Right on, Andreas - the way I tried to put my previous statement was
that it indicates that "new media" is either meaningless or dogmatic
(like "Neue Musik" and its life in the second half of the 20th
century in Germany ).
Electricity is indeed the great divide but does not create a genre –
it's a radical change in medium in the sense that electricity
provides power/energy/"watts" beyond the limitation of the human body
and the mechanical means we construct. And in that sense it does
create a new realm (but again not a genre etc.) - we can create,
project, store, distribute with energy and speed beyond the limits of
our physical body. And indeed at that point we could start a
discussion how this material, the "electrical capacity", is made
part of a specific artistic work/environment, what the artistic and
aesthetic implications and consequences of this material in this work
might be. And then as a new step we might consider the point in time
when Boolean logic entered the art world as yet another medium or
tool or just means of transport.
Johannes
On May 18, 2006, at 11:05 AM, Andreas Broeckmann wrote:
> dear johannes, dear friends,
>
>> 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).
>
> 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; and (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.
>
> greetings,
> -a
>
>
>
>
> so-called 'new media' (some rough guesses, revised):
>
> Animation, 80 years
> Architecture, 10.000 years
> Curatorial work, 5.000 years
> Cyber Art, 40 years
> Film, 110 years
> Video, 43 years
> Game Design, 44 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, 30.000 years
