>>This is James Morgan and
today we're going to be talking
about digital media art, new
media art, and the intersection
of art and technology.
All three of these
things actually refer
to the same body of
work essentially.
But there's also like
computers and art and there's
like several other topics
and you'll hear me use them
fairly interchangeably.
So what is art?
Well, art is a discussion,
it's about philosophy.
It's not really terribly useful
to approach it from that aspect.
It's much better to talk
about well, what's interesting
because people aren't interested
in what experts have to say,
they're more interested
in what their taste is
when it comes to art.
Media on the other hand
is more understandable
and media has also shifted.
It used to be more about
one-to-many in the case
of print media or
broadcast media.
With the advent of
computers and the Internet,
this has become much
more about many-to-many.
Along these lines though, art
has changed in the last country.
In the early 20th century,
Marcel Duchamp changed the way
that we understand art.
Our art after Marcel
Duchamp is conceptual;
it is about the ideas, it's not
about the aesthetics any longer.
Clement Greenberg in the middle
of this last century talked
about modernism and he
got some things right,
but in other ones he
sort of missed the point.
He said that it's really about
the characteristic methods
of a discipline to criticize
the discipline itself.
Not to subvert it, but to
entrench it more firmly
in the areas of its competence.
So let's look at painting.
Now when we're talking about
painting, we all have like sort
of a basic understanding
of what it is about.
We're not talking about house
painting so much, we're talking
about like fine art
painting, right?
It's about taking a substance
and applying it to a surface
so there are a lot of things
we consider along these lines.
So what is the surface?
What type of paint are we using
and how are you applying it?
The work of the artist's
hand is there,
like how do they apply it?
What sort of materials are they
using; is it thick, is it thin,
is it water based,
is it oil based,
is it even some sort
of traditional media?
The form, the color,
the subject.
What is the image?
What is being represented in
it; is it anything actually?
What do think of when we see
it and what do we fantasize
about when we see this image
when you see what has
been applied to it?
Mark Tribe describes new media
art as projects that make use
of emerging media
technologies and are concerned
with the cultural, political,
and aesthetic possibilities
of these tools.
In fact these three
things, cultural, political,
and aesthetic possibilities,
apply to all art media.
Now, with respect to video art,
where does this leave video art?
Is it part of the digital?
Well certainly YouTube is.
And YouTube is a very
interesting way to look at video
and to consider it in
a contemporary setting.
It is both digital and new
media in that standpoint.
In terms of technology, how
does one look at technology
and call this sort of
"Greenbergian" formalism out?
How does one sort
of deal with this?
Very often it is
about the formalistic
and the physical aesthetic
qualities of it itself.
More specifically, we're
dealing with the concept
because it always falls back
on the idea of the concept.
If you can't answer the
question, "What does it mean,"
then it does appear that
you're missing something.
Now you could say
that it means nothing,
that's certainly a
viable answer for it.
In terms of contemporary editing
and contemporary collage,
a lot of work has to be done at
Photoshop and this is like sort
of like the visual match-up.
Or images that sort of question
the authenticity of themselves
and what they present to us.
In addition to that the World
Wide Web provides an interesting
means to reach indirectly to us.
With that, www.jodie.org
actually takes and looks
at the essential quality
of the web which is to say
that beneath the surface,
there is a source code
and they plant a little
nugget of the source.
In terms of games, games
fall very specifically
at the point of interaction.
And in the game like Passage,
you experience your entire life
in the five minutes
that it takes to play.
It is a very sort of
profound, yet retro experience.
Working with 3D and inflatables,
it's possible to take and deal
with scale and deal with
the public and intervention
in a very sort of fun, if not
accessible sort of manner.
Performance for that matter
often intersects a lot
of digital media art.
In this example, the [inaudible]
are reenacting classic
performances instead of a
game or virtual environment.
The question is, "Well, how does
this affect the performance;
how does this change
it to suddenly be
in this other space,
or this area?"
For that matter, /hug
creates for an organization
like the American Red Cross,
but in the World of Warcraft
which has been at
war for 3,000 years.
And this question
is much more like,
where did we leave
our central humanity?
What is the place of
our central being?
In terms of art and
digital media art,
it's held at the same standards,
but has different goals.
Essentially the political,
cultural,
and aesthetic possibilities
are relevant
in all of these aspects.
In the end, art is art
and everything else
is everything else.
And that's not to say
that anything is less
than something else, but
the point is not well,
is something art, but If
it is art, then it is art
and we just aren't going to
engage in that conversation.
