Not sure what you mean about the relationship of net.art to new media? The term new media was being used in the community from the 1980's on. Mediamatic started including pieces about old media at that time in order to make that distinction. Net.art emerged in the early/mid 90's. I am not aware of the Wired article on net.art but you can't take that level of journalism seriously. Sounds like it was late to the party, although plenty of the artists associated with that group remained active in the area for a few more years. Some still are...
Periods, movements, "isms" are branding exercises. That can be useful when you want to sell something, directly or indirectly. In this respect there is nothing new about New Aesthetics. It's gaining traction because enough people need it to, not because it is meaningful in any valuable manner. Somebody somewhere is already cooking up the next wheeze.
best
Simon
On 18 Apr 2012, at 17:17, Saul Albert wrote:
> On Wed, Apr 18, 2012 at 12:46:13PM +0100, [log in to unmask] wrote:
>> Whilst agreeing with the general thrust of the Furtherfield article, I
>> concur with Armin that "New Media" was a much broader and widely
>> supported concept,
>
> Couldn't we maximise our pretentiousness by saying that New Aesthetics
> is to The Internet of Things as net.art was to New Media?
>
> Remember net.art? What was so fun about it was the slippage between
> net.art as a relatively defined group of people (during the 'Heroic period')
> and Net.Art as a self-perpetuating half joke that, like Cyberfeminism before
> it, got funnier when people took it seriously, got incensed or excited about it,
> and weirdly began to call their stuff net.art and themselves net.artists.
>
> Reading this thread I can't help but think of the Wired article about
> Heath Bunting that 'outed' net.art in 1997, and the response, kicked off
> by this missive supposedly from Tim Druckery
> (http://www.irational.org/heath/c4d/wired.html) and the debates that
> ensued, and feel kind of sorry for James Bridle who has poked his head
> above the parapet by doing some really interesting projects and writing
> about them engagingly, and seems to be catching all kinds of flak for
> it. I guess Heath intentionally made a great target of himself - I'm not
> sure James really meant to, and I don't think much of it is fair.
>
> But whatever his intentions, however deep or historically /
> philosophically / politically grounded / ungrounded they are - I think
> the connections coalescing around this discussion are really promising,
> especially Sarah's questions about being and object-hood. In that vein
> I'd like to post a couple of links that could point to some useful
> material for filling in the many gaps and glitches of New Aesthetics,
> beyond the association with OOO that Bogost pretty much rejects,
> (while also sticking the boot in to James Brindle).
>
> - The Actor-Network-Theory Heidegger Group
> (http://anthem-group.net/bibliography/) have a great bibliography on
> Latour/Heidegger that could be useful, and intersects with SR/Harman.
>
> - Abstract Sex by Luciana Parisi, which I think brought up a lot of the
> political and conceptual possibilities of non-anthropocentric views on
> technology long before the Speculative Realists got going properly.
> http://www.scribd.com/doc/22489821/Parisi-Luciana-Abstract-Sex-Philosophy-Bio-technology-and-the-Mutations-of-Desire
>
> I think whatever makes people dust off their keyboards (and mine is
> really dusty!) and send email to mailing lists is a good thing, and I'd
> love to see what projects/thought, stories and events might be
> jury-rigged and used to prop up New Aesthetics in a longer timeline.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Saul.
>
> --
> mob: +44(0)7941255210 / @saul
> sip: +44(0)2071007915 / skype:saulalbert
>
Simon Biggs
[log in to unmask] http://www.littlepig.org.uk/ @SimonBiggsUK skype: simonbiggsuk
[log in to unmask] Edinburgh College of Art, University of Edinburgh
http://www.eca.ac.uk/circle/ http://www.elmcip.net/ http://www.movingtargets.co.uk/
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