What is New Media Art?
This is a question that have been lingering since the modern technologhy and a large amount artists appeare. In the intrduction of the article, the function of New Media Art was to describe digital publishing form of those artworks which engaged with interactive multimedia installations, virtual reality environment and web-based art. Their contents are also various, containing cultural, political, aesthetic possibilities etc. And NMA was divided into two categories, Art and Technology and Media Art. For Art and Tech, it’s about those techniques to create artworks but not media-related. For the second one, it’s about tramsmitting information using social media to the public. However, the definition of NMA is more focused on Media rather than Tachnology.
My understanding towards NMA right now is more about generative arts and AI art. This is because our tech is more advanced than that in the past, and the relationship between human and tech changed. We have chatGPT and other AI tools, Large algorithm and information back them up, so that they can ‘think like a human’ and ‘act like a human’. By giving them commands, they will follow those and generate the artworks by themselves. Also, people nowadays are more intended to use the internet so that the transmitting speed of media is faster and faster, the realm it could reach is larger and larger. When the concept came up and kept improving and developing, it will be temped but also change.
The text mentions some of the artists and their amazing ideas, here are 2 of them that I am interested in.
·Eduardo Kac
description
Genesis
1999
A transgenic artwork that explores the intricate relationship between biology, belief systems, information technology, dialogical interaction, ethics, and the Internet.
Created by translating a sentence from the biblical book of Genesis into Morse Code, and converting the Morse Code into DNA base pairs according to a conversion principle specially developed for this work.
Genesis – Bible Morse Code (ekac.org)
intro of the artist
Eduardo Kac was best known for his works featuring genetically altered organisms in ways that frequently had conceptual or symbolic import.(Britannica, 2022) His art are usually called ‘bio art’ or ‘transgenic art’.
historical view
Gaining insights on the acient myth, people may think of the gods and been reminded that we human beings are created by the god. However, through nowaday’s scientific research, we go deeper in a biological perspective and discover that our lives come from genes. The view mostly changed from find the answer from god to find the answer form science. Through the telescope, colorful genes are represented which reveals the sea and the air. For these two elements are also grandious, they are commonly been believed as the origin and the essence of the lives. Kac took in the concept and created this artwork, it’s only about the past, but also reveals what perspective we hold to view the world right now. This is a well presented contemporary source and thankfully it’s shared by the media and everyone can get access to it!
·John F. Simon
description
Complex City
2000-2005
This is an artwork that concerned with realism of abstraction. New York’s modernity has been presented within an autobiography way.
introduction
A multimedia artist and Software Art pioneer.
historical view
The concept of city in the past was more about democracy, politically, the citizens were proud of getting rid of the landlords’ control and were willing to transmit their rights to the emperor. When the cities get more prosperous and become common units in the world, the cityscape changes as well. Skyscrapers appear and soon become the landscape of the city center, glass and metal are commonly used as the materials of the buildings, shapes varies, etc. The focus converted so the content of the paintings changes. This artwork is in an online gallary, by clicking ‘last panal’ or ‘next panal’, we can scan through the pieces. Although it’s not profitting, the truth is the audiance are gaining advantages.
NMA is developing and we are waiting to see what will happen in the near future.
Leave a Reply