New Media Arts

NEW MEDIA ARTS
What Is New Media Art?

Definition and History of New Media Art
New media art refers to all forms of
contemporary art made, altered, or transmitted
using new forms of media technology. This
includes digital art, interactive art, internet art,
and virtual art, as well as works of art made
using robotics, video games, biotechnology, 3D
printing, and computer animation. New media art
is a category that defies static categorization as
the form continues to expand and new media
technologies are invented and explored by
artists.
History of New Media Art
New media art began to emerge in the
mid-twentieth century, as new
technologies developed at a rapid pace.
In the 1990s, with the development of
the internet, there was a sudden
proliferation of new media art works and
intersections of new media. The internet
also provided a platform for new media
artists to reach large new audiences that
were previously inaccessible.
1. Early Origins
The invention of moving photographic
contraptions such as the praxinoscope and
zoetrope in the late nineteenth century
signaled the beginning of a new era in the
art world.
2. View From the Black Room
n 1958, the artist Wolf Vostell included a
television set in his View From the Black
Room cycle, extending the idea of found
object art into the realm of technology. This
marked one of the first examples of new
technologies being incorporated into
established artmaking practices.
3. Fluxus
During the 1960s, the Fluxus collective
experimented with multimedia work that
combined technology with performance
art. New media artists such as Nam June
Paik and Yoko Ono began their careers in
the Fluxus movement.
4. Robotics
In the 1960s, artists began to experiment
with robotics as a way to create more
kinetically dynamic sculptures. One of the
first to use this new technology was
French artist Jean Tinguely, who, inspired
by Fluxus and Dada, incorporated robotics
into his self-destroying sculpture Homage
to New York (1960).
5. The Internet
In the 1990s, the advent of computer
graphics and the internet expanded the
possibilities of new media art even further.
Many new media artists used websites,
video games, and other forms of digital
graphics to produce their work.
6. Social Media
In the twenty-first century, the proliferation of
social media technology has prompted new
modes of artists reaching audiences, as well as
new ways for artists to critique those
technologies. In 2010, performance artist Marina
Abramović presented The Artist is Present at the
Museum of Modern Art in New York City,
alongside new media artist An Xiao’s The Artist
is Kinda Present, which invited gallery-goers to
engage with Xiao via text or Tweet.
4 Characteristics of New Media Art
 Digital Technologies- New media art often takes

advantage of digital technologies, such as
computer graphics, artificial intelligence, or virtual
reality.
 Multimedia- A common tactic of new media artists
is to combine different types of media in one art
piece.
 Interactivity- Digital media forms, such as virtual
reality, social media, and video games, allow
viewers to interact with the artwork directly.
 Digital culture- Many new media artworks engage
with digital culture, questioning how we interact
online and the way that new media increasingly
shapes our everyday lives.
7 Notable New Media Artists
 Nam June Paik: Paik is considered the founder of
video art. Born in Seoul, the Korean American
artist is famous for his large works built out of
many screens, such as Video Flag (1985) and
Electronic Superhighway: Continental U.S.,
Alaska, Hawaii (1995).
 Vera Frenkel: This Canadian artist uses video,
performance, and interactive installation art to
create works that focus on global migration. Some
of her most important works include … from the
Transit Bar (1992) and Once Near Water: Notes
from the Scaffolding Archive (2008).
 Petra Cortright: Cortright is an American artist
whose video works have been presented in
galleries and on YouTube. Her work experiments
with how we present ourselves online, such as her
video works VVEBCAM (2007) and Video
Catalogue (2011), which showed the value of
Cortright’s based on a YouTube algorithm.
 Jeffrey Shaw: Shaw is a Melbourne-born visual
artist who has worked with new media, from
cinematic installations to virtualized environments,
since the 1960s. Some of his most recognized
works include T_Visionarium II (2006), an
interactive cinema piece, and mArchive (2014), a
360-degree digital interactive environment
cataloguing materials from the Melbourne
Museum.
 Maurice Benayoun: Benayoun was born in Algeria
and is based in Paris and Hong Kong. His works
have pioneered uses of digital and computer
technology and his teachings and lectures have
helped establish important concepts in new media
art. Some of his works include Occupy Wall
Screens (2012), a video work aligning stock prices
with emotional maps of Occupy Wall Street sites,
and the virtual reality work Colors Tunnel (2013).
 Alexei Shulgin: Russian artist Alexei Shulgin’s
work incorporates digital interactivity and web
design. His most notable works include Form Art
(1997) and 386DX (1997–present), in which a PC
running Windows 3.1 performs live music using
MIDI files and a text-to-speech function.
 Rafaël Rozendaal: Dutch-born Rozendaal creates
work specifically for the internet. Inspired by the
net.art movement founded in 1994, Rozendaal
builds webpages where users can interact with
colorful abstractions, such as color flip .com
(2008) and fill this up .com (2014).

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NEW MEDIA ARTS

What Is New Media Art?

 Digital Technologies- New media art often takes

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