Eduardo Kac - Genesis - Ars Electronica 99

New media art includes artworks designed and produced by means 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 ele ...

technologies. It comprises virtual art,

computer graphics Computer graphics deals with generating images and art with the aid of computers. Computer graphics is a core technology in digital photography, film, video games, digital art, cell phone and computer displays, and many specialized applications. ...

computer animation Computer animation is the process used for digitally generating Film, moving images. The more general term computer-generated imagery (CGI) encompasses both still images and moving images, while computer animation refers to moving images. Virtu ...

digital art Digital art, or the digital arts, is artistic work that uses Digital electronics, digital technology as part of the creative or presentational process. It can also refer to computational art that uses and engages with digital media. Since the 1960 ...

, interactive art,

sound art Sound art is an artistic activity in which sound is utilized as a primary Time-based media, time-based Artistic medium, medium or material. Like many genres of contemporary art, sound art may be interdisciplinary in nature, or be used in Cross-genr ...

, Internet art,

video games A video game or computer game is an electronic game that involves interaction with a user interface or input device (such as a joystick, game controller, controller, computer keyboard, keyboard, or motion sensing device) to generate visual fe ...

robotics Robotics is the interdisciplinary study and practice of the design, construction, operation, and use of robots. Within mechanical engineering, robotics is the design and construction of the physical structures of robots, while in computer s ...

3D printing 3D printing, or additive manufacturing, is the construction of a three-dimensional object from a CAD model or a digital 3D model. It can be done in a variety of processes in which material is deposited, joined or solidified under computer ...

, immersive installation and cyborg art. The term defines itself by the thereby created artwork, which differentiates itself from that deriving from conventional visual arts such as architecture,

painting Painting is a Visual arts, visual art, which is characterized by the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a solid surface (called "matrix" or "Support (art), support"). The medium is commonly applied to the base with ...

or sculpture. New media art has origins in the worlds of science, art, and performance. Some common themes found in new media art include

database In computing, a database is an organized collection of data or a type of data store based on the use of a database management system (DBMS), the software that interacts with end users, applications, and the database itself to capture and a ...

s, political and social activism,

Afrofuturism Afrofuturism is a cultural aesthetic, philosophy of science, and history that explores the intersection of the African diaspora culture with science and technology. It addresses themes and concerns of the African diaspora through technoculture ...

feminism Feminism is a range of socio-political movements and ideology, ideologies that aim to define and establish the political, economic, personal, and social gender equality, equality of the sexes. Feminism holds the position that modern soci ...

, and identity, a ubiquitous theme found throughout is the incorporation of new technology into the work. The emphasis on medium is a defining feature of much

contemporary art Contemporary art is a term used to describe the art of today, generally referring to art produced from the 1970s onwards. Contemporary artists work in a globally influenced, culturally diverse, and technologically advancing world. Their art is a ...

and many art schools and major universities now offer majors in "New Genres" or "New Media" and a growing number of graduate programs have emerged internationally. New media art may involve degrees of interaction between artwork and observer or between the artist and the public, as is the case in

performance art Performance art is an artwork or art exhibition created through actions executed by the artist or other participants. It may be witnessed live or through documentation, spontaneously developed or written, and is traditionally presented to a pu ...

. Several theorists and curators have noted that such forms of interaction do not distinguish new media art but rather serve as a common ground that has parallels in other strands of contemporary art practice. Such insights emphasize the forms of cultural practice that arise concurrently with emerging technological platforms, and question the focus on technological media per se. New media art involves complex curation and preservation practices that make collecting, installing, and exhibiting the works harder than most other mediums. Many cultural centers and museums have been established to cater to the advanced needs of new media art.

History

The origins of new media art can be traced to the moving image inventions of the 19th century such as the

phenakistiscope The phenakistiscope (also known by the spellings phénakisticope or phenakistoscope) was the first widespread animation device that created a fluid illusion of motion. Dubbed and ('stroboscopic discs') by its inventors, it has been known unde ...

(1833), the

praxinoscope The praxinoscope is an animation device, the successor to the zoetrope. It was invented in France in 1877 by Charles-Émile Reynaud. Like the zoetrope, it uses a strip of pictures placed around the inner surface of a spinning cylinder. The pr ...

