New Media Art

Overview

New media art is a broad range of artwork produced since the 1980s in which artists, using digital technologies, have reimagined traditional notions of art. In turn, these artists have expanded long-held conceptions about art itself and the nature of the relationship between the artist and the observer of the artwork and, ultimately, the far more complex relationship between the observer and the artwork

With digital technology, the artist has been liberated to recreate museum space itself, defy the limitations of traditional museums; the artist actually invites observers into the experience of an art piece and thus shapes a community of observers actually experiencing an artwork together in real-time. In barely thirty years, new media art has emerged as its own genre and its own discipline with its own theoreticians and practitioners (and critics) largely because of the virtually endless possibilities of creativity by the application of a variety of ever-evolving technologies including animation, music and sound effects, pixels and gifs, lasers, motion sculpture, robotics, 3D and even 4D effects, and computer graphics and broad-scale field projections, all to create for observers an immersive, interactive effect that actually transforms the experience of art into a social and very public event. Indeed, for millennials, the generation born in the last two decades of the twentieth century and, hence, the first generation born entirely within the computer era and thus comfortable and at home within the conceptual fields of digital environments, new media art has become a signature artistic discipline of the new millennium, its impact registering not only in art museums and galleries but also in other types of museums, including natural science museums, children's museums, technology museums, and public spaces such as zoos, aviaries, and historic sites.

In addition, as Ursyn (2015) shows, the conceptual premise of new media art has been applied to classrooms where lessons can be presented using a variety of media in an effort to appeal to students comfortable with technology and restless with a more traditional classroom presentation forum. In each case, new media art and its premises create often startling new possibilities for how to use technology to experience rather than see, to feel rather than observe, and to engage rather than visit.

Indeed, new media art itself has given museum directors and gallery curators the opportunity to reinvent art itself through the embrace of digital technologies, seeing such technology as a way to breathe new life into inherited conceptions of what is supposed to happen in public spaces such as a gallery. "The potentially interactive and participatory nature of new media [art] projects—which allow people to navigate, assemble or contribute to an artwork in a way that goes beyond the interactive, mental event of experiencing it—runs counter to the basic rule of museums, 'Please do not touch the art'" (Paul, 2012).

At the heart of new media art is the question of what actually makes art art. For close to two millennia, the answer was relatively simple. Art was a thing, a processed and pre-prepared artifact that was hanging on the wall or positioned on a shelf or standing on a floor or maybe in a garden. Art was an expression of a singular person's abstract thoughts, ideas, perspectives into any one of a comparatively small number of media: paintings (and the variety of media from pencils sketches to wall murals); sculptures (again with a variety of media and materials available); and, since the middle of the nineteenth century, photographs and, later, film. And for those interested in the experience of art, that experience was largely passive and almost by definition isolating. A visitor to a gallery stood respectfully, observed quietly, nodded lightly, and moved on. These museums were de facto about creating and sustaining distances, barriers obviously between the artifact and the visitor/observer (strolling security guards ensured that); between and among the observers themselves; and ultimately between the visitor and the artist who created the work, who stays necessarily apart and largely absent.

For example, Winslow Homer's iconic Northeaster, painted in 1895, hangs in the prestigious Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. The rough brushstrokes try to capture the roughness, the angry surge, and heavy veil of mist off the waves breaking on some black rocks—but the picture itself is static and the gallery hall itself quiet, safe, and well-lighted. The viewer, despite the tumultuous and dangerous scene depicted, stays fixed, posed, just staring meaningfully at the painting. Such diligent study, sometimes for several minutes at a time, was long defined as the special province of those who really understood art. Or perhaps the observer had purchased an audio tour of the museum and through headphones was fed information about Homer and the painting. Whatever aesthetic experience any piece might occasion was largely internalized save perhaps for quiet whispered conversation with other patrons. The museum feeling was long held to be reverential, decorous, dignified, like stepping into a cathedral or a mausoleum, stepping into a guarded space apart from the chaos and noise of the world outside the museum doors. Whatever the emotional tenor of the piece, joyous or grieving, comic or tragic; whatever the subject; whatever the artist's attitude, the museum itself stayed cathedral quiet and, visit to visit, the museum space itself stayed largely static, indeed visitors had no expectation of evolution, change, or novelty, save for the occasional special exhibits or the occasional relocating of works to workshops for restoration or periodic conservation.

