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>> So let's look a little bit closer at a definition.
As I said before there are a lot of terms that are related to it
and there is no specific perfect definition
but this one comes very close.
New media art describes projects that make use
of emerging technologies and are concerned with the cultural,
political, and esthetic possibilities of these tools.
This first part of the definition breaks
down into 2 distinct ideas.
The first is that where it talks about what it is,
what we're referring to emerging media technologies.
The second part relates to what's being done
with it the cultural, political,
and esthetic possibilities of these tools.
What's interesting about this definition is
that the second part applies
to any medium whether it be painting, drawing, photography,
or contemporary art and technology.
And you'll hear me referring to these 3 terms again and again
to sort of reflect on how the different aspects of the media
that we're looking at relate to this definition.
The second part of this definition is
that new media art is also a subset of 2 broader categories.
The first is art and technology and that relates
to electronic art, robotic art, genomic art,
or anything that is specifically technologically centered,
and the second field is media art.
Now, these are like video art or experimental film
and represent different technologies that by the 1990's
and the advent of the worldwide web these technologies were
still not new.
Now, new media art then represents sort
of the intersection of these 2 areas, so it is specifically
about things that don't fall entirely within one
but relate to like both.
I want to back up a little bit and I want to think
about the term new media art and sort of what it means
but let's start by breaking it down into its contingent parts.
So when we talk about art art has --
art is a very broad category and has changed
in its meaning over the years.
I mean since artists were working for the church,
since artists were working
for the government and for themselves.
One thing that I want to consider is that in looking
at art it never seems to be a good question to say, well,
is it art or what is art these seem to be like questions
that lead to these sort of philosophical discussions
and don't get very far.
So in terms of whether something is art or not
when we're talking we don't really care if it was made
by an artist or if it's claimed to be art that's fine,
but beyond that the questions that we're going to ask
and the things that we're going to think
about are is it interesting and what does it mean.
Now, with respect to media media is typically refers
to broadcast media or media that sort of follows that model
where there's one publisher and many readers or many consumers.
Now, this idea of one too many has been up-ended
by the Internet which is really about being many too many
as in there are many producers and many consumers.
But still when we are talking
about media we traditionally are thinking about the one too many,
the broadcast model, and this could be, like I said,
it could be television or it could be newspapers
or anything along those lines.
Finally, I want to consider the idea of digital and in this day
and age it's hard to do anything without working
with something that's specifically digital.
Digital refers to 2 distinct states at its, like,
sort of base environment.
That's to say that when anything that you take
that is digitally recorded comes
down to 2 states whether they be 1's and 0's or high voltage
and low voltage in an electronic sense.
Everything gets sort of translated
or coded as 1's and 0's.
Now, this is in direct comparison
to something that's analog where it's like if you're looking
at something as analog it has a complete range like say
when you're moving like through the span
of an arch you could stop anywhere in there where as
with the digital it's either 1 or the other and it's about sort
of stringing these 1's and 0's together to find or to add
up to something that's larger.
Now, I want to consider how art is related to media
and I don't want to go into it into too much depth
at this point we're going to talk
about it a little bit more in the future.
Particularly I want to talk about the fact
that all art is not digital today but the way
that we experience most art or the easy way
to experience most art is through the digital.
So if we look at the Mona Lisa most of us are familiar
with the Mona Lisa based on an image that we've seen and most
of the people who've grown
up in the last 20 years have seen this image then online
as opposed to even in a book.
The question is how many
of us have seen the actual painting itself?
How many of us are familiar with the actual object of art
as opposed to a digital representation of it.
And in the case of a book the book is even frequently a
digital representation that's been created
out of digitally scanned images.
Now, we're going to spend time with 3 specific areas images,
the web, and games and we're going to look at each of them
in terms of how they are digital media art
and how it relates to our definition.