Eduardo Kac - Genesis - Ars Electronica 99

New media art includes artworks designed and produced by means of

electronic media Electronic media are media that use electronics or electromechanical means for the audience to access the content. This is in contrast to static media (mainly print media), which today are most often created digitally, but do not require el ...

technologies, comprising

virtual art Virtual art is a term for the virtualization of art, made with the technical media developed at the end of the 1980s (or a bit before, in some cases). These include human-machine interfaces such as visualization casks, stereoscopic spectacles and s ...

computer graphics Computer graphics deals with generating images with the aid of computers. Today, computer graphics is a core technology in digital photography, film, video games, cell phone and computer displays, and many specialized applications. A great de ...

computer animation Computer animation is the process used for digitally generating animations. The more general term computer-generated imagery (CGI) encompasses both static scenes ( still images) and dynamic images ( moving images), while computer animation re ...

digital art Digital art refers to any artistic work or practice that uses digital technology as part of the creative or presentation process, or more specifically computational art that uses and engages with digital media. Since the 1960s, various name ...

interactive art Interactive art is a form of art that involves the spectator in a way that allows the art to achieve its purpose. Some interactive art installations achieve this by letting the observer walk through, over or around them; others ask the artist ...

sound art Sound art is an artistic activity in which sound is utilized as a primary medium or material. Like many genres of contemporary art, sound art may be interdisciplinary in nature, or be used in hybrid forms. According to Brandon LaBelle, sound art ...

Internet art upright=1.3, "Simple Net Art Diagram", a 1997 work by Michael Sarff and Tim Whidden Internet art (also known as net art) is a form of new media art distributed via the Internet. This form of art circumvents the traditional dominance of the phy ...

video games Video games, also known as computer games, are electronic games that involves interaction with a user interface or input device such as a joystick, controller, keyboard, or motion sensing device to generate visual feedback. This feedbac ...

robotics Robotics is an interdisciplinary branch of computer science and engineering. Robotics involves design, construction, operation, and use of robots. The goal of robotics is to design machines that can help and assist humans. Robotics integrat ...

3D printing 3D printing or additive manufacturing is the construction of a three-dimensional object from a CAD model or a digital 3D model. It can be done in a variety of processes in which material is deposited, joined or solidified under computer co ...

, and cyborg art. The term defines itself by the thereby created artwork, which differentiates itself from that deriving from conventional visual arts (i.e. architecture,

painting Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a solid surface (called the "matrix" or "support"). The medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush, but other implements, such as knives, sponges, and a ...

, sculpture, etc.). New Media art has origins in the worlds of science, art, and performance. Some common themes found in new media art include databases, political and social activism, Afrofuturism, feminism, and identity, a ubiquitous theme found throughout is the incorporation of new technology into the work. The emphasis on medium is a defining feature of much

contemporary art Contemporary art is the art of today, produced in the second half of the 20th century or in the 21st century. Contemporary artists work in a globally influenced, culturally diverse, and technologically advancing world. Their art is a dynamic ...

and many art schools and major universities now offer majors in "New Genres" or "New Media" and a growing number of graduate programs have emerged internationally. New media art may involve degrees of interaction between artwork and observer or between the artist and the public, as is the case in

performance art Performance art is an artwork or art exhibition created through actions executed by the artist or other participants. It may be witnessed live or through documentation, spontaneously developed or written, and is traditionally presented to a pu ...

. Yet, as several theorists and curators have noted, such forms of interaction, social exchange, participation, and transformation do not distinguish new media art but rather serve as a common ground that has parallels in other strands of contemporary art practice. Such insights emphasize the forms of cultural practice that arise concurrently with emerging technological platforms, and question the focus on technological media per se. New Media art involves complex curation and preservation practices that make collecting, installing, and exhibiting the works harder than most other mediums. Many cultural centers and museums have been established to cater to the advanced needs of new media art.

History

The origins of new media art can be traced to the moving image inventions of the 19th century such as the

phenakistiscope The phenakistiscope (also known by the spellings phénakisticope or phenakistoscope) was the first widespread animation device that created a fluent illusion of motion. Dubbed and ('stroboscopic discs') by its inventors, it has been known und ...

