new media art

Connections and Gaps between Artists’ and Institutions’ New Media Preservation Efforts

Connections and Gaps between Artists’ and Institutions’ New Media Preservation Efforts

Media art, which frequently involves data, software, or electronic devices, keeps facing the challenge of technological obsolescence. Since preservation and conservation are fields often dominated by museums and similar organizations, a contrast exists between personal and institutional practices. In some cases, artists rely on museums for technological support. This article looks at new media artists’ firsthand experiences and media artworks donated to the MoMA.

An Investigation Into New Media Artists' Personal Preservation Practices

An Investigation Into New Media Artists' Personal Preservation Practices

Relying on electronic devices and digital files, new media artworks are sensitive to technology’s constant upgrades and possible obsolescence. A single dysfunctional file may lead to the permanent loss of an artwork’s content. Aware of such vulnerabilities and urged by their duty to care for objects for future generations, museums have established various initiatives for collecting and preserving media art and have also started encouraging artists to adopt preservation practices themselves. Given all the different approaches, this article investigates major strategies and tactics adopted by artists who advocate for new media art preservation as part of artistic practices.

Artist Perspectives on Net Art and New Media

Artist Perspectives on Net Art and New Media

In less than three decades, the end of net art movement has been announced more times than its new beginning has been declared. The early 2000s brought a new group of net artists who saw utopian potential in the internet and began using it as a tool to demonstrate independence from traditional art markets. The net artists of today are more easily defined within the genre of new media art rather than net art since their work explores not only the technology of the internet but also the technologies employed on the internet and the socio-political contexts that it produces. Stereyl and Blas—two artists included in this post—reflect a sentiment of contemporary new media artists: the virtual ecosystem is not the same as it was a ten years ago. What defines new media art is a continuing analysis and reflection on this ecosystem.

AI-assisted and AI-powered Art: Different Challenges for Digital Preservation

AI-assisted and AI-powered Art: Different Challenges for Digital Preservation

Artists are among the many professions that are embracing artificial intelligence. AI is beginning to undertake tedious repetitive work, without replacing human’s creativity. Recently, the art market has displayed an interest in purchasing AI art. Christies sold Edmond de Belamy, an algorithm-generated painting, and Sotheby’s sold Memories of Passersby I, an AI video installation, at $432,500 and $51,012, respectively. With a rapidly increasing variety of AI art being created and transacted, the need to preserve such art in differentiated ways is emerging.

#TBT: Highlighting New Media Art

#TBT: Highlighting New Media Art

While technology and art combine frequently to facilitate the practices of arts managers, they are simultaneously blending to create a whole new artform--new media art.  All bets are off with this medium, as an array of tools, approaches and capabilities make it impossible to label as either visual or performance; in many cases, the art goes even farther and provides a social benefit to those who experience it.  This week’s TBT provides managers with a roundup of the research we’ve done so far to start piecing together a picture of what new media art means for the future of management in all types of arts venues and forums.

How Museums Are Dealing With New Media Art: Part 1

How Museums Are Dealing With New Media Art: Part 1

When talking about new media art, there is no single definition. According to a 2001 research study by the Rockefeller Foundation, media artworks can be defined according to nine common elements: fluidity, intangibility, liveness, variability, replicability, connectivity, interactivity, computability, and chance. New media art is a very general and broad category and includes many subcategories. Among these, net art, digital art and plurimedia art are the most common within the visual art field. Nevertheless, the meaning of new media is constantly evolving.

The Website Exhibition: Old and New

Open, explore, type to enter, and browse; ever notice how the Internet's functioning, even jargon, is quite similar to that of a museum, where websites appropriate the role of continuously changing exhibits. Moreover, with the Internet steadily acquiring a past, websites have become historical databases and locations where this past continues to surface, as long as it is deemed relevant by Google or Bing. In the art world, knowingly or unknowingly, this phenomenon of virtual longevity has led to the rise of online exhibitions, where the artworks never have to be shipped, mounted, dismantled, and sheepishly monitored by security guards.
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One of the best online exhibitions was created in lieu of the Monet exhibition at the Grand Palais in Paris in late 2010. For the virtual component, the exhibition designers were faced with a both a challenge and an opportunity; how could they affect a lasting impression on the viewers through the artworks of one of the most ubiquitous artists of Impressionism? How could they ask viewers to look past the commercialization of Monet? (You can buy impressionist laptop sleeves and coffee mugs).
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The answer lay in the development of a virtual exhibition component that reminded us that the brilliance of Monet cannot ever become part of the everyday vernacular. The exhibition takes us on a journey through an impressionistic world set against the backdrop of a canvas. In this journey, which begins with the spill of Monet’s inkwell, we travel through the medium of color as it makes it’s way across a virtual albeit realistic canvas. A series of gradual and beautiful spreads of color transform before our eyes into changing land/city-scapes , where we see ink-cloud shaped sections of Monet's paintings.
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Moreover, playing in the background and transporting us to another era, is a wonderful piece by Debussy. Thus, as we glide from from one image to the next, we are given a chance to view not an impressionist painting, but an entire impressionist world! And all along the way we are encouraged to take part through a series of interactive sections, some of which involve waving and even blowing air into our microphones!
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If impressionist artwork of the 19th century can be so wonderfully exhibited online, surely there are contemporary art mediums that can be displayed within the virtual bounds of a website. Maybe digital and new media art, which requires digital space, not wall space. This is where Art Micro-Patronage comes in, digitally.
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Art Micro-Patronage is an experimental online exhibition space featuring monthly curated shows of digital, new media, and intermedia work. As visitors navigate through the exhibitions, they are encouraged to become micro-patrons of the arts, associating their appreciation of the works with small monetary values.
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In Art Micro-Patronage, a visitor can navigate through a series of artworks, all of which have been adapted to the website format. Their current exhibit is titled Dériving An Imaginary City: Virtual Psychogeographies, which “looks at the use of digital tools in mapping the interplay between psychological states and urban environments.” The exhibition was surprisingly easy to follow and some of the artworks were truly interactive, while others were video exhibits displayed via YouTube or Vimeo.
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A nice twist to Art Micro-Patronage is that instead of simply liking an artwork, viewers can become micro-patrons by pledging a small sum of money (.50 cents to 20 dollars) to a particular artwork. The use of crowd-funding to support an artist is not entirely novel but Art Micro-Patronage removes the intermediaries. Moreover, viewers may be more likely to pay for completed project rather than one that is still in the conception phase. Yet, the figure for the amount of money pledged to the exhibition is not exactly stellar: $83 dollars. In due time, perhaps teems of micro-patrons will be able to make difference at the macro level. Nevertheless, Art Micro-Patronage has some intriguing exhibitions planned for the upcoming year!
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In both the Monet and the Art Micro-Patronage exhibitions, the website exhibition format was employed in a manner that enhanced a visitor’s interaction with the artwork. While the Monet exhibition used the virtual aspect to draw visitors and facilitate interaction, Art Micro-Patronage is simply using the medium of the artwork to display the artwork! And as the Monet exhibition continues to exist beyond the physical, tangible exhibition, it has become encased in the museum that is the World Wide Web, while Art-Micro Patronage is the latest gallery that raises money through the very act of a visitor opening, exploring, entering and browsing their space.