>Following Saul's post of last week, many people are writing that "we need
a new critical paradigm" or something to that effect, and I agree we do,
but no-one seems to have one.
I don't necessarily agree with that. First of all, I think one needs to give
the discussions about aesthetics of and critical approaches to new media
that have been taking place for at least a decade more credit. They may not
have filtered through to the art world in general (which is not unusual but
follows the history of art-historical discourse about a 'new' medium in
general) but that doesn't mean that they haven't taken place or that we are
clueless when it comes to approaching the medium. Secondly, I firmly believe
that there isn't 'one' new critical paradigm that will help out here but
that critical discourse on new media art has to draw from many paradigms and
be as hybrid as the art form itself.
>I share some reservations about Manovich's central model, mainly because it
takes a transfer model medium and tries to apply it to an immersive or
interactive or generative medium.
I agree with that but Lev explicitely focuses on only one 'model,' the
language of film / cinema / traditional moving image as it relates to new
media. Certainly important to examine but again, it's only one model and
there are many others that, in my opinion, need to be considered. Theater
and performance are two of these models and I believe that there are strong
art-historical links to 'movements' such as conceptual art, Dada, Fluxus,
Oulipo, the 'networked' art of the 70s and 80s etc.
>Theatre makes a better model perhaps, because there is a fine tradition of
interactivity and participation both on a ritual/ symbolic level, and at a
level where content and meaning can actually change and evolve a living
piece ...I think what we need is an aesthetic of interactivity, and this can
be fed from a number of sources including looking at ritual, gameplay and
the emerging discipline of experience design.
I very much agree, an 'aesthetics of interactivity' certainly is one very
important aspect of these new critical paradigms. And there are already so
many different models of interaction that have evolved in this medium: a
huge portion of interactive art can be summed up under the label of reactive
or responsive art where input such as the audience's movements and actions,
changing light levels, temperature, or sounds trigger responses of the
environment. In many works, the interaction is based on enabling the
audience to explore 'databases' of preconfigured materials through seemingly
infinite combinations; then there are the ones that are more open systems
and rely on the audience to construct the 'database' of materials to be
explored. Yet another model is system interaction where elements of software
systems themselves interact with each other with varying degrees of audience
input. The creation of technologized tools and 'instruments' that are used
and played by the audience also is an area of inquiry that has consistently
grown.
>But these are all centred in other disciplines, are we going to adopt and
adapt our own or we run the risk of being judged as "design" whenever we
venture into interactive media...
I don't think that any 'new' form of artistic practice develops in an
art-historical vacuum but naturally draws on previous disciplines -- nothing
wrong with adopting, adapting, reconfiguring the paradigms of other
disciplines. To me, the risk of being judged as design when venturing into
interactive media doesn't seem to be connected to the previous idea but it
is an extremely important point to make and a major challenge: the fact that
interaction by nature relies on some form of interface often seems to result
in a focus on the interface itself (particularly if its 'new'), a separation
of the interface from content, and the conclusion that this art is very much
about design.
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