New Media Art Response

Rachel N. Gibbs

Professor Asmuth

ART 2602

January 14, 2019

Many individuals, including myself, typically imagine new media artworks as contemporary digital pieces that heavily utilize technology and innovative techniques; this idea of what forms new media art is not necessarily the truth. According to New Media Art by Mark Tribe and Reena Jana, New Media art is neither new or old, but in fact an art movement that continues to evolve while walking on a fine line between new and traditional media. Depending on how an artist wishes to respond to an external stimuli (ex: political tension, trends, etc.), New Media art can become inclusive and exclusive of traditional media.

When inclusive of traditional media, artists may utilize traditional mediums (such as paints, photographs, etc.) while practicing new techniques of creating and distributing their works. An example of a New Media artwork that is inclusive of traditional media is Michael Mandiberg’s After Sherrie Levine. As the traditional media of his piece, Michael Mandiberg utilizes re-photographed images taken by Sherrie Levine in 1979 of Walker Evan’s Depression era photographs. To transform the traditional media in hand into a New Media artwork, Michael Mandiberg appropriates the photographs by posting them online to a website (AfterSherrieLevine.com) as well as forming an event for invited individuals to print and frame the re-photographed images. Of course, it is easy to see that the use of the internet and computers are the new media factors of the artwork. To take it a step further, the decision Mandiberg made to share his knowledge and allow the public to take part in After Sherrie Levine shifts the traditional practice of “passive audience reception” to “active participation” ( a practice well known in New Media art as interactive art). The decision for artists to rely on both traditional practices of art while also introducing innovative technology, ideas, and practices to comment on mass media are one of many ways New Media art can be inclusive of traditional media.

When exclusive of traditional media, artists may utilize strictly digital mediums to both create and distribute their pieces in an method that is highly untraditional; many times, the methods used can stretch the typical concept of art to the farthest it’s been. An example of a genre that can be found in New Media art exclusive of traditional media is the hacker culture. For the hacker culture, artists hack into technology to create pieces that have transformed information previously written into the systems that have been hacked; rather than following traditional practices of displaying artworks, the hacker culture focuses on sharing their knowledge of computer science for the public to emulate and further advance technology. This moral code of allowing the public to interact and/or emulate pieces from the hacker culture is completely void of traditional practices of only allowing the public to view artworks passively; instead the hacker culture is mainly active with audience participation to further distribute their pieces to the public. On top of their practices, the “new media” portion of the hacker culture is also their use of technology as a medium (such as video games, cd-ROMs, computers, and web sites). An artist from the hacker culture that easily presents New Media art exclusive of traditional media is Cory Arcangel. With Cory Arcangel and his piece Super Mario Clouds, a Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) Super Mario game cartridge is hacked, replaced with a new programme chip to show only background clouds, projected onto a screen, and then ultimately shared his source code online with tutorials for the public to also create their own Super Mario Clouds . As viewers can see, New Media artists exclusive of traditional media most often do not rely on traditional media but instead focus on introducing technology and science that can aid the public.

As Mark Tribe explains throughout New Media Art, New Media art is not one type of art style; it is a massive art movement that consists of many different genres hat erase the dividing line typically seen between new and traditional media. There are New Media artworks that are inclusive and exclusive of traditional media depending on how an artist wishes to present their idea to the public.