Electronic art is a form of art that makes use 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 ...

. More broadly, it refers to

technology Technology is the application of knowledge to reach practical goals in a specifiable and Reproducibility, reproducible way. The word ''technology'' may also mean the product of such an endeavor. The use of technology is widely prevalent in me ...

and/or

. It is related to

information art Information art, which is also known as informatism or data art, is an emerging art form that is inspired by and principally incorporates data, computer science, information technology, artificial intelligence, and related data-driven fields. The ...

new media art New media art includes artworks designed and produced by means of electronic media technologies, comprising virtual art, computer graphics, computer animation, digital art, interactive art, sound art, Internet art, video games, robotics, 3D pri ...

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 ...

, digital art, interactive art, internet art, and

electronic music Electronic music is a genre of music that employs electronic musical instruments, digital instruments, or circuitry-based music technology in its creation. It includes both music made using electronic and electromechanical means ( electroa ...

. It is considered an outgrowth of conceptual art and

systems art Systems art is art influenced by cybernetics, and systems theory, that reflects on natural systems, social systems and social signs of the art world itself. Systems art emerged as part of the first wave of the conceptual art movement extended i ...

Background

The term ''electronic art'' is almost synonymous to

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 ...

and digital art. The latter two terms, and especially the term computer-generated art are mostly used for visual artworks generated by computers. However, electronic art has a much broader connotation, referring to artworks that include any type of electronic component, such as works in

music Music is generally defined as the art of arranging sound to create some combination of form, harmony, melody, rhythm or otherwise expressive content. Exact definitions of music vary considerably around the world, though it is an aspe ...

, dance,

architecture Architecture is the art and technique of designing and building, as distinguished from the skills associated with construction. It is both the process and the product of sketching, conceiving, planning, designing, and constructing building ...

and performance. It is an interdisciplinary field and so artists often collaborate with scientists and engineers when creating their works. The art historian of electronic art Edward A. Shanken works to document current and past experimental art with a focus on the intersection of art, science, and technology. Other writers on the topic of electronic art include

Frank Popper Frank Popper (17 April 1918 – 12 July 2020) was a Czech-born French-British historian of art and technology and Professor Emeritus of Aesthetics and the Science of Art at the University of Paris VIII. He was decorated with the medal of the L ...

Dominique Moulon Dominique Moulon (born 1962) is a historian of art and technology, art critic and curator, specializing in French digital art. He is the author of the books ''Art contemporain nouveaux médias'' and ''Art Beyond Digital''. Background Dominiqu ...

, Sarah Cook, and

Christiane Paul Christiane Paul (; born 8 March 1974 in Berlin-Pankow) is a German film, television and stage actress. Paul first worked as a model for magazines such as '' Bravo''. She was 17 when she obtained her first leading role in the film '. Prior to h ...

. Electronic art often features components of

interactivity Across the many fields concerned with interactivity, including information science, computer science, human-computer interaction, communication, and industrial design, there is little agreement over the meaning of the term "interactivity", but mo ...

.Paul, Christiane (2006). ''Digital Art'', pp. 8, 11. Thames & Hudson. Artists make use of technologies like 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, pub ...

computer network A computer network is a set of computers sharing resources located on or provided by network nodes. The computers use common communication protocols over digital interconnections to communicate with each other. These interconnections are ...

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 integrate ...

wearable technology Wearable technology is any technology that is designed to be used while worn. Common types of wearable technology include smartwatches and smartglasses. Wearable electronic devices are often close to or on the surface of the skin, where they detec ...

, digital painting,

wireless Wireless communication (or just wireless, when the context allows) is the transfer of information between two or more points without the use of an electrical conductor, optical fiber or other continuous guided medium for the transfer. The most ...

technology and

immersive virtual reality Immersion into virtual reality (VR) is a perception of being physically present in a non-physical world. The perception is created by surrounding the user of the VR system in images, sound or other stimuli that provide an engrossing total enviro ...

. As the technologies used to deliver works of electronic art become obsolete, electronic art faces serious issues around the challenge to preserve artwork beyond the time of its contemporary production. Currently, research projects are underway to improve the preservation and documentation of the fragile electronic arts heritage (see DOCAM - Documentation and Conservation of the Media Arts Heritage).

