necessary to set it implicitly aside
from "old media". Obviously an "ars antiqua" can only be labeled as
such, once an "ars nova" has been called out (these terms refer to a
muscial period in the early Renaissance in France where exactly this
happened).

"Media art" is an even more difficult term - since there is simply no
art without medium or media.

And we do have to create and use terminology in order to describe and/or
create perspectives of reality. This is most important when one is part
of a minority - since the word smiths for the "majority" have "the
media" to exert their power.

I have to use "new media" and "media art" in a non-scientific
environment, when dealing with people who have power and money to
support "new" and who are for whatever reason highly motivated to do so
with their power and their money. It is very difficult to convey to
them, what I / we are talking about, since they often do not have any
experience with works in this field. It's a little bit along the lines
of Wittgenstein who asked in "Remarks on Color": What does a blind man
mean when he says the sky is blue?

For all practical purposes (but based on some theoretical pondering), I
am using "new media" in a very simplistic or naïve way: anything which
is run by something which is plugged into an electrical outlet (or
generator) - "which is run" implies "time based", i.e. something which
changes over times as an explicit and implicit condition/parameter -
where the "time based" condition is an integral part of the work /
concept / piece / production /intent / experience / perception. And
since the term "new media" seems to have come up after media got more
and more rooted in digital technology, mostly these days the definition
not only includes electricity but also digital technology.

But, in all cases, I would never limit "new media" to "digital
technology" for two reasons. One is, that analog electrical technology
did change the paradigm of time-based art already a long time ago - and
the introduction of formal and technical parameters implemented with
electricity into the arts (gates, on-off, chaotic behavior, feedback,
projection of images, loudspeakers etc.) is the basis for all digital
technology and has had similar revolutionary consequences for the arts
as digital technology during the past 50 years. And the second reason is
that all digital signals have to be converted to analog signals before
our senses/we can perceive them - we cannot create sense without this
conversion.

Maybe "new media art" means "moving electrons" as material, condition,
and consequence for artistic works which are "time-based" (as opposed to
"static" (granting that nothing is static - but that is another issue)).
Works in "new media" integrate the condition of "moving electrons" as
tool and thus as material and thus as part of the experience.

Not very specific - but it does imply that "new media" is no genre and
cannot be restricted to an explicit artistic position. But it does mean
that when "new media" are used in an artistic production, the conditions
of the "moving electrons" cannot be omitted. And this is not a
technology based definition; on the contrary, it is actually an
aesthetic postulate which liberates from the technological discussion in
the sense that the technology which is part of a work is part of the
work - and nothing just on its own.

                        Johannes