When art loses its materiality (painting, sculpture, photography) and becomes electronic data (digital media), how are we to assess it? Each of the readings provided a lot of questions but no certain answers in thinking through this phenomenon. N. Katherine Hayles approaches the question of media specificity through literary theory--and makes a case for "positioning text against work" with the influence of Roland Barthes. When text is no longer just words on a printed page, but takes on a new effect through electronic "hypertext," Hayles makes a point that we must make a "careful consideration of what difference the medium makes." Here, navigation becomes a "signifying strategy," and the subject becomes transformed as not just a passive reader but as a participant in how the text unfolds. She declares: "Whether in print or on screen, the specificity of the medium comes into play as its characteristic are flaunted, suppressed, subverted, reimagined."
In "Beyond New Media Art," Quaranta writes that it is important to think of this "new media as a conceptual category." He makes a point that can point to a clearing of the confusion by making the differentiation "between medium as 'artistic medium' and medium as generic means of communication." The word medium, in art history, refers to the specific language inherent within the characteristics of a particular art form. Medium, on the other hand, through the language of sociology and digital culture, refers to any tool of communication such as the electric light bulb, printing press, or television.
Finally, Lev Manovich, seeking to understand the challenges that can distinguish old media from new media, points to the computerization of an object into digital code. A key point he makes is that new media follows a different logic than that of old media. Old media, based more in industrial society, follow the factory logic, assembly line, and mass standardization; new media, based in post-industrial society, favors the "fractal structure," of discrete samples or pixels, that can be individually customized according to the taste of the user. An example that comes to mind is that of tennis shoes. In industrial society, there were a handful of options for tennis shoes, mostly mass produced in form and color. Today, the NikeID website offers a user the customization of every element of the shoe model you choose into any "color way" that you desire. First, you see these changes digitally on the screen in front of you as you make them, and once ordered, the shoe arrives in the mail exactly as you designed on the interface.
In "Beyond New Media Art," Quaranta writes that it is important to think of this "new media as a conceptual category." He makes a point that can point to a clearing of the confusion by making the differentiation "between medium as 'artistic medium' and medium as generic means of communication." The word medium, in art history, refers to the specific language inherent within the characteristics of a particular art form. Medium, on the other hand, through the language of sociology and digital culture, refers to any tool of communication such as the electric light bulb, printing press, or television.
Finally, Lev Manovich, seeking to understand the challenges that can distinguish old media from new media, points to the computerization of an object into digital code. A key point he makes is that new media follows a different logic than that of old media. Old media, based more in industrial society, follow the factory logic, assembly line, and mass standardization; new media, based in post-industrial society, favors the "fractal structure," of discrete samples or pixels, that can be individually customized according to the taste of the user. An example that comes to mind is that of tennis shoes. In industrial society, there were a handful of options for tennis shoes, mostly mass produced in form and color. Today, the NikeID website offers a user the customization of every element of the shoe model you choose into any "color way" that you desire. First, you see these changes digitally on the screen in front of you as you make them, and once ordered, the shoe arrives in the mail exactly as you designed on the interface.
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