(1877) and Eadweard Muybridge's

zoopraxiscope The zoopraxiscope (initially named ''zoographiscope'' and ''zoogyroscope'') is an early device for displaying moving images and is considered an important predecessor of the movie projector. It was conceived by photographic pioneer Eadweard ...

(1879). From the 1900s through the 1960s, various forms of kinetic and light art, from

Thomas Wilfred Thomas Wilfred (June 18, 1889 in Naestved, Denmark – August 15, 1968 in Nyack, New York), born Richard Edgar Løvstrøm, was a visual artist, inventor, designer and musician. He is best known for his art of light, which he named '' lumia'', and ...

's 'Lumia' (1919) and 'Clavilux' light organs to

Jean Tinguely Jean Tinguely (22 May 1925 – 30 August 1991) was a Swiss sculptor best known for his kinetic art sculptural machines (known officially as Métamatics) that extended the Dada tradition into the later part of the 20th century.Chilvers, Ian; Gl ...

's self-destructing sculpture ''

Homage to New York ''Homage to New York'' was a 1960 kinetic artwork and performance by Jean Tinguely. Description ''Homage to New York'' was a kinetic artwork composed of found mechanical parts including multiple bicycle wheels, a weather balloon, a piano, ...

'' (1960) can be seen as progenitors of new media art. Steve Dixon in his book ''Digital Performance: New Technologies in Theatre, Dance and Performance Art'' argues that the early twentieth century

avant-garde In the arts and literature, the term ''avant-garde'' ( meaning or ) identifies an experimental genre or work of art, and the artist who created it, which usually is aesthetically innovative, whilst initially being ideologically unacceptable ...

art movement

Futurism Futurism ( ) was an Art movement, artistic and social movement that originated in Italy, and to a lesser extent in other countries, in the early 20th century. It emphasized dynamism, speed, technology, youth, violence, and objects such as the ...

was the birthplace of the merging of technology and performance art. Some early examples of performance artists who experimented with then state-of-the-art lighting, film, and projection include dancers Loïe Fuller and Valentine de Saint-Point. Cartoonist

Winsor McCay Zenas Winsor McCay ( – July 26, 1934) was an American cartoonist and animator. He is best known for the comic strip ''Little Nemo'' (1905–1914; 1924–1927) and the animated film ''Gertie the Dinosaur'' (1914). For contractual reasons, he w ...

performed in sync with an animated Gertie the Dinosaur on tour in 1914. By the 1920s many

Cabaret Cabaret is a form of theatrical entertainment featuring music song, dance, recitation, or drama. The performance venue might be a pub, casino, hotel, restaurant, or nightclub with a stage for performances. The audience, often dining or drinking, ...

acts began incorporating film projection into performances.

Robert Rauschenberg Milton Ernest "Robert" or "Bob" Rauschenberg (October 22, 1925 – May 12, 2008) was an American painter and graphic artist whose early works anticipated the Pop art movement. Rauschenberg is well known for his Combine painting, Combines (1954� ...

's piece ''Broadcast'' (1959), composed of three interactive re-tunable radios and a painting, is considered one of the first examples of interactive art. German artist Wolf Vostell experimented with television sets in his (1958) installation TV De-collages. Vostell's work influenced

Nam June Paik Nam June Paik (; July 20, 1932 – January 29, 2006) was a South Korean artist. He worked with a variety of media and is considered to be the founder of video art. He is credited with the first use (1974) of the term "electronic super highway" ...

, who created sculptural installations featuring hundreds of television sets that displayed distorted and abstract footage. Beginning in Chicago during the 1970s, there was a surge of artists experimenting with video art and combining recent computer technology with their traditional mediums, including sculpture, photography, and graphic design. Many of the artists involved were grad students at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, including Kate Horsfield and Lyn Blumenthal, who co-founded the Video Data Bank in 1976. Another artists involved was Donna Cox, she collaborated with mathematician George Francis and computer scientist Ray Idaszak on the project ''Venus in Time'' which depicted mathematical data as 3D digital sculptures named for their similarities to

Paleolithic The Paleolithic or Palaeolithic ( years ago) ( ), also called the Old Stone Age (), is a period in human prehistory that is distinguished by the original development of stone tools, and which represents almost the entire period of human prehist ...

