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Andreas Broeckmann wrote: > 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. It's pretty hard to argue with that, I think Andreas makes a very salient critique. I would like to add, though, that the technological blindness comes as much from the art world as it does from those creating works with new technologies, if not more so. (And here we might consider a certain amount of further confusion at Refresh! over whether we were discussing "new media-art" or "new-media art".) The permanent collection at ZKM, for example, brilliantly highlights the works that stand the test of time due to their creative ideas and those that simply look terribly outdated because of their reliance on the technology of the day. So, on the one hand, I would argue for more rigorous approach to the creation or curation of works as well as the scholarship of studying them. On the other, I still think it is incredibly important to play and make mistakes in the creation of work in this area as it is still the best form of experimental discovery in such an immature field. But play, of course, is my complete bias. Best, Andy ----------------------------------------------------------- Andy Polaine Head, School of Media Arts Senior Lecturer, Interactive Media ----------------------------------------------------------- T +61 2 9385 0781 M +61 413 121 934 F +61 2 9385 0719 http://www.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://playpen.polaine.com http://www.antirom.com ----------------------------------------------------------- School of Media Arts College of Fine Arts (COFA) The University of New South Wales Cnr Oxford Street and Greens Road Paddington Sydney, NSW 2010 Australia CRICOS Provider code: 00098G -----------------------------------------------------------