Art festivals that use the term "electronic art" in their name

* International Symposium for Electronic Art (ISEA), organized annually since 1988, international * Ars Electronica Symposium, organized yearly since 1979 by Ars Electronica in

Linz Linz ( , ; cs, Linec) is the capital of Upper Austria and third-largest city in Austria. In the north of the country, it is on the Danube south of the Czech border. In 2018, the population was 204,846. In 2009, it was a European Capital ...

, Austria * Dutch Electronic Art Festival (DEAF), organized yearly since 1994 by

V2 Institute for the Unstable Media V2_, Lab for the Unstable Media, founded in 1981, is an interdisciplinary center for art and media technology in Rotterdam, the Netherlands.Stephen Wilson, ''Information Arts: Intersections of Art, Science, and Technology'', MIT Press, 2002, p. 8 ...

Rotterdam Rotterdam ( , , , lit. ''The Dam on the River Rotte'') is the second largest city and municipality in the Netherlands. It is in the province of South Holland, part of the North Sea mouth of the Rhine–Meuse–Scheldt delta, via the ''"Ne ...

, the Netherlands *

Electronic Language International Festival The Festival Internacional de Linguagem Eletrônica (FILE; English: Electronic Language International Festival) is a New media art festival that usually takes place in three cities of Brazil: São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Porto Alegre and it has ...

(FILE) organized yearly since 2000 in

São Paulo São Paulo (, ; Portuguese for ' Saint Paul') is the most populous city in Brazil, and is the capital of the state of São Paulo, the most populous and wealthiest Brazilian state, located in the country's Southeast Region. Listed by the Ga ...

, Brazil *The Prix Ars Electronica, a major yearly award for several categories of electronic art

Artists

Notable artists working in electronic art include: *

Laurie Anderson Laurel Philips Anderson (born June 5, 1947), known as Laurie Anderson, is an American avant-garde artist, composer, musician, and film director whose work spans performance art, pop music, and multimedia projects. Initially trained in violin and ...

Roy Ascott Roy Ascott FRSA (born 26 October 1934) is a British artist, who works with cybernetics and telematics on an art he calls technoetic by focusing on the impact of digital and telecommunications networks on consciousness. Since the 1960s, Ascott ...

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 ...

* Maurizio Bolognini * Angie Bonino * Mez Breeze * Miguel Chevalier * Heiko Daxl *

Elizabeth Diller Elizabeth Diller, also known as Liz Diller, is an American architect and partner in Diller Scofidio + Renfro, which she co-founded in 1979. She is also an architecture professor at Princeton University. Life Elizabeth Diller was born in 1954 in ...

* David Em * Ken Feingold * Ingeborg Fülepp * Peter Gabriel * Pietro Grossi *

Genco Gulan Genco Gulan ( (born 1969 in Turkey) is a contemporary conceptual artist and theorist, who lives and works in Istanbul. His transmedia contextual work involves painting, found objects, new media, drawings, sculpture, photography, performance and ...

* Garnet Hertz * Perry Hoberman * Jodi (art collective) * Eduardo Kac *

Knowbotic Research Knowbotic Research is a German-Swiss electronic art group, established in 1991. Its members are Yvonne Wilhelm, Christian Hübler and Alexander Tuchacek. They hold a professorship for Art and Media at the University of the Arts in Zurich. History ...

* Marc Lee * George Legrady * Golan Levin * Liu Dao * Rafael Lozano-Hemmer *

Chico MacMurtrie Chico MacMurtrie was born in New Mexico in 1961. He has been awarded four grants from the National Endowment for the Arts for Interdisciplinary Artists. In 1990 he received the San Francisco Bay Guardian Goldie Award. In 1992 MacMurtrie formed ...

* Sergio Maltagliati * Jennifer & Kevin McCoy * Yucef Merhi *

Joseph Nechvatal Joseph Nechvatal (born January 15, 1951) is an American post-conceptual digital artist and art theoretician who creates computer-assisted paintings and computer animations, often using custom-created computer viruses. Life and work Joseph Ne ...

