nettime's digester on Sat, 21 Feb 2004 11:58:09 +0100 (CET)


[Date Prev] [Date Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Date Index] [Thread Index]

Re: <nettime> questions to nettime [5x]




Table of Contents:

   RE: <nettime> questions to nettime                                              
     "Jim Andrews" <jim@vispo.com>                                                   

   Re: <nettime> questions to nettime                                              
     chris mann <chrisman@rcn.com>                                                   

   Re: <nettime> questions to nettime - caught typo                                
     Ken Jordan <ken@kenjordan.tv>                                                   

   Re: <nettime> questions to nettime                                              
     =?iso-8859-1?q?David=20Gonzalez?= <douglasengelbart@yahoo.es>                   

   Re: <nettime> questions to nettime                                              
     =?iso-8859-1?q?David=20Gonzalez?= <douglasengelbart@yahoo.es>                   



------------------------------

Date: Fri, 20 Feb 2004 04:51:09 -0800
From: "Jim Andrews" <jim@vispo.com>
Subject: RE: <nettime> questions to nettime

> I've  got a question seeking some kind of answer please..
>
> does anybody know why there's such a mess with the terms
>
> media arts
> new media arts
> digital art
> interactive art
>
> and also sometimes they all get mixed up into the
> art+science+technology area
> as part of it....
> ?

Yes, I agree that formerly these problems existed. But I am happy to inform
you that it has all recently been cleared up by a Canada Council For the
Arts jury, at least in Canada. The 'New Media' section of the Canada
Council's 'Media Arts' section recently awarded nine grants to Canadian 'new
media' artists. There were 85 applications from around the country. Seven of
nine of the recipients are from Montréal. $219k of $285k went to Montréal.

It used to be that there occassionally arose discussion around the globe
over whether 'new media' necessarily involved the use of the computer or
what. But it turns out this is unimportant. The important thing, in Canada,
in any case, is whether or not the artist is from Montréal. This makes
things much simpler and I'm sure it will come as a happy and welcome
solution to many testy problems. The beauty of it is you can ask as many
questions as you like about 'new media' art and they all become amenable to
simple answers. Is the artist from Montréal? If we keep this question in
mind, we encounter little confusion.

Of course I was at first dubious of such a far-reaching critical principle,
but I phoned the Canada Council about this matter and they assure me that
the jury was not made up of Montréalers but was comprised of five excellent
new media artists from around the country and that the selection was made
solely on the basis of quality.

So there you have it.

ja
http://vispo.com



------------------------------

Date: Fri, 20 Feb 2004 12:01:50 -0500
From: chris mann <chrisman@rcn.com>
Subject: Re: <nettime> questions to nettime

 
> does anybody know why there's such a mess with the terms
> 
> media arts
> new media arts
> digital art
> interactive art

a fetish of avoidance therapy. as though the user was other than a site of
intelligence.



------------------------------

Date: Fri, 20 Feb 2004 13:06:48 -0500
From: Ken Jordan <ken@kenjordan.tv>
Subject: Re: <nettime> questions to nettime - caught typo

Sorry - Caught a typo. The following paragraph should read:

* Digital art: work of any new or legacy discipline (including image
creation, music making, etc) involving digitized material that consciously
focuses on the use of a computer in the creation of the artwork, making the
computer's involvement part of the "statement" of artwork (for this reason,
Timbaland productions are not usually regarded as digital art, while
mash-ups that use Timbaland material sometimes are).


Also, for the record, the definition of "multimedia" that we used in our
book had five core characteristics:
* integration
* interactivity
* hypermedia
* immersion
* narrativity

best,

Ken


------------------------------

Date: Fri, 20 Feb 2004 20:29:33 +0100 (CET)
From: =?iso-8859-1?q?David=20Gonzalez?= <douglasengelbart@yahoo.es>
Subject: Re: <nettime> questions to nettime

 
many thanks for your answers!

> ...because these terms are, in the first case,
> institutional monikers
> rather than thorough concepts. 

ok but i'm worried because this institutional monikers
tend to constrict our thougth....and solidifies art
practice as if it were an "object" rather than a
"process" 

and I see so much exhibitions with this mess going
around... 

> On could consider the term "media arts" redundant as
> there is no art
> without media. 

first we would have to say that all form of
communication has a media (but I think it's different
if we say that "IS a Media") and that all art form is
also a form of communication...??

so then we should say that all art is communication
and therefore it needs a media....am i rigth?  

is there any possibility to express yourself without
the intention of communicate with the other? could
this be also an art form?

Do all artworks seek communication? Even when they
clearly destruct the code and create "its own code"? 
 
>Assumptions that digital
> "multimedia" works are
> "interactive" for example only make sense from the
> media studies
> perspective, if you conceive of the computer as a
> successor to film,
> radio and television, but don't make any sense if
> you take  performance,
> games and theater into account. 

ok so we have "New Media Arts" versus "Digital Arts". 