(1833), the

praxinoscope The praxinoscope was an animation device, the successor to the zoetrope. It was invented in France in 1877 by Charles-Émile Reynaud. Like the zoetrope, it used a strip of pictures placed around the inner surface of a spinning cylinder. The p ...

(1877) and Eadweard Muybridge's

zoopraxiscope The zoopraxiscope (initially named ''zoographiscope'' and ''zoogyroscope'') is an early device for displaying moving images and is considered an important predecessor of the movie projector. It was conceived by photographic pioneer Eadweard M ...

(1879). From the 1900s through the 1960s, various forms of kinetic and light art, from

Thomas Wilfred Thomas Wilfred (June 18, 1889 in Naestved, Denmark - August 15, 1968 in Nyack, New York), born Richard Edgar Løvstrøm, was a musician and inventor. He is best known for his light art, which he named '' lumia'', and his designs for color organ ...

's 'Lumia' (1919) and 'Clavilux' light organs to Jean Tinguely's self-destructing sculpture ''Homage to New York'' (1960) can be seen as progenitors of new media art. Steve Dixon in his book ''Digital Performance: New Technologies in Theatre, Dance and Performance Art'' argues that the early twentieth century

avant-garde The avant-garde (; In 'advance guard' or ' vanguard', literally 'fore-guard') is a person or work that is experimental, radical, or unorthodox with respect to art, culture, or society.John Picchione, The New Avant-garde in Italy: Theoretica ...

art movement

Futurism Futurism ( it, Futurismo, link=no) was an artistic and social movement that originated in Italy, and to a lesser extent in other countries, in the early 20th century. It emphasized dynamism, speed, technology, youth, violence, and objects suc ...

was the birthplace of the merging of technology and performance art. Some early examples of performance artists who experimented with then state-of-the-art lighting, film, and projection include dancers Loïe Fuller and Valentine de Saint-Point. Cartoonist

Winsor McCay Zenas Winsor McCay ( – July 26, 1934) was an American cartoonist and animator. He is best known for the comic strip '' Little Nemo'' (1905–14; 1924–26) and the animated film '' Gertie the Dinosaur'' (1914). For contractual reasons, he w ...

performed in sync with an animated Gertie the Dinosaur on tour in 1914. By the 1920s many Cabaret acts began incorporating film projection into performances.Dixon, S. (2007). ''Digital performance: A history of new media in theater, dance, performance art, and installation''. MIT Press

Robert Rauschenberg Milton Ernest "Robert" Rauschenberg (October 22, 1925 – May 12, 2008) was an American painter and graphic artist whose early works anticipated the Pop art movement. Rauschenberg is well known for his Combines (1954–1964), a group of artwor ...

's piece ''Broadcast'' (1959), composed of three interactive re-tunable radios and a painting, is considered one of the first examples of interactive art. German artist

Wolf Vostell Wolf Vostell (14 October 1932 – 3 April 1998) was a German painter and sculptor, considered one of the early adopters of video art and installation art and pioneer of Happenings and Fluxus. Techniques such as blurring and Dé-coll/age are ...

experimented with television sets in his (1958) installation TV De-collages. Vostell's work influenced Nam June Paik, who created sculptural installations featuring hundreds of television sets that displayed distorted and abstract footage. Beginning in Chicago during the 1970s, there was a surge of artists experimenting with video art and combining recent computer technology with their traditional mediums, including sculpture, photography, and graphic design. Many of the artists involved were grad students at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, including

Kate Horsfield Kate Horsfield (born 1944), is an American artist who focused her work on video art and video documentation. She is also an author and teacher. She is best known for co-founding the Video Data Bank in 1976, an international video art distributi ...

and Lyn Blumenthal, who co-founded the Video Data Bank in 1976.Sandor, E. (2018). Ellen Sandor. In D.J. Cox, E. Sandor & J. Fron (Eds.), ''New media futures: The rise of women in the digital arts'' (pp.50-70). University of Illinois Press. Another artists involved was Donna Cox, she collaborated with mathematician George Francis and computer scientist Ray Idaszak on the project ''Venus in Time'' which depicted mathematical data as 3D digital sculptures named for their similarities to paleolithic Venus statues. In 1982 artist Ellen Sandor and her team called (art)n Laboratory created the medium called PHSCologram, which stands for photography, holography, sculpture, and computer graphics. Her visualization of the AIDS virus was depicted on the cover of

IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications The publications of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) constitute around 30% of the world literature in the electrical and electronics engineering and computer science fields, publishing well over 100 peer-reviewed journals ...

in November 1988. At the

University of Illinois The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (U of I, Illinois, University of Illinois, or UIUC) is a public land-grant research university in Illinois in the twin cities of Champaign and Urbana. It is the flagship institution of the Uni ...

in 1989, members of the Electronic Visualization Laboratory

Carolina Cruz-Neira Carolina Cruz-Neira is a Spanish-Venezuelan-American computer engineer, researcher, designer, educator, and a pioneer of virtual reality (VR). She is known for inventing the cave automatic virtual environment (CAVE). She previously worked at Iow ...

, Thomas DeFanti, and Daniel J. Sandin collaborated to create what is known as

CAVE A cave or cavern is a natural void in the ground, specifically a space large enough for a human to enter. Caves often form by the weathering of rock and often extend deep underground. The word ''cave'' can refer to smaller openings such as sea ...

or Cave Automatic Virtual Environment an early virtual reality immersion using rear projection. In 1983, Roy Ascott introduced the concept of "distributed authorship" in his worldwide telematic project La Plissure du Texte for Frank Popper's "Electra" at the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris. The development of computer graphics at the end of the 1980s and real time technologies in the 1990s combined with the spreading of the Web and the Internet favored the emergence of new and various forms of interactive art by

Ken Feingold Kenneth Feingold (born 1952 in USA) is a contemporary American artist based in New York City. He has been exhibiting his work in video, drawing, film, sculpture, photography, and installations since 1974. He has received a Guggenheim Fellowship ...

Lynn Hershman Leeson Lynn Hershman Leeson (née Lynn Lester Hershman; born 1941) is a multimedia American artist and filmmaker. Her work combines art with social commentary, particularly on the relationship between people and technology. Leeson is a pioneer in new med ...

, David Rokeby, Ken Rinaldo,

Perry Hoberman Perry Hoberman (born 1954), is an installation artist who has worked extensively with machines and media. His career has included stints with Laurie Anderson and the USC Interactive Media Division. He has taught at the Cooper Union School of Ar ...

, Tamas Waliczky; telematic art by Roy Ascott, Paul Sermon,

Michael Bielický Michael Bielicky (born 12 January 1954 in Prague) is a Czech-German artist working in new media, video art, and installations. He is a professor in the department of digital media and post-digital narratives at the Karlsruhe University of Arts ...

; Internet art by

Vuk Ćosić Vuk Ćosić ( sr-cyr, Вук Ћосић; born 31 July 1966) is a Slovenian contemporary artist associated with the net.art movement. Active in politics, literature and art, Ćosić has exhibited, published, and been active since 1994. He is well ...

Jodi Jodi is a feminine given name which may refer to: People * Jodi Albert (born 1983), English actress * Jodi Anasta (born 1985), Australian actress and model * Jodi Anderson (born 1957), American heptathlete * Jodi Appelbaum-Steinbauer (born 1956 ...

; virtual and immersive art by Jeffrey Shaw,

Maurice Benayoun Maurice Benayoun (aka MoBen or 莫奔) (born 29 March 1957) is a French new-media artist, curator, and theorist based in Paris and Hong Kong. His work employs various media, including video, computer graphics, immersive virtual reality, th ...

, Monika Fleischmann, and large scale urban installation by

Rafael Lozano-Hemmer Rafael Lozano-Hemmer (born 1967 in Mexico City) is a Mexican-Canadian electronic artist who works with ideas from architecture, technological theater and performance. Lozano-Hemmer lives and works in Montreal and Madrid. Biography Rafael Lozan ...