Millennial artists who came of age under the tectonic influence of the Internet, theme parks, and video games, wondered what would happen if a museum became an activity, if an artwork broke free of the ornate frames, stepped off the pedestals, and shattered the glass cases and became a medium that moved, an energy behind, under, around, and over visitors. Further, new media artists proposed that visitors become participants in the artwork. Art can create a conversation between the artist and the observer. New media art redefines the concept of a gallery, the perception process of art, the notion of a collection and it undermines the long-held faith that artwork offered a singular instance of stability and permanence in a world otherwise prone to the chaos of change. The Mona Lisa, after all, would always be the Mona Lisa; Michelangelo's David would always be Michelangelo's David; and Matthew Brady's stark photographs of Civil War battlefields would themselves endure generation to generation, unchanged and unchangeable.

Applications

With new media art, however, the artist is challenged to conceptualize a work of art that can now participate in motion, can appeal to multiple senses, can surround an observer, can change with every viewing. Art breaks free of the single plane of expression and artists can reconfigure the space within which art can actually happen. Thus, in many critical ways the theme of new media art is art and technology and the relationship between technology and society, a self-reflexive exploration of the very identity of art in a digital age. Like traditional painters who, in the mid-nineteenth century, were introduced to the technology of the camera, or photographers exposed in the early decades of the twentieth century to motion pictures, new media artists explore an artistic revolution the extent and achievement of which can only be guessed. Thus, new media can not only reshape the conceptions of art but can as well introduce technology into a realm where, tradition has long believed, it has no place. In turn art, by defying the frame and leaping off the pedestal, the art restores its own relevancy.

An artist who envisions an artwork and shares its conceptual basis with digital engineers and computer software developers can create an entirely original piece that can be staged and experience. If a new media artist, for example, were inspired to produce a seascape, the choices for such presentation are far wider and far more complex than were available to Winslow Homer. Although not interested in trying to actually recreate or restage the feel of a surging sea (although such literal presentations might work in a natural science museum or in an aquarium), the new media artist would focus, rather, on themes or motifs to develop the project. For example, the artist might want to capture the chaotic power of nature, the loneliness of humanity within such a forbidding landscape, and the dark beauty of the sea itself. Rather than a painting hanging on a wall, the new media art work might be a small darkened gallery room itself bathed in urgent, moving blues and greens colors surge on the walls. The room moves, alters, changes. On a large screen television in the corner plays a black and wide video of an elderly woman playing a harp, that music creates a haunting ambient musical environment. In addition, observers hear an occasional wind effect. On two other screens, creature-shadows randomly pass in stylized animation sequences. In the corners are strands of seaweed-like objects, mechanimatronic figures that seem to wave as if being pushed and pulled by the urgent rhythms of the sea itself. Positioned mirrors create at once depth and emptiness to the galley space. Overhead the ceiling would be illuminated in yellows that, with the 3-D glasses the visitors can wear, create a disconcerting sensation of being far underwater and looking up to an inaccessible sky-world. The room is at once inviting and terrifying, expansive and claustrophobic. With computer graphics and digital software applications, the seascape envelops the observers, immerses them in a world they actually visit and feel. The media art site invites them to pause, to linger, not only to think about the sea and its powerful metaphoric presence but rather to experience the artist's theoretical concept of the sea, now realized in a complex arrangement of moving shapes, colors, odors, sounds, music, and animation.

The creative capacities of digital technologies offer artists committed to exploring new media as a way to realize their ideas into forms of virtually unlimited expression. As artists grow progressively bolder and more daring in their conceptual presentations, the creative sites in turn become progressively more expensive and elaborate. Museums and galleries, many already struggling to maintain operating budgets, may find financially supporting the new media art as untenable. These are displays that unlike traditional paintings and sculpture are often designed to be updated, even temporary and ephemeral. However, many museums have found that immersive shows focusing on specific artists' work--Vincent van Gogh, for example--draw sell-out crowds. Early successes have prompted development of new immersive shows and entire galleries devoted to immersive exhibitions.