* Yves Netzhammer * Graham Nicholls * Simon Penny *

Melinda Rackham Melinda Rackham is an Australian artist, writer and curator. Education and early art Rackham studied sculpture and performance at the College of Fine Arts in Sydney, graduating in 1989 with the Sculpture and Alumni prizes. It was here she was ...

Martin Rev Martin Reverby, better known by his stage name Martin Rev, (born December 18, 1947) is an American musician and one half of the influential synth-punk band Suicide. Rev has also released several solo albums for a number of record labels, includi ...

* Ken Rinaldo *

David Rokeby David Rokeby (born in 1960 in Tillsonburg, Ontario) is an artist who has been making works of electronic, video and installation art since 1982. He lives with his wife, acclaimed pianist Eve Egoyan, and daughter, Viva Egoyan-Rokeby, in Toronto, ...

* Stefan Roloff * Lillian Schwartz * Ricardo Scofidio * Paul Sermon *

Scott Snibbe Scott Snibbe (born 1969 in New York City) is an interactive media artist, entrepreneur, and meditation instructor who is currently the host of A Skeptic's Path to Enlightenment meditation podcast. He has collaborated with other artists and musici ...

Michael Snow Michael Snow (born December 10, 1928) is a Canadian artist working in a range of media including film, installation, sculpture, photography, and music. His best-known films are '' Wavelength'' (1967) and '' La Région Centrale'' (1971), with the ...

Stelarc Stelarc (born Στέλιος Αρκαδίου ''Stelios Arcadiou'' in Limassol in 1946; legally changed his name in 1972) is a Cyprus-born Australian performance artist raised in the Melbourne suburb of Sunshine, whose works focus heavily on ...

* Survival Research Laboratories * Gianni Toti * Tamás Waliczky * Norman White

Notes

References

* Sarah J. Rogers (ed), ''Body Mécanique: Artistic Explorations of Digital Realms'', Columbus, Ohio, Wexner Center for the Arts, The

Ohio State University The Ohio State University, commonly called Ohio State or OSU, is a public land-grant research university in Columbus, Ohio. A member of the University System of Ohio, it has been ranked by major institutional rankings among the best publ ...

, 1998 *

Christine Buci-Glucksmann Christine Buci-Glucksmann is a French philosopher and Professor Emeritus from University of Paris VIII specializing in the aesthetics of the Baroque and Japan, and computer art. Her best-known work in English is ''Baroque Reason: The Aesthetics o ...

, "L’art à l’époque du virtuel", in Frontières esthétiques de l’art, Arts 8, Paris: L’Harmattan, 2004 * Frank Popper, Art of the Electronic Age, Thames & Hudson, 1997 * Joline Blais and

Jon Ippolito Jon Ippolito is an artist, educator, new media scholar, and former curator at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. Ippolito studied astrophysics and painting in the early 1980s, then pursued Internet art in the 1990s. His works explore digitally indu ...

,
At the Edge of Art
', Thames & Hudson, 2006 * Oliver Grau (2003). ''Virtual Art: From Illusion to Immersion'' (Leonardo Book Series). Cambridge, Massachusetts:

MIT Press The MIT Press is a university press affiliated with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, Massachusetts (United States). It was established in 1962. History The MIT Press traces its origins back to 1926 when MIT publish ...

/Leonardo Books. . * Oliver Grau (Ed.): ''Media Art Histories'',

/Leonardo Books, 2007. *

, ''Digital Art'', Thames & Hudson *

Donald Kuspit Donald Kuspit (born March 26, 1935) is an American art critic and poet, known for his practice of psychoanalytic art criticism. He has published on the subjects of avant-garde aesthetics, postmodernism, modern art, and conceptual art. Educatio ...

"Del Atre Analogico al Arte Digital" in Arte Digital Y Videoarte, Kuspit, D. ed., Consorcio del Circulo de Bellas Artes, Madrid, pp. 33–34 & 3 color images * Lopes, Dominic McIver. (2009)
''A Philosophy of Computer Art.''
London:

Routledge Routledge () is a British multinational publisher. It was founded in 1836 by George Routledge, and specialises in providing academic books, journals and online resources in the fields of the humanities, behavioural science, education, law ...

