Core values of a Museum of New Media Art
1. Museums of new media should be both real virtual museum & virtual real museums.
2. The museum should incorporate new media art from all parts of the world, so that people can get a good idea of what new media art means in different countries.
3. The museum should have a section dedicated to upcoming artists who want to showcase their work.
4. A new media art museum not only showcases work but also educates, thus there should be teachers who teach its visitors about media art.
5. The museum of new media art should provide its visitors with surveys at the end of their visit that asks questions of how they approached the art work: phenomenologically, affectively, experientially, and critically.
6. The art in the museum should include art from different time periods. This allows people to realize that new media art dates back to a few decades, and that it is not a recent phenomenon.
7. The art in the museum should feature different types of mediums.
8. The art featured in the museum should be interactive so that visitors have the opportunity to engage with the artwork and not just be spectators.
9. New media art featured in real virtual museums should be for all age groups and should be easy to access.
10. The new media art museum should keep track of all the art work that is featured especially after it is no longer displayed (i.e. in a database).
-Artist: Jenny Holzer
-Title of the work: Xenon on Bregenz
-Location (URL if web-based): http://www.designboom.com/contemporary/holzer.html
-Date of creation: 2004
-Description of the work: Ms. Holzer is well-known for her work with projections, the projectors are exceptionally powerful and, because they’re so bright, they allow Holzer to throw text on different public dimensions, in this case a giant building. The medium she uses is writing and the public dimension in her work plays an important role.
-Artist’s personal web page: http://www.artnet.com/artists/jenny-holzer/
-Artist: Justine Cooper
-Title of the work: RAPT II-installation view
-Location: http://www.artslant.com/ny/events/show/18151-terminal
-Date of creation: 1998
-Description of the work: RAPT II is an installation made of 76 of the MRI axial scans, printed on architectural film, suspended and aligned to create a 24 foot long floating body.
-Artist’s personal web page: http://justinecooper.com/
Research Paper on ideas of: spectatorship, flatness & panopticism
Rancière: Spectator
In Jacques Rancière’s article “The Emancipated Spectator” he defines a spectator as someone who looks at a spectacle and as being passive, and challenges spectators to take on a more active role. He uses the idea of the “Ignorant schoolmaster” derived by a French professor to compare it to spectatorship, in which a schoolmaster shouldn’t teach his knowledge to his students but instead command them to venture through the forest. In the same way dramaturge or performers should give spectators the opportunity to become more engaged and think outside of the box than and have less of a motionless attitude when looking at performances. One of the quotes in Rancière’s article that summaries his main points is as follows “Breaking away from the phantasms of the Word made flesh and the spectator turned active, knowing that words are only words, and spectacles only spectacles, may help us better understand how words, stories, and performances can help us change something in the world we live” (Jacques Rancière, 11)
Lanier: Flatness
In the second reading for this week, “The Unbearable Thinness of Flatness” by Jaron Lanier, Lanier examines the weaknesses and strengths the internet has brought about. Lanier refers to cultural expressions as flat global structures which are brand new tiny program free to be used by all, but he believes “flatness, as applied to human affairs, lead to blandness and meaningless” (Jaron Lanier, 2 &3). When the internet and new generations of digital culture started coming out Lanier thought he would be experiencing new things and would be shocked by the new innovations presented to him, but instead he argues there is a lack of creativity and originality. “The whole point of connected media technologies was that we were supposed to come up with new, amazing cultural expression” (Jaron Lanier, 8) According to Lanier between the early 1990s and late 2000s there has been a lack of distinct style in music, which he doesn’t understand given the new technologies and softwares available to create original and unique music. He doesn’t think that all musicians lack creativity there are still those coming up with original ideas but for the most part he doesn’t get a sense of uniqueness from the internet or music he has been exposed to.
Foucault: Panopticism
In Michel Foucault’s article “Discipline & Punish: The Birth of the Prison” Foucault examines the term Panopticon based on Jeremy’s Bentham’s interpretation of Panopticon. The panoptic mechanism is used to observe individuals i.e. inmates, “He is seen, but he does not see; he is the object of information, never a subject in communication” (Michel Foucault, 5). Through the use of panopticon a prisoner will always see a tall outline of the central tower from which he/she is being watched but will not be able to know exactly when he/she is being watched this is referred to as visible and unverifiable. However, panoptic mechanism serves more than just of the purpose of spying but Foucault says it can also be used as a laboratory in which experiments can be carried out. “It is polyvalent in its applications; it serves to reform prisoners, but also to treat patients, to instruct schoolchildren, to confine the insane, to supervise workers, to put beggars and idlers to work” (Michel Foucault, 8). The thing that is common among all these different applications is that is possible to perfect the exercise of power.