Issues

Many of the most controversial new media artworks of the last decade have been developed in response to incendiary current events. New media art has, for instance, been an element of the Black Lives Matter initiative, the national debate over guns, the ongoing debate over the implications of climate change, the #MeToo movement and its focus on sexual harassment against women in the workplace, in addition to a variety of hot button issues in both politics and religion. Such topical treatments imbue new media art with a compelling urgency, but museums and galleries may find funding the art sites challenging when such art is designed not be a permanent part of a collection. In addition, those new media artworks that can find a place within a museum's permanent collection are often updated, their effects and animation revisited by the artist as a way to keep the art fresh and organic—such updating, often involving investment in newer technologies, can prove a challenge to fund.

Of course, critics have argued the new media art can easily conflate originality with simple novelty and serious conceptuals with slick gimmicks and flashy effects. As Shanken (2016) points out, the new media art poses a challenge to traditional art and traditional museums. Does new media art "dumb down" the intellectual experience of art itself, does its choreographed razzle and dazzle trivialize the work of more traditional forms and appeal to the lowest common denominator, thus alienating those who seek art for its subtler messages, its themes, its complexities, and its emotional impact, turning gallery space into pseudo-theme parks and elaborate video games. Advocates of the new genre dismiss such worries: art, they say, should always seek to engage, enthrall, delight, and connect. Charles Gere, a curator at London's prestigious Tate Gallery, suggests that traditional art museums will become "performative," rather than "constantive." That is, organic and evolving rather than static and stable. In the end, however, new art media may serve to redefine not merely art but the very concept of a museum. Indeed, new generation artists intrigued by the potential to reach a far vaster audience through social media and the archival potential of YouTube through the vehicle of phones and other handheld devices have sought to create new media artwork that can be translated through such media. Instead of traveling to a museum or gallery, the visitor can now be an observer, participating in the artwork anywhere, and anyplace becomes a museum-site. This may be the boldest promise of the new media art movement. By animating art, by reconceiving the relationship between art and the space where it exists, by expanding the range of effects and media available to a creative artist, the new media art liberates art itself and has moved toward unprecedented democratization, art that is as stunning as it is immediate, as engaging as it is provoking.

Bibliography

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Jagodzinski, J. (2015). The challenges of art education in designer capitalism: Collaborative practices in the (new media) arts. International Journal of Art & Design Education, 34(3), 282–295. doi: 10.1111/jade.12088

Maj, A. (2017). Przechwytywanie danych: Sztuka nowych mediów i cyberaktywizm jako narzędzia oporu wobec kontroli systemów inteligentnych. Wybrane strategie komunikacyjne. Transformacje, 1/2(92/93), 377–394. Retrieved May 23, 2018 from EBSCO Online Database Academic Source Ultimate. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=asn&AN=126478337&site=ehost-live

Paul, C. (2012). The myth of immateriality: Presenting new media art. Technoetic Arts: A Journal of Speculative Research, 10(1–2). Retrieved May 23, 2018 from EBSCO Online Database Academic Source Ultimate. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=asn&AN=86198282&site=ehost-live

Post, C. c. (2017). Preservation practices of new media artists. Journal of Documentation, 73(4), 716–732. doi: 10.1108/JD-09-2016-0116

Shanken, E. (2016). Contemporary art and new media art: Digital divide vs. hybrid discourse. In C. Paul (Ed.), A Companion to Digital Art. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell.

Ursyn, A. (2015). Criticism and assessment applied to new media art. Teaching Artists Journal, 13(4), 204–217. Retrieved May 23, 2018 from EBSCO Online Database Academic Source Ultimate. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=eue&AN=109309875&site=ehost-live

Wei, S.X. (2021, Mar. 25). What media arts can teach us about technology and its use. Research Outreach. researchoutreach.org/articles/what-media-arts-teach-about-technology-use/

Wise, C. (2023, December 27). Immersive exhibitions are changing the way people consume art. Public Broadcasting Service. www.pbs.org/newshour/show/immersive-exhibitions-are-changing-the-way-people-consume-art