Venus statues. In 1982 artist Ellen Sandor and her team called (art)n Laboratory created the medium called PHSCologram, which stands for photography, holography, sculpture, and computer graphics. Her visualization of the AIDS virus was depicted on the cover of IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications in November 1988. At the

University of Illinois The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC, U of I, Illinois, or University of Illinois) is a public university, public land-grant university, land-grant research university in the Champaign–Urbana metropolitan area, Illinois, United ...

in 1989, members of the Electronic Visualization Laboratory Carolina Cruz-Neira, Thomas DeFanti, and Daniel J. Sandin collaborated to create what is known as

CAVE Caves or caverns are natural voids under the Earth's Planetary surface, surface. Caves often form by the weathering of rock and often extend deep underground. Exogene caves are smaller openings that extend a relatively short distance undergrou ...

or Cave Automatic Virtual Environment an early virtual reality immersion using rear projection. In 1983,

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

introduced the concept of "distributed authorship" in his worldwide telematic project La Plissure du Texte for Frank Popper's "Electra" at the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris. The development of computer graphics at the end of the 1980s and real time technologies in the 1990s combined with the spreading of the Web and the Internet favored the emergence of new and various forms of interactive art by Ken Feingold,

Lynn Hershman Leeson Lynn Hershman Leeson (née Lynn Lester Hershman; born June 17, 1941) is an American multimedia artist and filmmaker. Her work with technology and in media-based practices is credited with helping to legitimize digital art forms. Her interests inc ...

, David Rokeby, Ken Rinaldo,

Perry Hoberman Perry Hoberman (born 1954), is an installation artist who has worked extensively with machines and media. His career has included stints with Laurie Anderson and the USC Interactive Media Division. He has taught at the Cooper Union School of ...

, Tamas Waliczky; telematic art by

, Paul Sermon, Michael Bielický; Internet art by

Vuk Ćosić Vuk Ćosić ( sr-Cyrl, Вук Ћосић; born 31 July 1966) is a Slovenian contemporary artist associated with the net.art movement. Active in politics, literature and art, Ćosić has exhibited, published, and been active since 1994. He is well ...

, Jodi; virtual and immersive art by Jeffrey Shaw, Maurice Benayoun, Monika Fleischmann, and large scale urban installation by Rafael Lozano-Hemmer. In Geneva, the

Centre pour l'Image Contemporaine The Centre pour l'Image Contemporaine or CIC was a contemporary art exhibition centre in Geneva, Switzerland. CIC was established in 1985 to organize events and exhibitions of images using new technologies such as video, multimedia, and the Internet ...

or CIC coproduced with

Centre Georges Pompidou The Centre Pompidou (), more fully the (), also known as the Pompidou Centre in English and colloquially as Beaubourg, is a building complex in Paris, France. It was designed in the style of high-tech architecture by the architectural team of ...

from Paris and the Museum Ludwig in Cologne the first internet video archive of new media art. Programmed Machines installation by Maurizio Bolognini

Programmed Machines installation by Maurizio Bolognini

Simultaneously advances in biotechnology have also allowed artists like

Eduardo Kac Eduardo Kac (born July 3, 1962) is a Brazilian and American contemporary artist whose portfolio encompasses various forms of art including performance art, poetry, holography, interactive art, digital and online art, and BioArt. Recognized for h ...

to begin exploring DNA and genetics as a new art medium. Influences on new media art have been the theories developed around interaction,

hypertext Hypertext is E-text, text displayed on a computer display or other electronic devices with references (hyperlinks) to other text that the reader can immediately access. Hypertext documents are interconnected by hyperlinks, which are typic ...

, databases, and

networks Network, networking and networked may refer to: Science and technology * Network theory, the study of graphs as a representation of relations between discrete objects * Network science, an academic field that studies complex networks Mathematics ...

. Important thinkers in this regard have been

Vannevar Bush Vannevar Bush ( ; March 11, 1890 – June 28, 1974) was an American engineer, inventor and science administrator, who during World War II, World War II headed the U.S. Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD), through which almo ...

and Theodor Nelson, whereas comparable ideas can be found in the literary works of

Jorge Luis Borges Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges Acevedo ( ; ; 24 August 1899 – 14 June 1986) was an Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator regarded as a key figure in Spanish literature, Spanish-language and international literatur ...

Italo Calvino Italo Calvino (, ; ;. RAI (circa 1970), retrieved 25 October 2012. 15 October 1923 – 19 September 1985) was an Italian novelist and short story writer. His best-known works include the ''Our Ancestors'' trilogy (1952–1959), the '' Cosm ...

