dear sarah, dear friends,

in sarah's report about the Refresh/Methodologies panel, sarah writes:

>As for Anna's comment about the show in Australia, yesterday Andreas 
>said that what is of interest in the break between digital 
>aesthetics and analogue aesthetics is that the understanding of 
>digital aesthetics hinges on technicality of production...  and that 
>it may be better to spend time thinking about the experiential 
>qualities of art, and identify the qualities of its reception.

i said it a little bit differently, trying to insist that a strict 
distinction between analogue and digital aesthetics only makes sense 
on the technical level of a production aesthetics. here's the passage 
from my manuscript: 'There is a notion of the digital which posits a 
deep break of a digital aesthetics, away from the aesthetics based on 
analogue techniques. I will not pursue this discussion here, yet, I 
hope that the following will help to suggest that such an 
understanding of a digital aesthetics hinges on the technical aspects 
of artistic production. In contrast, an approach that highlights the 
experiential qualities of art, and the aspects of reception, is more 
likely to identify a continuum between analogue and digital 
aesthetics, and emphasises that in this respect media art should not 
be discussed in separation from contemporary art practice in 
general.' - we have had this argument before on this list, but what i 
tried to do in my paper was to make a case for developing aesthetic 
categories which can indeed be applied productively, disrespecting 
whether a work or project has been developed using digital or 
non-digital techniques.

i also said that whatever is 'new' about 'new media' is what is the 
least interesting for art. can the 'newness' of apparatuses or other 
techniques really be a relevant criterion for study and cultural 
engagement? (this implies that this engagement, and the scholarship, 
becomes obsolete when the device loses its newness?) and does it make 
sense to use the blanket term 'new media' without clarifying, at 
least, whether you mean one of the many, many technical 
manifestations, or one of a set of theories, or one of the many forms 
of 'new media art'? is it in any way satisfying, or sufficient, if 
Anna positions herself by saying, 'I've written about and made new 
media work'? - in the early 1970s, 'new media' meant 'video'. - how 
productive is it to make such a shifting signifier as 'new' a 
cornerstone of one's thinking about art and media cultural practice? 
i believe that it is plainly short-sighted. i also believe that it is 
part of the problem of this cultural engagement with technologies 
that its proponents continue to use sweeping terminologies and 
cluster stuff together which does not belong together, or which does 
not fit the supposed classifications of so-called 'new media'. one 
thing that the Refresh! conference has made clear is that we are in 
need of a lot more rigorous scholarship in the history of media art 
and media technologies, scholarship that does more than blindly and 
uncritically celebrate any mediocre, so-called creative application 
of such technologies as 'art' - and scholarship that places 
media-based art in its techno-historical, art historical, social 
anthropological, etc., context. that's simply - work to be done. and 
i get the feeling that the use of the term 'new media' mostly 
signifies a laziness in thinking. the term is just too broad.

greetings,
-a