. In Geneva, the

Centre pour l'Image Contemporaine The Centre pour l'Image Contemporaine or CIC was a contemporary art exhibition centre in Geneva, Switzerland. CIC was established in 1985 to organize events and exhibitions of images using new technologies such as video, multimedia, and the Intern ...

or CIC coproduced with

Centre Georges Pompidou The Centre Pompidou (), more fully the Centre national d'art et de culture Georges-Pompidou ( en, National Georges Pompidou Centre of Art and Culture), also known as the Pompidou Centre in English, is a complex building in the Beaubourg area of ...

from Paris and the

Museum Ludwig Museum Ludwig, located in Cologne, Germany, houses a collection of modern art. It includes works from Pop Art, Abstract and Surrealism, and has one of the largest Picasso collections in Europe. It holds many works by Andy Warhol and Roy Lic ...

in Cologne the first internet video archive of new media art. Programmed Machines installation by Maurizio Bolognini

Simultaneously advances in biotechnology have also allowed artists like

Eduardo Kac Eduardo Kac �dwardoʊ kæts; ĕd·wâr′·dō kăts(1962) is a contemporary artist of dual nationality (American and Brazilian) whose artworks span a wide range of practices, including performance art, poetry, holography, interactive art, digit ...

to begin exploring DNA and genetics as a new art medium. Influences on new media art have been the theories developed around interaction,

hypertext Hypertext is text displayed on a computer display or other electronic devices with references ( hyperlinks) to other text that the reader can immediately access. Hypertext documents are interconnected by hyperlinks, which are typically ...

, databases, and

networks Network, networking and networked may refer to: Science and technology * Network theory, the study of graphs as a representation of relations between discrete objects * Network science, an academic field that studies complex networks Mathematics ...

. Important thinkers in this regard have been

Vannevar Bush Vannevar Bush ( ; March 11, 1890 – June 28, 1974) was an American engineer, inventor and science administrator, who during World War II headed the U.S. Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD), through which almost all warti ...

and Theodor Nelson, whereas comparable ideas can be found in the literary works of

Jorge Luis Borges Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges Acevedo (; ; 24 August 1899 – 14 June 1986) was an Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator, as well as a key figure in Spanish-language and international literature. His best-known b ...

Italo Calvino Italo Calvino (, also , ;. RAI (circa 1970), retrieved 25 October 2012. 15 October 1923 – 19 September 1985) was an Italian writer and journalist. His best known works include the '' Our Ancestors'' trilogy (1952–1959), the ''Cosmicomi ...

, and

Julio Cortázar Julio Florencio Cortázar (26 August 1914 – 12 February 1984; ) was an Argentine, nationalized French novelist, short story writer, essayist, and translator. Known as one of the founders of the Latin American Boom, Cortázar influenced an ...

Themes

In the book ''New Media Art'',

Mark Tribe Mark Tribe (born 1966) is an American artist. He is the founder of Rhizome, a not-for-profit arts organization based in New York City. In 2013, he was appointed chair of the MFA program of the School of Visual Arts in New York City. Formerl ...

and Reena Jana named several themes that contemporary new media art addresses, including

computer art Computer art is any art in which computers play a role in production or display of the artwork. Such art can be an image, sound, animation, video, CD-ROM, DVD-ROM, video game, website, algorithm, performance or gallery installation. Many tradit ...

collaboration Collaboration (from Latin ''com-'' "with" + ''laborare'' "to labor", "to work") is the process of two or more people, entities or organizations working together to complete a task or achieve a goal. Collaboration is similar to cooperation. Most ...

identity Identity may refer to: * Identity document * Identity (philosophy) * Identity (social science) * Identity (mathematics) Arts and entertainment Film and television * ''Identity'' (1987 film), an Iranian film * ''Identity'' (2003 film), an ...

, appropriation, open sourcing,

telepresence Telepresence refers to a set of technologies which allow a person to feel as if they were present, to give the appearance or effect of being present via telerobotics, at a place other than their true location. Telepresence requires that the use ...

, surveillance, corporate parody, as well as intervention and hacktivism. In the book ''Postdigitale'',

Maurizio Bolognini Maurizio Bolognini (born July 27, 1952) is a post-conceptual media artist. His installations are mainly concerned with the aesthetics of machines, and are based on the minimal and abstract activation of technological processes that are beyond the ...

