Media art
Parent categories: media - art
Related: digital art - electronic art - media - new media - art film - experimental film - sound art - video art
Still from Diagonal-Symphonie (1924) - Viking Eggeling
image sourced here.
Definition
Media art is a generic term in contemporary art, used for describing art which is, to a significant extent, related to or created in a technological medium. Media art refers to disciplines such as video art, electronic art, Internet art and to works related to telecommunications and mass media, including television, radio and telephone. Similar artistic concepts are intermedia and mixed media.
The term media art is mainly used to describe specific types of artworks which were created from the 1960s until present. The term itself has become widely used since the 1990s.
Media art poses museums and cultural institutions with notoriously difficult problems in terms of preservation and conservation, because the technological equipment and software used for media art projects become obsolete very quickly. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_art [Oct 2004]
New media art history
The origins of new media art can be traced to the moving photographic inventions of the late 19th Century such as the zoetrope (1834), the praxinoscope (1877) and Eadweard Muybridge's zoopraxiscope (1879). During the 1960s the divergence with the history of cinema came with the video art experiments of Nam June Paik, and multimedia performances of Fluxus. More recently, the term "new media" has become closely associated with the term Digital Art, and has converged with the history and theory of computer-based practises.
Some important influences on new media art have been the theories developed around hypertext, databases, and networks. Important thinkers in this regard have been Vannevar Bush and Theodor Nelson with important contributions from the literary works of Jorge Luis Borges, Italo Calvino, Julio Cortázar and Douglas Cooper. These elements have been especially revolutionary for the field of narrative and anti-narrative studies, leading explorations into areas such as non-linear and interactive narratives. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New media art [Jan 2005]
Forerunners
These text excerpts documented online in «Media Art Net» can be read as the first formulation of the thematic focal points that are reflected in other texts included in this media art overview. In detail, the following can be said to be the forerunners as far as the following texts are concerned:* Luigi Russolo, «The Art of Noise,» 1913, cf. text on «Audio Art» * Walter Ruttmann, «Malerei mit Zeit,» circa 1919–20, cf. text on «Technological Constructions of Space–Time» * Bertolt Brecht, «Radio as Communication Apparatus,» 1930; cf. for audience participation the texts on «Interaction, Participation, Networking» and «Audio Art» * Dziga Vertov, «Cinema Pravda and Radio Pravda,» 1925; cf. for mass effect the text on «Television—Art or Anti-art?,» and for the globalization aspect the text on «Social Technologies.» * F.T.P. Marinetti, Pino Masata, «La Radia,» 1933; cf. for mass effect the text on «Television—Art or Anti-art?» * Velimir Khlebnikov, «The Radio of the Future,» 1921; cf. for telecommunications the text on «Interaction, Participation, Networking» * László Moholy-Nagy, «Das simultane oder Polykino,» 1927; cf. the text on «Immersion and Interaction.» * James Joyce, «Finnegans Wake,» 1938; cf. the text on «Virtual Narrations.» --http://www.medienkunstnetz.de/themes/overview_of_media_art/forerunners/3/ [Oct 2004]
Seventies
Since the 1970s, media art has become a category in itself, with a growing number of artists experimenting with technological means -- video art is the most well-known example here. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_art#History [Sept 2004]
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