So "new" should be used/understood in a relative sense. The "new" in
"new media" only causes nausea, vomiting, ulcers or other dangerous
conditions if it is used with the attitude of denoting the latest
advancement of humanity towards the goal of enlightenment
(enlightenment in the mystical or rationalistic sense - doesn't matter).
A pragmatistic proposal: "new media" needs a source for electricity.
And then let's move on to the implication of this seemingly naive
statement e.g. for the production of art and for the perception and
reflection on art and the feed-back loop between the two).
And as food for the time line Andreas sketched:
Dec. 28, 2004 — German archaeologists have discovered one of the
world's oldest known musical instruments — a
30,000-year-old flute finely carved from a woolly mammoth's ivory tusk.
Subtract the incredible stupidity (and arrogance at the same time) of
the Discovery Channel's way of putting things - - -
"woolly" mammoth - and his name was by the way Fritz, that's how
big mammoth mama called little mammoth when he was not yet quite that
woolly and only a few years before Fritz's ivory tusk had fowled off
his skull and was picked up by some Teutonic ancestor whose name we
don't know but whose marvelous piece of engineering we were honored
to discover 30,000 years later - - - and Discovery Channel has
initialized the search for the magnificent tender hand of that early
human being whose name we don't know yet but who carved this flute
(by the way, the flute is indeed amazing!!! a mouthpiece like a
Shakuhachi and three wholes to play different pitches)
- - - music might have started an order of magnitude earlier than
Andreas assumed - especially if we may position the beginning of
music at the moment when the voice was "discovered" for singing
(which could only happen after the capacity for language came about -
birds don't sing, they sing only for our ears) and when the feet
while dancing created sounds in a rhythmic sequence (rhythmic not
necessarily meaning metric) and the hands clapped along. I would
assume that music (or "sound as shaped medium") came about in
parallel with what we call "consciousness", the development of
speaking/language and the new way of considering one's body (Narcis
looking into the pond).
And I think we could date many of Andrea's estimates a lot earlier -
even the game design (the digital one is meant I assume) had it's
first game completed in 1962 (MIT, Spacewar!).
All this is meant in support Andreas' criticism of using "new" as
fetish for making us sound more important than we might be.
Johannes Goebel
On May 17, 2006, at 8:04 PM, Dr. Klaus Knoll wrote:
> nice estimates. for a more in-depth discussion of the "new" in new
> media let me point you to art
> historian susan e. ryan's insightful discussion: "what's so new
> about new media?", to be found in
> vol.5 no.2 of: http://www.intelligentagent.com/ where she traces
> the use of the term through
> most of the 20th century.
> kind regards, klaus k.
>
>
> From: Andreas Broeckmann <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: May 16, 2006 10:38:21 PM HST
> Subject: Re: Fwd: MFA in 'New Media' / Curatorial Work
> Reply-To: Andreas Broeckmann <[log in to unmask]>
>
>
> so-called 'new media' (some rough guesses):
>
> Animation, 80 years
> Architecture, 10.000 years
> Curatorial work, 5.000 years
> Cyber Art, 40 years
> Film, 110 years
> Video, 40 years
> Game Design, 30 years
> Graphic Design, 5.000 years
> Installation Art, 100 years
> Interactive Art, 40 years
> Interdisciplinary Art, 1.000 years
> Performance Art, 2.500 years
> Photography, 160 years
> Sound / Music, 5.000 years
>
> everything flows ...
>
> -a
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