suggested that new media artists have one common denominator, which is a self-referential relationship with the new technologies, the result of finding oneself inside an epoch-making transformation determined by technological development. New media art does not appear as a set of homogeneous practices, but as a complex field converging around three main elements: 1) the art system, 2) scientific and industrial research, and 3) political-cultural media activism. There are significant differences between scientist-artists, activist-artists and technological artists closer to the art system, who not only have different training and technocultures, but have different artistic production. This should be taken into account in examining the several themes addressed by new media art. Non-linearity can be seen as an important topic to new media art by artists developing interactive, generative, collaborative, immersive artworks like Jeffrey Shaw or

who explored the term as an approach to looking at varying forms of digital projects where the content relays on the user's experience. This is a key concept since people acquired the notion that they were conditioned to view everything in a linear and clear-cut fashion. Now, art is stepping out of that form and allowing for people to build their own experiences with the piece. Non-linearity describes a project that escape from the conventional linear narrative coming from novels, theater plays and movies. Non-linear art usually requires audience participation or at least, the fact that the "visitor" is taken into consideration by the representation, altering the displayed content. The participatory aspect of new media art, which for some artists has become integral, emerged from

Allan Kaprow Allan Kaprow (August 23, 1927 – April 5, 2006) was an American painter, assemblagist and a pioneer in establishing the concepts of performance art. He helped to develop the "Environment" and " Happening" in the late 1950s and 1960s, as well ...

's ''Happenings'' and became with Internet, a significant component of contemporary art. The inter-connectivity and interactivity of the

internet The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, p ...

, as well as the fight between corporate interests, governmental interests, and public interests that gave birth to the web today, inspire a lot of current new media art.

Databases

One of the key themes in new media art is to create visual views of databases. Pioneers in this area include Lisa Strausfeld, Martin Wattenberg and Alberto Frigo. From 2004-2014

George Legrady George Legrady (''Légrády György, Tamás, Antal, Tivadar'', born January 8, 1950) is a multidisciplinary digital media artist and university professor in photography and computational media arts. Early life and education Legrady was born in Bu ...

's piece "Making Visible the Invisible" displayed the normally unseen library metadata of items recently checked out at the

Seattle Public Library The Seattle Public Library (SPL) is the public library system serving the city of Seattle, Washington. Efforts to start a Seattle library had commenced as early as 1868, with the system eventually being established by the city in 1890. The syst ...

on six LCD monitors behind the circulation desk. Database aesthetics holds at least two attractions to new media artists: formally, as a new variation on non-linear narratives; and politically as a means to subvert what is fast becoming a form of control and authority.

Political and social activism

Many new media art projects also work with themes like politics and social consciousness, allowing for

social activism Activism (or Advocacy) consists of efforts to promote, impede, direct or intervene in social, political, economic or environmental reform with the desire to make changes in society toward a perceived greater good. Forms of activism range fro ...

through the interactive nature of the media. New media art includes "explorations of code and user interface; interrogations of archives, databases, and networks; production via automated scraping, filtering, cloning, and recombinatory techniques; applications of user-generated content (UGC) layers; crowdsourcing ideas on social- media platforms; narrowcasting digital selves on "free" websites that claim copyright; and provocative performances that implicate audiences as participants".

Afrofuturism

Afrofuturism Afrofuturism is a cultural aesthetic, and philosophy of science and history that explores the intersection of the African diaspora culture with science and technology. It addresses themes and concerns of the African diaspora through technocultu ...

is an interdisciplinary genre that explores the

African diaspora The African diaspora is the worldwide collection of communities descended from native Africans or people from Africa, predominantly in the Americas. The term most commonly refers to the descendants of the West and Central Africans who were ...

experience, predominantly in the United States, by deconstructing the past and imagining the future through the themes of technology, science fiction, and fantasy. Musician Sun Ra, believed to be one of the founders of Afrofuturism, thought a blend of technology and music could help humanity overcome the ills of society. His band, The Sun Ra Arkestra, combined traditional Jazz with sound and performance art and were among the first musicians to perform with a synthesizer. The twenty-first century has seen a resurgence of Afrofuturism aesthetics and themes with artists and cooperation's like Jessi Jumanji and Black Quantum Futurism and art educational centers like Black Space in Durham, North Carolina.