Art Manifesto
Media art is work in art galleries and museums created by using new technologies such as computers. Today, technologically advanced processes are BECOMING more evident and widely used, and WE MUST recognize their value and find ways to organize, display and archive them. The complexity of contemporary technology should NOT be a cause of anxiety but should BE welcomed as a CHALLENGE and as part of our culture.
The BeSt WAY to OrGaNiZe New Media Art is to start categorizing and tracking it from oldest to newest because it is constantly changing, and by doing so it would also allow audiences to distinguish between original pieces of work and replicates. Educational Institutions should invest money and research the most effective ways to account for all the new media art.
The BeSt WAY to DiSpLaY New Media Art is through different means not just the internet. In displaying new media both the cyberculture and the cultural and computing aspects should be taken into account. New media artists should find ways to make their work interactive and allow for their audiences to see their work in real space, and this can be through the use of galleries and museums.
The BeSt WAY to ArChIvE New Media is by using the internet because it is a source that can be easily accessed by many. There should be a centralized site that keeps a record of all the new media art available.
New Media Art around the world has assimilated at different speeds and some countries have spent a lot on new technologies. As new media curators we must TAKE ACTION into our own hands and allow the world to see that new media art extents more than just the internet but it is also being integrated into architecture, paintings, and sculptors. In Manovich’s eight propositions he discusses that art is constantly evolving but now technology is being incorporated. While art may be evolving there are also a lot of pieces of work that are being reinvented or replicated but this is still considered new media art. It is time for new media art to be taken more seriously and seen in a new light.
Sources:
1. https://docs.google.com/a/uci.edu/document/d/104_ONuRSx4uaCeMxB1ulejJmdpG806kGDT53IwxcHD4/edit
2. http://bauhaus-online.de/en/atlas/das-bauhaus/idee/manifest
3. https://docs.google.com/a/uci.edu/file/d/0B7uZWBWgnBgvRXdMTXVJUGRTbWFOUHdvYTV6amNRdw/edit
4. https://docs.google.com/a/uci.edu/document/d/116D8u4k0yk25nGnqQAZN5Bh_Fot5iwwLu3jKLZFPj8E/edit
Hyperlinks
In the readings, “New Media From Borges to HTML” by Lev Manovich and “New Media Art and the Gallery in the Digital Age” by Charlie Gere, the authors incorporate hyperlinks to present their arguments on contemporary media art. The use of hyperlinks in these two articles are a demonstration of how new technologies are being used in all kinds of medias nowadays including articles. The hyperlinks serve as substitutes for citations in the articles, and they are more effective in allowing the reader to access the website right there and there and not have to scroll down to try and find out where the information came from. For example, in the first reading Manovich uses his first hyperlinks in the following sentence, “Although SIGGRAPH in the U.S. and Ars Electronica in Austria have already acted as annual gathering places of artists working with computers since the late 1970s, the new media field begin to take real shape only in the end of the 1980s”. Through the use of hyperlinks like the ones above I was able to learn a lot, not only from the content of the papers but also from the additional information found in the websites which the hyperlinks took me to.
In Manovich’s article, he discusses eight different propositions on what he believes new media is. Proposition #4 states, “New Media as the Mix Between Existing Cultural Conventions and the Conventions of Software”. The hyperlinks are one example of this particular proposition, because they take an old concept of linking information from one place to another but hyperlinks are able to do this at a more rapid and effective rate. New media, in this case the hyperlinks, allow for users to take advantage of accessing information at a faster rate as well as giving users the opportunity to learn more about specific concepts they may be unfamiliar with while reading an article.
Towards the end of Gere’s article, he writes “The gallery has an important role to play in making this art visible, not just now but also in the future, when such work will be part of art history.” I completely agree with Gere’s in this statement. Today, the gallery still plays an important role in showcasing important pieces of work, and in order for galleries to continue to hold this significant role they will need to be able to bring in the new art. Galleries will have to adapt and figure out new ways to incorporate new technologies in their exhibitions. The things that are in a gallery tend to represent the past and the things that are most valued, and this will have to include new media as it is becoming an important part of our lives.
Title: The Kreutzer Sonata: And Other Stories
Original Form: the University of California
Digitized: Mar 10, 2008