The first one comes from the Media Studies following
McLuhan legacy.... And they look at the computer as
the succesor of video and cinema? But there is nothing
in common except that the computer uses a tv monitor
to see the data!

However, the term "digital art" is
> problematic as it seduces
> to falsely identify "digital" with "computer-based".
> An example of
> digital art in a very literal, but non-electronic
> and non-computational
> sense is Peter Kubelka's 1959 experimental film
> "Arnulf Rainer" which
> simply is an edit of single monochrome white and
> black frames. 

I don't get it, all digital is electronical, but not
all electronical is digital...and what about the
mechanical?. But I cannot understand the digital
without the electronical and the computer!

Maybe you mean that "digital" is any kind of numerical
binary system...  

> I always wonder why the moniker "media arts" got so
> much more popular
> than the much simpler and clearer term "electronic
> arts", but I guess it
> has to do with McLuhan's discursive legacy.

Anyway what about artforms many times included under
this terms as the ones that are exploring
biotechnology, nanotechnology, space arts, biology,
robotics, artifical life with such a mess with the
sciences, technologies and discourse from art history,
media studies and so on  involved in their
construction??????

For example the Autopoiesis artwork by Ken Rinaldo is
it a just new media art? 
is it just digital art?
is it just interactive art?

...it uses mechanical robotic arms, artificial life,
artificial intelligence and therefore also a network
of computers
evolving in interaction with "users"...how do we call
it? 
is it a digito-electronico-mechanical art installation
that inteds to be interactive and evolves through the
user action?

do we need an ontology of "new media arts"?
do we need an ontology of Technologies and Sciences?

clearly at least I need a map....(ready to destroy
when something "new" appears) 

best,
david  



___________________________________________________
Yahoo! Messenger - Nueva versión GRATIS
Super Webcam, voz, caritas animadas, y más...
http://messenger.yahoo.es


------------------------------

Date: Fri, 20 Feb 2004 21:00:37 +0100 (CET)
From: =?iso-8859-1?q?David=20Gonzalez?= <douglasengelbart@yahoo.es>
Subject: Re: <nettime> questions to nettime

many thanks for your quick answer!!!

> Clearly, these terms are used interchangeably, and
> few people care that they
> might mean different things. Still, from what I've
> seen, here's how they
> tend to be used (tho there are many exceptions):

Great! the meaning comes from the uses made...(but i
think there's an underground battle going around in
order to conquer this "artforms" and put them inside a
"tradition", as if they were a "logical consequence"
with a "origin" clearly defined....)

>  
> * New media arts: a catch-all phrase for anything
> demonstratively "arty"
> that involves video, audio, or computers.

so this means new media arts includes also both
digital arts and media arts... 

but an artwork based on artifical life technologies
and life sciences, as for example some of the
Sommerer/Mignonneau what do they have in common with
the Media? 

 
> * Digital art: work of any new or legacy discipline
> (including image
> creation, music making, etc) involving digitized
> material that consciously
> focuses on the use of a computer in the creation of
> the artwork, making the
> computer's involvement of the "statement" of artwork
> (for this reason,
> Timbaland productions are not usually regarded as
> digital art, while
> mash-ups that use Timbaland material sometimes are).

Yeah but is it the computer the center of this art
forms? Maybe now...but as the other sciences (for
example cognitive sciences, biology etc) and
technologies (nanotech? etc) change completely the
computer sciences and become the center of the artwork
should we still call it digital art?? is it the
digital the focus?

 
> For our anthology, Multimedia: From Wagner to
> Virtual Reality, Randall
> Packer and I wrestled with the various terms being
> used, and settled on
> "multimedia". We discuss why in the book's
> introduction. The idea was to
> focus attention on the aspects of personal
> expression unique to
> computer-based media -- the things that pre-digital
> media didn't encourage
> or enable. 

And it's a great book that I enjoyed so much (thanks!)
but i still thinking why you entittled your book
MULTIMEDIA instead of NEW MEDIA...There is a book
called "The New Media Reader" recently published with
almost the same selection of authors as you did in
2001.  

What bothers me is that behind a particular term there
is a whole universe or discourse arising and making
able some "neural connections" and making unable
others but with so much "possibles" floating around
waiting to lay on and evolve into new thougths and art
works/process...

best
david  


___________________________________________________
Yahoo! Messenger - Nueva versión GRATIS
Super Webcam, voz, caritas animadas, y más...
http://messenger.yahoo.es


------------------------------

#  distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission
#  <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,
#  collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets
#  more info: majordomo@bbs.thing.net and "info nettime-l" in the msg body
#  archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@bbs.thing.net