Feminism and the female experience

Japanese artist Mariko Mori's multimedia installation piece ''Wave UFO'' (1999-2003) sought to examine the science and perceptions behind the study of consciousness and neuroscience. Exploring the ways that these fields undertake research in a materially reductionist manner. Mori's work emphasized the need for these fields to become more holistic and incorporate incites and understanding of the world from philosophy and the humanities.Mondloch, K. (2018). ''A capsule aesthetic: Feminist materialisms in new media art''. University of Minnesota Press. Swiss artist Pipilotti Rist's (2008) immersive video installation ''Pour Your Body Out'' explores the dichotomy of beauty and the grotesque in the natural world and their relation to the female experience. The large-scale 360-degree installation featured breast-shaped projectors and circular pink pillows that invited viewers to relax and immerse themselves in the vibrant colors, psychedelic music, and partake in meditation and yoga. American filmmaker and artist Lynn Hersman Leeson explores in her films the themes of identity, technology and the erasure of women's roles and contributions to technology. Her (1999) film Conceiving Ada depicts a computer scientist and new media artist named Emmy as she attempts and succeeds at creating a way to communicate through cyberspace with

Ada Lovelace Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace (''née'' Byron; 10 December 1815 – 27 November 1852) was an English mathematician and writer, chiefly known for her work on Charles Babbage's proposed mechanical general-purpose computer, the An ...

, an Englishwoman who created the first computer program in the 1840s via a form of artificial intelligence.

Identity

With its roots in outsider art, New Media has been an ideal medium for an artist to explore the topics of identity and representation. In Canada, Indigenous multidisciplinary artists like Cheryl L'Hirondelle and Kent Monkman have incorporated themes about gender, identity, activism, and colonization in their work. Monkman, a Cree artist, performs and appears as their alter ego Miss Chief Eagle Testickle, in film, photography, painting, installation, and performance art. Monkman describes Miss Chief as a representation of a

two-spirit Two-spirit (also two spirit, 2S or, occasionally, twospirited) is a modern, , umbrella term used by some Indigenous North Americans to describe Native people in their communities who fulfill a traditional third-gender (or other gender-varia ...

or non-binary persona that does not fall under the traditional description of drag.

Future of new media art

The emergence of

has introduced a new bridge to new media art, joining the virtual and the physical worlds. The rise of this technology has allowed artists to blend the computational base of new media art with the traditional physical form of sculpture. A pioneer in this field was artist Jonty Hurwitz who created the first known anamorphosis sculpture using this technique.

Longevity

As the technologies used to deliver works of new media art such as

film A film also called a movie, motion picture, moving picture, picture, photoplay or (slang) flick is a work of visual art that simulates experiences and otherwise communicates ideas, stories, perceptions, feelings, beauty, or atmospher ...

, tapes,

web browser A web browser is application software for accessing websites. When a user requests a web page from a particular website, the browser retrieves its files from a web server and then displays the page on the user's screen. Browsers are used o ...

software Software is a set of computer programs and associated documentation and data. This is in contrast to hardware, from which the system is built and which actually performs the work. At the lowest programming level, executable code consist ...

and

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ef ...

s become obsolete, New Media art faces serious issues around the challenge to preserve artwork beyond the time of its contemporary production. Currently, research projects into New media art preservation are underway to improve the preservation and documentation of the fragile media arts heritage (see DOCAM - Documentation and Conservation of the Media Arts Heritage). Methods of preservation exist, including the translation of a work from an obsolete medium into a related new medium, the digital archiving of media (see the Rhizome ArtBase, which holds over 2000 works, and the

Internet Archive The Internet Archive is an American digital library with the stated mission of "universal access to all knowledge". It provides free public access to collections of digitized materials, including websites, software applications/games, music, ...

), and the use of emulators to preserve work dependent on obsolete software or operating system environments. Around the mid-90s, the issue of storing works in digital form became a concern. Digital art such as moving images, multimedia, interactive programs, and computer-generated art has different properties than physical artwork such as oil paintings and sculptures. Unlike analog technologies, a digital file can be recopied onto a new medium without any deterioration of content. One of the problems with preserving digital art is that the formats continuously change over time. Former examples of transitions include that from 8-inch floppy disks to 5.25-inch floppies, 3-inch diskettes to CD-ROMs, and DVDs to flash drives. On the horizon is the obsolescence of flash drives and portable hard drives, as data is increasingly held in online

cloud storage Cloud storage is a model of computer data storage in which the digital data is stored in logical pools, said to be on "the cloud". The physical storage spans multiple servers (sometimes in multiple locations), and the physical environment is ty ...

. Museums and galleries thrive off of being able to accommodate the presentation and preservation of physical artwork. New media art challenges the original methods of the art world when it comes to documentation, its approach to collection and preservation. Technology continues to advance, and the nature and structure of art organizations and institutions will remain in jeopardy. The traditional roles of curators and artist are continually changing, and a shift to new collaborative models of production and presentation is needed.