, and Julio Cortázar.

Themes

In the book ''New Media Art'', Mark Tribe and Reena Jana named several themes that contemporary new media art addresses, including

computer art Computer art is art in which computers play a role in the 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 traditio ...

collaboration Collaboration (from Latin ''com-'' "with" + ''laborare'' "to labor", "to work") is the process of two or more people, entities or organizations working together to complete a task or achieve a goal. Collaboration is similar to cooperation. The ...

, identity, appropriation, open sourcing,

telepresence Telepresence is the appearance or sensation of a person being present at a place other than their true location, via telerobotics or video. Telepresence requires that the users' senses interact with specific stimuli in order to provide the feeli ...

, surveillance, corporate parody, as well as intervention and

hacktivism Hacktivism (or hactivism; a portmanteau of ''hack'' and ''activism''), is the use of computer-based techniques such as hacking as a form of civil disobedience to promote a political agenda or social change. A form of Internet activism with roots ...

. In the book ''Postdigitale'', Maurizio Bolognini suggested that new media artists have one common denominator, which is a self-referential relationship with the new technologies, the result of finding oneself inside an epoch-making transformation determined by technological development. New media art does not appear as a set of homogeneous practices, but as a complex field converging around three main elements: 1) the art system, 2) scientific and industrial research, and 3) political-cultural media activism. There are significant differences between scientist-artists, activist-artists and technological artists closer to the art system, who not only have different training and technocultures, but have different artistic production. This should be taken into account in examining the several themes addressed by new media art. Non-linearity can be seen as an important topic to new media art by artists developing interactive, generative, collaborative, immersive artworks like Jeffrey Shaw or Maurice Benayoun who explored the term as an approach to looking at varying forms of digital projects where the content relays on the user's experience. This is a key concept since people acquired the notion that they were conditioned to view everything in a linear and clear-cut fashion. Now, art is stepping out of that form and allowing for people to build their own experiences with the piece. Non-linearity describes a project that escape from the conventional linear narrative coming from novels, theater plays and movies. Non-linear art usually requires audience participation or at least, the fact that the "visitor" is taken into consideration by the representation, altering the displayed content. The participatory aspect of new media art, which for some artists has become integral, emerged from

Allan Kaprow Allan Kaprow (August 23, 1927 – April 5, 2006) was an American performance artist, installation artist, painter, and assemblagist . He helped to develop the " Environment" and "Happening" in the late 1950s and 1960s, as well as their theory. ...

's ''Happenings'' and became with Internet, a significant component of contemporary art. The inter-connectivity and interactivity of the

internet The Internet (or internet) is the Global network, global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a internetworking, network of networks ...

, as well as the fight between corporate interests, governmental interests, and public interests that gave birth to the web today, inspire a lot of current new media art.

Databases

One of the key themes in new media art is to create visual views of databases. Pioneers in this area include Lisa Strausfeld, Martin Wattenberg and Alberto Frigo. From 2004 to 2014 George Legrady's piece "Making Visible the Invisible" displayed the normally unseen library metadata of items recently checked out at the

Seattle Public Library The Seattle Public Library (SPL) is the public library system serving the city of Seattle, Washington (state), Washington. Efforts to start a Seattle library had commenced as early as 1868, with the system eventually being established by the ci ...

on six LCD monitors behind the circulation desk. Database aesthetics holds at least two attractions to new media artists: formally, as a new variation on non-linear narratives; and politically as a means to subvert what is fast becoming a form of control and authority.

Political and social activism

Many new media art projects also work with themes like politics and social consciousness, allowing for social activism through the interactive nature of the media. New media art includes "explorations of code and user interface; interrogations of archives, databases, and networks; production via automated scraping, filtering, cloning, and recombinatory techniques; applications of user-generated content (UGC) layers; crowdsourcing ideas on social- media platforms; narrowcasting digital selves on "free" websites that claim copyright; and provocative performances that implicate audiences as participants".

Afrofuturism

is an interdisciplinary genre that explores the

African diaspora The African diaspora is the worldwide collection of communities descended from List of ethnic groups of Africa, people from Africa. The term most commonly refers to the descendants of the native West Africa, West and Central Africans who were ...

experience, predominantly in the United States, by deconstructing the past and imagining the future through the themes of technology, science fiction, and fantasy. Musician

Sun Ra Le Sony'r Ra (born Herman Poole Blount, May 22, 1914 – May 30, 1993), better known as Sun Ra, was an American jazz composer, bandleader, piano and synthesizer player, and poet known for his experimental music, "cosmic" philosophy, prolific ou ...

