two crucial questions for me are, (1) whether the fact that something
has an electric plug, or uses an electronic or digital system, puts
it into a realm entirely (or significantly) different from what
artists of all those fields have been doing before or without
electricity;
Yes, but let's also distinguish between the current day and what
Duchamp, Moholy-Nagy, Sonnier, Davis, and Paik did.
(2) whether it makes any sense to group all these
practices under one single umbrella ('new media'). i believe that it
is interesting to discuss 'net art', 'software art', 'machine art',
'video', etc., as fields of artistic activity; but just because
practitioners in such fields as architecture, music, graphic design,
and software art, are today all using computers, does not in itself
create sufficient ground for discussing them as an ensemble in a
meaningful way.
Bravo. In my experience, (at least in the US) curators and museum
boards of directors feel like they need a general nomenclature or
mnemonic to tap the consciousness of the patrons and audience. Is this
essentializing? Probably. But I'm merely reporting what I see here.
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