Preservation

''see also

Conservation and restoration of new media art The conservation and restoration of new media art is the study and practice of techniques for sustaining new media art created using from materials such as digital, biological, performative, and other variable media. New media art runs a unique ris ...

'' New media art encompasses various mediums all which require their own preservation approaches.Paul, C. (2012). The myth of immateriality – presenting new media art. ''Technoetic Arts: A Journal of Speculative Research, 10''(2/3) 167-172 https://doi.org/10.1386/tear.10.2-3.167_7 Due to the vast technical aspects involved no established digital preservation guidelines fully encompass the spectrum of new media art. New media art falls under the category of "complex digital object" in the Digital Curation Centre's digital curation lifecycle model which involves specialized or totally unique preservation techniques. Complex digital objects preservation has an emphasis on the inherent connection of the components of the piece.

Education

In New Media programs, students are able to get acquainted with the newest forms of creation and communication. New Media students learn to identify what is or isn't "new" about certain technologies. Science and the market will always present new tools and platforms for artists and designers. Students learn how to sort through new emerging technological platforms and place them in a larger context of sensation, communication, production, and consumption. When obtaining a bachelor's degree in New Media, students will primarily work through practice of building experiences that utilize new and old technologies and narrative. Through the construction of projects in various media, they acquire technical skills, practice vocabularies of critique and analysis, and gain familiarity with historical and contemporary precedents. In the United States, many Bachelor's and Master's level programs exist with concentrations on Media Art, New Media, Media Design, Digital Media and Interactive Arts.

Leading art theorists and historians

Leading art theorists and historians in this field include Roy Ascott,

Lev Manovich Lev Manovich ( ) is an author of books on digital culture and new media, and professor of Computer Science at the Graduate Center, City University of New York. Manovich's current research and teaching focuses on digital humanities, social comput ...

, Christine Buci-Glucksmann, Jack Burnham, Mario Costa, Edmond Couchot, Fred Forest, Oliver Grau,

Margot Lovejoy Margot Lovejoy (21 October 1930 – 1 August 2019) ...

Robert C. Morgan Robert C. Morgan (born 1943) is an American art critic, art historian, curator, poet, and artist. Biography Robert C. Morgan received his M.F.A. in sculpture from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst in 1975 and his Ph.D. in art education ...

, Dominique Moulon, Christiane Paul, Catherine Perret, Frank Popper, and Edward A. Shanken.

Types

The term New Media Art is generally applied to disciplines such as: * Artistic computer game modification *

ASCII art ASCII art is a graphic design technique that uses computers for presentation and consists of pictures pieced together from the 95 printable (from a total of 128) characters defined by the ASCII Standard from 1963 and ASCII compliant char ...

* Bio Art *

Cyberformance Cyberformance refers to live theatrical performances in which remote participants are enabled to work together in real time through the medium of the internet, employing technologies such as chat applications or purpose-built, multiuser, real-time ...

Computer art Computer art is any art in which computers play a role in production or display of the artwork. Such art can be an image, sound, animation, video, CD-ROM, DVD-ROM, video game, website, algorithm, performance or gallery installation. Many tradit ...

* Critical making *

Digital art Digital art refers to any artistic work or practice that uses digital technology as part of the creative or presentation process, or more specifically computational art that uses and engages with digital media. Since the 1960s, various name ...

Demoscene The demoscene is an international computer art subculture focused on producing demos: self-contained, sometimes extremely small, computer programs that produce audiovisual presentations. The purpose of a demo is to show off programming, visual ...

Digital poetry Digital poetry is a form of electronic literature, displaying a wide range of approaches to poetry, with a prominent and crucial use of computers. Digital poetry can be available in form of CD-ROM, DVD, as installations in art galleries, in cert ...

Electronic art Electronic art is a form of art that makes use of electronic media. More broadly, it refers to technology and/or electronic media. It is related to information art, new media art, video art, digital art, interactive art, internet art, and elec ...

* Experimental musical instrument building * Evolutionary art *

Fax art Fax art is art specifically designed to be sent or transmitted by a facsimile machine, where the "fax art" is the received "fax". It is also called telecommunications art or telematic art. According to art historians Annmarie Chandler and Norie ...