, believed to be one of the founders of Afrofuturism, thought a blend of technology and music could help humanity overcome the ills of society. His band, The Sun Ra Arkestra, combined traditional Jazz with sound and performance art and were among the first musicians to perform with a synthesizer. The twenty-first century has seen a resurgence of Afrofuturism aesthetics and themes with artists and cooperation's like Jessi Jumanji and Black Quantum Futurism and art educational centers like Black Space in Durham, North Carolina.

Feminism and the female experience

Japanese artist

Mariko Mori is a Japanese multidisciplinary artist. She is known for her photographs and videos of her hybridized future self, often presented in various guises and featuring traditional Japanese motifs. Her work often explores themes of technology, spiritu ...

's multimedia installation piece ''Wave UFO'' (1999–2003) sought to examine the science and perceptions behind the study of consciousness and neuroscience. Exploring the ways that these fields undertake research in a materially reductionist manner. Mori's work emphasized the need for these fields to become more holistic and incorporate insights and understanding of the world from philosophy and the humanities. Swiss artist Pipilotti Rist's (2008) immersive video installation ''Pour Your Body Out'' explores the dichotomy of beauty and the grotesque in the natural world and their relation to the female experience. The large-scale 360-degree installation featured breast-shaped projectors and circular pink pillows that invited viewers to relax and immerse themselves in the vibrant colors, psychedelic music, and partake in meditation and yoga. American filmmaker and artist

explores in her films the themes of identity, technology and the erasure of women's roles and contributions to technology. Her (1999) film Conceiving Ada depicts a computer scientist and new media artist named Emmy as she attempts and succeeds at creating a way to communicate through cyberspace with

Ada Lovelace Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace (''née'' Byron; 10 December 1815 – 27 November 1852), also known as Ada Lovelace, was an English mathematician and writer chiefly known for her work on Charles Babbage's proposed mechanical general-pur ...

, an Englishwoman who created the first computer program in the 1840s via a form of artificial intelligence.

Identity

With its roots in outsider art, New Media has been an ideal medium for an artist to explore the topics of identity and representation. In Canada, Indigenous multidisciplinary artists like Cheryl L'Hirondelle and

Kent Monkman Kent Monkman (born 13 November 1965) is a First Nations in Canada, First Nations artist of Cree ancestry. He is a member of the Fisher River Cree Nation, Fisher River nation situated in Manitoba's Interlake Region. Monkman lives and works betwe ...

have incorporated themes about gender, identity, activism, and colonization in their work. Monkman, a Cree artist, performs and appears as their alter ego Miss Chief Eagle Testickle, in film, photography, painting, installation, and performance art. Monkman describes Miss Chief as a representation of a

two-spirit ''Two-spirit'' (also known as ''two spirit'' or occasionally ''twospirited'', or abbreviated as ''2S'' or ''2E'', especially in Canada) is a umbrella term used by some Indigenous North Americans to describe Native people who fulfill a trad ...

or non-binary persona that does not fall under the traditional description of drag.

Future of new media art

The emergence of

has introduced a new bridge to new media art, joining the virtual and the physical worlds. The rise of this technology has allowed artists to blend the computational base of new media art with the traditional physical form of sculpture. A pioneer in this field was artist

Jonty Hurwitz Jonty Hurwitz (born 2 September 1969 in Johannesburg) is a British South African artist, engineer and entrepreneur. Hurwitz creates scientifically inspired artworks and Anamorphosis, anamorphic sculptures. He is recognised for the smallest hum ...

who created the first known anamorphosis sculpture using this technique.

Longevity

As the technologies used to deliver works of new media art such as

film A film, also known as a movie or motion picture, is a work of visual art that simulates experiences and otherwise communicates ideas, stories, perceptions, emotions, or atmosphere through the use of moving images that are generally, sinc ...

