patrick lichty <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> In my current set of writing, I am making the argument that at best New
> Media is at best a broad classification, and at worst becoming a
> museological term for a movement. I'm also linking it to the remnants
> of the Modernist Avant-Garde.
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I tend to agree with your first opinion Patrick. To agree with the latter
and to then accept your further contention that New Media represents the
last remnants of Modernism would be to exclude much new media based practice
of the past twenty years.
I saw recently that there is to be a conference in Santa Monica where the
stated aim is to detail both a non-definitive and accurate history of
computer based arts. Not sure how you would achieve the two together but,
aside from that conundrum, the idea of an accurate history is itself
problematic. Accurate histories were part of the Modernist domain. We don't
do those anymore, do we?
I would expect (perhaps I am overly optimisitic) that most museologists (or
at least those savvy enough to be addressing new media) are sophisticated
enough to engage their subject from a relativistic point of view and to
recognise that new media is not a singular area of practice but a whole
diversity of approaches and intentions as complex, fragmented and
contradictory as the rest of art practice. Just as there are artists working
with "traditional" media out there who subscribe to positions that might
have been established as long ago as 1500, 1800, 1900, 1950, 1980 or 2000
(some arbitrary, but interesting, dates) the same holds true for those
artists who have, for whatever reasons, chosen to work with media that are
of recent invention.
I am aware of new media artists using the latest technologies whose approach
is essentially pre-Modern. Others who are definitively Modernist and others
post. I don't want to name names, because nobody is comfortable with being
classified like that. It only functions to close down the creative options.
I don't think the term new media art is very useful at all. It determines
difference according to means rather than intent or context. When you seek
to establish the provenance of an artefact (of any kind or period) you do
not look only at the tools used. You would also look at the content of the
work, to arrive at an understanding of where and when the work was made.
This involves addressing the socio-cultural context of the work and thus
both the millieu within which it was produced and the relative intent of the
producer(s). Media is part of this, but only part. To argue that it is more
than that would be to reduce your analysis to that of the technological
determinist.
New media will never be recognised as a movement, because it isn't. It is
not even an aesthetic. It is not a coherent thing at all. It is simply
artists being artists, of whatever kind, who happen to be using new media.
It might be that the fact they are using a particular media is important to
their practice, or it might not. Even where it is important, and therefore
you might expect a degree of commonality of practice because of that
inclusive engagement, I think you will agree that the actual practice (in
terms of intent, context and instrumentality) is too diverse to be regarded
as a consitituted movement - or even a general dynamic as broad as the terms
Modernism or Romanticism were able to encompass. The practice we see all
around us is, again, too diverse to be tucked under even those broad
umbrellas.
Best
Simon
Simon Biggs
[log in to unmask]
http://www.littlepig.org.uk/
Research Professor
Art and Design Research Centre
Sheffield Hallam University, UK
http://www.shu.ac.uk/schools/cs/cri/adrc/research2/
Senior Research Fellow
Computer Laboratory
University of Cambridge
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