* Generative art *

Glitch art Glitch art is the practice of using digital or analog errors for aesthetic purposes by either corrupting digital data or physically manipulating electronic devices. Glitches appear in visual art such as the film '' A Colour Box'' (1935) by Len L ...

Hypertext Hypertext is text displayed on a computer display or other electronic devices with references ( hyperlinks) to other text that the reader can immediately access. Hypertext documents are interconnected by hyperlinks, which are typically ...

* Information art *

Interactive art Interactive art is a form of art that involves the spectator in a way that allows the art to achieve its purpose. Some interactive art installations achieve this by letting the observer walk through, over or around them; others ask the artist ...

* Kinetic art *

Light art Light art or The Art of Light is generally referring to a visual art form in which (physical) light is the main, if not sole medium of creation. Uses of the term differ drastically in incongruence; definitions, if existing, vary in several asp ...

Motion graphics Motion graphics (sometimes mograph) are pieces of animation or digital footage which create the illusion of motion or rotation, and are usually combined with audio for use in multimedia projects. Motion graphics are usually displayed via e ...

Net art upright=1.3, "Simple Net Art Diagram", a 1997 work by Michael Sarff and Tim Whidden Internet art (also known as net art) is a form of new media art distributed via the Internet. This form of art circumvents the traditional dominance of the phys ...

Performance art Performance art is an artwork or art exhibition created through actions executed by the artist or other participants. It may be witnessed live or through documentation, spontaneously developed or written, and is traditionally presented to a pu ...

* Radio art * Robotic art * Software art *

Sound art Sound art is an artistic activity in which sound is utilized as a primary medium or material. Like many genres of contemporary art, sound art may be interdisciplinary in nature, or be used in hybrid forms. According to Brandon LaBelle, sound art ...

* Systems art * Telematic art *

Video art Video art is an art form which relies on using video technology as a visual and audio medium. Video art emerged during the late 1960s as new consumer video technology such as video tape recorders became available outside corporate broadcasting ...

Video games Video games, also known as computer games, are electronic games that involves interaction with a user interface or input device such as a joystick, controller, keyboard, or motion sensing device to generate visual feedback. This feedbac ...

Virtual art Virtual art is a term for the virtualization of art, made with the technical media developed at the end of the 1980s (or a bit before, in some cases). These include human-machine interfaces such as visualization casks, stereoscopic spectacles and s ...

Artists

Cultural centres

* Australian Network for Art and Technology * Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe *

Eyebeam Art and Technology Center Eyebeam is a not-for-profit art and technology center in New York City, founded by John Seward Johnson III with co-founders David S. Johnson and Roderic R. Richardson. Originally conceived as a digital effects and coding atelier and center fo ...

* Foundation for Art and Creative Technology *

Gray Area Foundation for the Arts Gray Area Foundation for the Arts, Inc. is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization supporting art and technology for social good in San Francisco, California. Gray Area hosts exhibitions and music events, software and electronics classes, a media lab, ...

* Harvestworks * InterAccess * Los Angeles Center for Digital Art (LACDA) * Netherlands Media Art Institute * NTT InterCommunication Center *

Rhizome (organization) Rhizome is an American not-for-profit arts organization that supports and provides a platform for new media art. History Artist and curator Mark Tribe founded Rhizome as an email list in 1996 while living in Berlin.RIXC The Centre for new media culture in Riga (RIXC) is the joint effort of a number of independent local Latvian cultural groups working in the fields of new media, art, film, music, youth culture and the social projects. The founders of RIXC are ...

School for Poetic Computation The School for Poetic Computation (SFPC) is a hybrid of a school, residency and research group that was founded in 2013 in New York. A small group of students and faculty work closely to explore the intersections of code, art, hardware and theo ...

(SFPC) *

School of the Art Institute of Chicago The School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) is a private art school associated with the Art Institute of Chicago (AIC) in Chicago, Illinois. Tracing its history to an art students' cooperative founded in 1866, which grew into the museum and ...

* Squeaky Wheel: Film and Media Arts Center * V2 Institute for the Unstable Media *

WORM Worms are many different distantly related bilateral animals that typically have a long cylindrical tube-like body, no limbs, and no eyes (though not always). Worms vary in size from microscopic to over in length for marine polychaete wor ...