, tapes,

web browser A web browser, often shortened to browser, is an application for accessing websites. When a user requests a web page from a particular website, the browser retrieves its files from a web server and then displays the page on the user's scr ...

software Software consists of computer programs that instruct the Execution (computing), execution of a computer. Software also includes design documents and specifications. The history of software is closely tied to the development of digital comput ...

and

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware and software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ...

s become obsolete, New Media art faces serious issues around the challenge to preserve artwork beyond the time of its contemporary production. Currently, research projects into

New media art preservation The conservation and restoration of new media art is the study and practice of techniques for sustaining new media art created using from materials such as digital, biological, performative, and other variable media. New media art runs a unique ri ...

are underway to improve the preservation and documentation of the fragile media arts heritage (see DOCAM – Documentation and Conservation of the Media Arts Heritage). Methods of preservation exist, including the translation of a work from an obsolete medium into a related new medium, the digital archiving of media (see the Rhizome ArtBase, which holds over 2000 works, and the

Internet Archive The Internet Archive is an American 501(c)(3) organization, non-profit organization founded in 1996 by Brewster Kahle that runs a digital library website, archive.org. It provides free access to collections of digitized media including web ...

), and the use of

emulators In computing, an emulator is hardware or software that enables one computer system (called the ''host'') to behave like another computer system (called the ''guest''). An emulator typically enables the host system to run software or use perip ...

to preserve work dependent on obsolete software or operating system environments. Around the mid-90s, the issue of storing works in digital form became a concern. Digital art such as moving images, multimedia, interactive programs, and computer-generated art has different properties than physical artwork such as oil paintings and sculptures. Unlike analog technologies, a digital file can be recopied onto a new medium without any deterioration of content. One of the problems with preserving digital art is that the formats continuously change over time. Former examples of transitions include that from 8-inch floppy disks to 5.25-inch floppies, 3-inch diskettes to CD-ROMs, and DVDs to flash drives. On the horizon is the obsolescence of flash drives and portable hard drives, as data is increasingly held in online

cloud storage Cloud storage is a model of computer data storage in which data, said to be on "the cloud", is stored remotely in logical pools and is accessible to users over a network, typically the Internet. The physical storage spans multiple servers (so ...

. Museums and galleries thrive off of being able to accommodate the presentation and preservation of physical artwork. New media art challenges the original methods of the art world when it comes to documentation, its approach to collection and preservation. Technology continues to advance, and the nature and structure of art organizations and institutions will remain in jeopardy. The traditional roles of curators and artist are continually changing, and a shift to new collaborative models of production and presentation is needed.

Preservation

''See also

Conservation and restoration of new media art The conservation and restoration of new media art is the study and practice of techniques for sustaining new media art created using from materials such as digital, biological, performative, and other variable media. New media art runs a unique ri ...

'' New media art encompasses various mediums all which require their own preservation approaches. Due to the vast technical aspects involved no established digital preservation guidelines fully encompass the spectrum of new media art. New media art falls under the category of "complex digital object" in the Digital Curation Centre's digital curation lifecycle model which involves specialized or totally unique preservation techniques. Complex digital objects preservation has an emphasis on the inherent connection of the components of the piece.

Education

In New Media programs, students are able to get acquainted with the newest forms of creation and communication. New Media students learn to identify what is or isn't "new" about certain technologies. Science and the market will always present new tools and platforms for artists and designers. Students learn how to sort through new emerging technological platforms and place them in a larger context of sensation, communication, production, and consumption. When obtaining a bachelor's degree in New Media, students will primarily work through practice of building experiences that utilize new and old technologies and narrative. Through the construction of projects in various media, they acquire technical skills, practice vocabularies of critique and analysis, and gain familiarity with historical and contemporary precedents. In the United States, many Bachelor's and Master's level programs exist with concentrations on Media Art, New Media, Media Design, Digital Media and Interactive Arts.

Theorists and historians

Notable art theorists and historians working in this field include: *

* Maurice Benayoun *

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 of ...

* Jack Burnham * Mario Costa * Edmond Couchot * Fred Forest *

Oliver Grau Oliver Grau (born 24 October 1965) is a German art historian and Media studies, media theoretician who focuses on image science, modernity and media art as well as culture of the 19th century and Italian art of the Renaissance. His main areas of ...

* Margot Lovejoy * Lev Manovich * Robert C. Morgan * Dominique Moulon *

Christiane Paul Christiane Paul (; born 8 March 1974) is a German film, television and stage actress. Career 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 her acting c ...

* Catherine Perret * Frank Popper * Edward A. Shanken

Types

The term New Media Art is generally applied to disciplines such as: * Artistic computer game modification *

ASCII art ASCII art is a graphic design technique that uses computers for presentation and consists of pictures pieced together from the 95 printable (from a total of 128) character (computing), characters defined by the ASCII Standard from 1963 and ASCI ...