* Robert C. Morgan ''Digital Hybrids'', '' art press'' volume #255 * Frank Popper
From Technological to Virtual Art
MIT Press/Leonardo Books, 2007 * Alan Liu ''The Laws of Cool'', Chicago Press, pp. 331–336 & 485-486 * Bruce Wands ''Art of the Digital Age'', London: Thames & Hudson *

br>''The Matrix of Sensations''
''VI: Digital Artists and the New Creative Renaissance'' * Frank Popper, ''Origins and Development of Kinetic Art'', Studio Vista and New York Graphic Society, 1968 * Frank Popper, ''Die Kinetische Kunst-Licht und Bewegung, Umweltkunst und Aktion'', Dumont Schauberg, 1975 * Frank Popper, ''Le Déclin de l'objet'', Le Chêne, 1975 *

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 computin ...

(2001). eonardo Books, ''The Language of New Media''Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press/Leonardo Books. * Dick Higgins, ‘Intermedia’ (1966), reprinted in Donna De Salvo (ed.), Open Systems Rethinking Art c. 1970, London: Tate Publishing, 2005 *

Nicolas Bourriaud Nicolas Bourriaud (born 1965) is a curator and art critic, who has curated a great number of exhibitions and biennials all over the world. With Jérôme Sans, Bourriaud cofounded the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, where he served as codirector from ...

, (1997) Relational Aesthetics, Dijon: Les Presses du Réel, 2002, orig. 1997 * Rainer Usselmann, (200
"''The Dilemma of Media Art: Cybernetic Serendipity at the ICA London''"
, Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press/Leonardo Journal - Volume 36, Number 5, October 2003, pp. 389–396 * Charlie Gere, (2002) Digital Culture, Reaktion *

, Ten Key Texts on Digital Art: 1970-2000 Leonardo
Volume 35, Number 5, October 2002
pp. 567–569 * Paul Brown, Charlie Gere, Nicholas Lambert,

Catherine Mason Catherine Mason (born in Australia) is an art historian and author who specialises in digital art, especially computer art. Biography Mason was born in Australia, brought up in the United States, and educated in the United Kingdom. In the lat ...

(editors) (2006) White Heat Cold Logic: British Computer Art 1960–1980, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press * Mark Hansen, (2004) New Philosophy for New Media, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press * Frank Popper, Art—Action and Participation,

New York University Press New York University Press (or NYU Press) is a university press that is part of New York University. History NYU Press was founded in 1916 by the then chancellor of NYU, Elmer Ellsworth Brown. Directors * Arthur Huntington Nason, 1916–1 ...

, 1975 * Frank Popper, Origins and Development of Kinetic Art, New York Graphic Society/Studio Vista, 1968 * Frank Popper, ''Réflexions sur l'exil, l'art et l'Europe : Entretiens avec Aline Dallier'', Klincksieck, 1998 * Yucef Merhi, Artists' Fellowship - 2009 Digital/Electronic Arts, New York Foundation for the Arts, 2009 * Margot Lovejoy ''Digital Currents: Art in the Electronic Age'', Routledge, 2004 * Frank Popper ''Ecrire sur l'art : De l'art optique a l'art virtuel'', L'Harmattan, 2007 *

Fred Forest Fred Forest (born July 6, 1933 in Mascara, French Algeria) is a French new media artist making use of video, photography, the printed press, mail, radio, television, telephone, telematics, and the internet in a wide range of installations, perform ...

''Art et Internet'', Editions Cercle D'Art / Imaginaire Mode d'Emploi * Edward A. Shanken Selected Writings on Art and Technology http://artexetra.com * Edward A. Shanken ''Art and Electronic Media''. London: Phaidon, 2009. * Norman M. Klein, "Spaces Between: Traveling Through Bleeds, Apertures, and Wormholes Inside the Database Novel," in ''Third Person: Authoring and Exploring Vast Narratives,'' Pat Harrigan and Noah Wardip-Fruin (eds), Cambridge, A: MIT Press, 2009.

External links

Stephen Wilson: extensive list of "information arts" links

list of prominent digital artists
New Media Art book (wiki edition)
{{Digital art Computer art Electronics and society Robotic art Visual arts genres Contemporary art Digital art Postmodern art Conceptual art