“The memory of a memory”
This short video art contains a total of 26 videos that were kept inside my phone just like a photo album and I go over them whenever I miss my home. All of the videos were recorded back when I was in my home country, Mongolia. It mainly shows scenes of my beloved family, friends, and the blue sky that I miss the most and I tried to bring up the concept of a nostalgic memory that everyone has.
Four tracks, 2021
Amongst all the artworks inside the exhibition, “Four tracks” by Shen Xin was the one I find the most refreshing. The idea of just typing words and sentences on a plain background with bright colours including cyan, magenta and yellow, seems simple yet odd but the way the project engages with the watchers attracted people the most.
A six-channel interactive installation which was displayed with 6 iPads was closest to the theme “The Instructed Collective” as it contained three continuous stories empowering alternative histories, relations and potentials between individuals and nation states. By tapping on the screen, you will get each words and sentences guiding you to the next scenery as it seeks to create affirmative spaces of belonging that embrace polyphonic narratives and identities.
As the conversations between four groups of Chinese railroad workers who are all gathered from across different lands and epochs, you can tell the time and space collide while reading each story. The workers wonder which group brought the mosquitoes, though they slowly realise no one is to blame as mosquitoes inhabit all the lands they arrived from. Those from the past raise their voices, while those from the present are silenced.
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The words that explore “time”:
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My story is how I got into NYU Shanghai and why:
It all started with one picture I took on my phone and that was when my small interest towards photography got enlarged. From taking pictures of the city and landscapes to staged portraits, I became more and more attracted to the art of photography and was given my first ever digital camera by my uncle as a compliment, which later made me decide to follow up my dream of becoming a talented photographer and filmmaker. To study this field more thoroughly, I decided to go abroad and chose NYU as my university and IMA as my major to deepen my knowledge about arts in general. And got welcomed by the NYU Shanghai community, I am now here chasing my goal.
Defining new media art is just as hard as defining what art is, but from the word “New media”, it is a form of art that is made with the combination of new media technology and traditional art forms.
Though it can be created in many ways, new media arts are mostly created by digital age technologies such as net art, mixed media, computer-based arts, photography, videography.
Lastly, the most significant thing about new media art is that it is a collaboration between the art creator and the observer and by that means, it gives the audiences a chance to interact with the artwork rather than just looking at it.
Nam June Paik – TV Buddha, 1974
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Rafaël Rozendaal – Permanent Distraction, 2021
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Hito Steyerl – Factory of the Sun, 2016
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Roy Ascott – La Plissure du Texte, 1982
Evolution to abstract and nonobjective art
Systems oriented culture, explained by Burnham, is how the culture of art has changed from object oriented to systems-oriented culture, and system by means it focuses mainly on conceptual ideas rather than material. Systems can be ideas, people, messages, power source and atmospheric conditions, while it also needs an input to create an output, and depending on the throughput, the output can be changed.
To explain with an example, Olafur Eliasson, Icelandic-Danish artist who installed large amounts of ice blocks outside the Tate Modern museum in London tried to raise awareness about climate change. To connect this public art created by Eliasson with Burnham’s idea, an artwork that physically makes a reaction to its environment is not seen as an object, but rather understood as a system. His definition of systems is said by himself “A sculpture that physically reacts to its environment is no longer to be regarded as an object. The range of outside factors affecting it, as well as its own radius of action, reach beyond the space it materially occupies. It thus merges with the environment in a relationship that is better understood as a system of interdependent processes. These processes evolve without the viewer’s empathy. He becomes a witness. A system is not imagined, it is real”.