* Bio Art * Cyberformance *

Computer art Computer art is art in which computers play a role in the 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 traditio ...

* Critical making *

Digital art Digital art, or the digital arts, is artistic work that uses Digital electronics, digital technology as part of the creative or presentational process. It can also refer to computational art that uses and engages with digital media. Since the 1960 ...

Demoscene The demoscene () is an international computer art subculture focused on producing demos: self-contained, sometimes extremely small, computer programs that produce audiovisual presentations. The purpose of a demo is to show off computer programmi ...

* Digital poetry *

Electronic art Electronic art is a form of art that makes use of electronic media. More broadly, it refers to technology and/or electronic media. It is related to information art, new media art, video art, digital art, interactive art, internet art, and electr ...

* Experimental musical instrument building *

Evolutionary art Evolutionary art is a branch of generative art, in which the artist does not do the work of constructing the artwork, but rather lets a system do the construction. In evolutionary art, initially generated art is put through an iterated process o ...

* Fax art *

Generative art Generative art is post-conceptual art that has been created (in whole or in part) with the use of an autonomous system. An ''autonomous system'' in this context is generally one that is non-human and can independently determine features of an ...

* Glitch art *

Hypertext Hypertext is E-text, text displayed on a computer display or other electronic devices with references (hyperlinks) to other text that the reader can immediately access. Hypertext documents are interconnected by hyperlinks, which are typic ...

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

* Interactive art *

Kinetic art Kinetic art is art from any medium that contains movement perceivable by the viewer or that depends on motion for its effects. Canvas paintings that extend the viewer's perspective of the artwork and incorporate multidimensional movement are ...

* Light art *

Motion graphics Motion graphics (sometimes mograph) are pieces of animation or digital footage that create the illusion of motion or rotation, and are usually combined with audio for use in multimedia projects. Motion graphics are usually displayed via electro ...

* Net art *

Performance art Performance art is an artwork or art exhibition created through actions executed by the artist or other participants. It may be witnessed live or through documentation, spontaneously developed or written, and is traditionally presented to a pu ...

* Radio art *

Robotic art Robotic art is any artwork that employs some form of robotic or automated technology. There are many branches of robotic art, one of which is robotic installation art, a type of installation art that is programmed to respond to viewer interactions ...

* Software art *

Sound art Sound art is an artistic activity in which sound is utilized as a primary Time-based media, time-based Artistic medium, medium or material. Like many genres of contemporary art, sound art may be interdisciplinary in nature, or be used in Cross-genr ...

Systems art Systems art is art influenced by cybernetics and systems theory, reflecting on natural systems, social systems, and the social signs of the art world itself. Systems art emerged as part of the first wave of the conceptual art movement in the 19 ...

* Telematic art *

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. V ...

Video games A video game or computer game is an electronic game that involves interaction with a user interface or input device (such as a joystick, game controller, controller, computer keyboard, keyboard, or motion sensing device) to generate visual fe ...

* Virtual art

Artists

Cultural centres

* Australian Network for Art and Technology * Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe *

* Daniel Langlois Foundation * Eyebeam Art and Technology Center * Foundation for Art and Creative Technology *

Gray Area Foundation for the Arts Grey (more frequent in British English) or gray (more frequent in American English) is an intermediate color between black and white. It is a neutral or achromatic color, meaning that it has no chroma. It is the color of a cloud-covered s ...

Harvestworks Harvestworks is a not-for-profit arts organization located in New York City New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's ...

* InterAccess * Los Angeles Center for Digital Art (LACDA) * Netherlands Media Art Institute * NTT InterCommunication Center * Rhizome (organization) * RIXC * School for Poetic Computation (SFPC) *

School of the Art Institute of Chicago The School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) is a Private university, private art school associated with the Art Institute of Chicago (AIC) in Chicago, Illinois. Tracing its history to an art students' cooperative founded in 1866, which gr ...

* Squeaky Wheel: Film and Media Arts Center * V2 Institute for the Unstable Media *

WORM Worms are many different distantly related bilateria, bilateral animals that typically have a long cylindrical tube-like body, no limb (anatomy), limbs, and usually no eyes. Worms vary in size from microscopic to over in length for marine ...