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I think that both terms "media" and "new media" are very much conventional in the sense of how we use them in our professional communication. I personally stand for an empirical approach to their definition since they don't have singular commonly shared meanings, and for the majority of people are usually associated just with the mass media. > 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. I quite agree with this point. I'm convinced that while talking about "media art", we, or at least most of us, mean a new form of art determined by its medium or tool (by analogy to painting, etc). Under media in this context we rather mean a complex set of modern technologies for production and reproduction, distribution and receiving, use and representation of information. In this regard the term "new media" is basically an extension of the term "media", and no more than just an emphasis of the distinction between "older" and "newer" generations of media. Thus I see it as a rather supplement of the term "media" which doesn't bring any new substantiveness . > 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. I absolutely agree that you can't talk about "media" or "new media" component in definition of a particular cultural or art form as a label which helps us to distinct "a general dynamic", as Simon Biggs put it. Both media as a cultural phenomenon and media art are too heterogeneous for that. Although if we look at the ptoblematics of media/medium for the media art in a perspective of art history, then it is obviously totally new set of questions for the aesthetics informed consequently by the problematics of media as part of socio-politico-cultural relationships. I think it would be more productive to look at the entire problem of definitions (or taxonomies?) of media/new media practices very contextually and empirically, then it will be easier for everybody to deal with them. Why do we need endlessly ask ourselves” what is media art?" while we all know, even if it is intuitively, what do we mean? The same with "what is art in media art"? Since we call it art and not something else, does it make big practical sense to go into endless speculations about it? Just look how far are philosophers-aestheticians with the similar questions - they are still discussing painting and can't resolve them:)