Friday, May 6, 2011

Re: [Yasmin_discussions] arts and sciences: re-drawing boundaries

hi jeremy,

i guess i want to know where you are locating discussion of
terminology. in fifteen years of being involved in making, curating,
and writing about art and technology, i've seen confusions arise,
nominally, for artists working in non-technological media like paint
or drawing, where they might say they are doing new mixed media works,
but not be doing any new media art.

i fail to see the term 'new media art' as "deeply problematic" but
perhaps other artists on the list want to respond. what's impressed
me, in fact, about new media art (as a term) is that it is able to be
applied to a hugely diversified range of artworks including digital,
net.art, web-based, mobile and other art, as well as works made prior.
surrealists and fluxus artists, for example, would not have called
their works 'new media art' per se, perhaps, but the used the new
technologies of their time. i've operated under the assumption that
new media art was art that used or engaged new technologies as part of
the work. in other words, digital photographs reproduced as prints and
framed and exhibited would not count as new media art, despite their
digital origin. and new media art is surely not limited to screen
exhibition.

if the distinction you are making, about the term in relation to
boundaries which you feel should or need to be redrawn? reexamined?
or, where did the boundary begin which is being redrawn? why does it
require redrawing? are defining elements of new media art something
your exhibition will be looking at with arts culture as a cultural
geography of art practices, or for mapping new work, or what?

i'm curious


molly

On Thu, May 5, 2011 at 11:39 PM, <hight@34n118w.net> wrote:
> This reminds me of a discussion many of us in new media and locative media
> have been having for several years now.  What is "new media"? The
> terminology is so deeply problematic that it almost to some negates itself
> in a self destructing (yet also sustaining) mobius strip. It could be
> anything from the printing press, sun dial or use of colored soils as
> drawing tools to the latest new platforms and software being used to make
> anything from narratives to images and animations.  Figures come and go
> with declarations of its birth, others its death, yet others its stasis or
> perseverance.
>
> The connected issue emerges from the pragmatic (but also semiotic) realm
> of exhibition and presentation. Is new media to be shown on screens in the
> traditional white space of the gallery? Is this to a degree though issuing
> it as of another aesthetic realm and still of online space?  Is it to be
> perhaps placed on flat screens embedded in walls or projected from hidden
> laptops to instead jump into the pantheon of physical exhibition in a more
> familiar construct?  What is the work seen on a tiny phone screen in all
> of this?
>
> Locative Media art has seen many genres within its years since the mid to
> late nineties. What makes a work a wearable not a sensor work woven into
> clothing?  What in Roland Barthes' larger discussion of metaphor as being
> many things to even stained glass or a single image as a narrative denotes
> locative narrative versus another form?  Does it matter?
>
> What is the Avant Garde? Is it a containing space or a chosen designation?
>  What is a meme's lifespan?  What spaces do we prescribe in physical and
> online spaces that connote new and established exhibition spaces and the
> lines between?
>
> A lot of literary magazines are being run on blogs now. The blog used to
> have the little brother connotation for some as not a "space" as though
> built and designed but a prefab like in architecture.  Does the online
> exhibition space have to have "rooms"  and navigation to be so named?
> What may come soon?  What older paradigms and forms have shifted away if
> any?  Who decides such contexts?
>
>
>
>
>
>
>> Dear Lanfranco
>>
>> Thank you for the long answer to my questions and the in-depth description
>> of your actions, achievements and plans with LEA.
>>
>> What you are describing as the process with the artists looks to me ...
>> the usual curatorial process with artists that are alive (= not dead), who
>> are creating a new work that, as a curator, you are supporting. I don't
>> see any difference or specificity here and it is exactly the kind of
>> things I am doing when I curate a show.
>>
>> You write : "I don't think that old and traditional categories of
>> 'exhibiting' and 'documenting' apply any longer."
>>
>> I do not agree with that statement. I agree that some of the boundaries
>> are bluring or are elsewhere than where they were before, but I do think
>> there is a difference between let say Edunia or Alba by Eduardo Kac and
>> the documentation about those works. Likewise, there is a difference
>> between a performance and the documentation about the performance. Those
>> categories disappears only for some kind of
>> digital-new-media-technoscience-artworks, not all of them. Hence
>> remediation or transmediation do not apply on an equal basis for all "new
>> media" artworks.
>>
>> But I totally agree when you write that : "The beauty of the medium
>> (Internet) I found is that it allows to blur these boundaries - to be at
>> the same time exhibition, catalog and archive and to leave to the viewer
>> the perception of its structures favoring one over the other."
>>
>> About the other points you are raising :
>>
>> You write :
>> "a) the exhibition pages and all their dissemination and visibility
>> structures could be defined as artworks in themselves"
>> This reminds me of the heated debate in the contemporay art field of the
>> (physical) exhibition being the creation and the curators being (almost)
>> artists (and sometimes considering themselves as more important than the
>> artists and artworks themselves). Are we bringing to the
>> digital-technosciences field this debate ?
>> My point of view here, is that curating a show is also "designing" the
>> presentation of the works (in French we say "scenographie" like "stage
>> design") and this has been often (not always) not fully addressed online :
>> the content was considered as what mattered. I think now, what Neural, You
>> and others are doing is adressing the issue of how to design online
>> exhibitions that are more than a list of links.
>>
>> About transmediation : I don't think it is exactly the same as moving a
>> sculpture from one physical space to another. And I don't believe in the
>> same possible experience for the audience in different media (or why would
>> you bother to build the physical thing when the concept would be enough
>> ?). All works are not equal in this process.
>> I also think that we should be carefull with an "all-screen" domination
>> that will solve all issues. But don't get me wrong, those issues are
>> exciting, doing it well is a real challenge that I am trying to achieve.
>>
>> About your project with Judit Hersko, you write :
>> "So the difficulties we are facing here are several:
>> a) relating the previous online show to the physical space
>> b) linking the new piece which is an outdoor piece in a different location
>> to the internal pieces in the gallery
>> c) transferring the new artwork in an online presence
>> d) consider how the new context will affect the artwork itself and its
>> development"
>>
>> This is exactly the agenda ! And it could be the program of a nice
>> conference or workshop ;-) Is there anything planed at ISEA around this ?
>>
>> There would be much to write about your long email but I suspect I should
>> stop here or the moderator is not going to approve my post !
>>
>> Best
>> Annick
>>
>>
>>
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>
>
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--
Molly Beth Hankwitz, PhD
Media and Communications
Creative Industries
Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia
**********************************
mobile research**architecture
415 283 7757

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