New Media Art - (including an exert taken from my MA thesis).

I was initially exploring the digital or new media art, to specifically look for the roots of digital fiction from art practice. Although I found this art practice interesting it did not fulfill the needs I had at the time. It can be said however, that art takes and borrows, is influenced by and cannot always be defined by rigid prescriptive definitions. So although I tend to call what I am seeking to create, digital fiction, it cannot be said not to include ideas form New Media art.​

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In seeking a structure and methodology for my creative blog I have looked at two creative digital areas; what is defined as New Media art and then Digital Fiction. I will look at New Media Art first returning later to Digital Fiction. Although New Media Art, or art that uses as its medium ‘new media’ or digital techniques, has its basis development from the past twenty years, the origins are seen in art movements in the early twentieth century. Used as a generic term, New Media Art relates to art or artefacts created under titles such as ‘Digital Art’, ‘Computer Art’, ‘Multimedia Art’, and ‘Interactive Art’. Both Christiane Paul (Paul, 2003) and the book New Media Art (Tribe & Jana, 2006), locate the roots of New Media Art in the art movement DADA which emerged as movement challenging the conception of what art is. Christiane Paul feels that there is a close relationship between New Media Art and the performance and conceptual art pieces of the Dadaists. Techniques such as photomontage, collage, performance and the use of irony and absurdity can be seen in both the work of the Dadaist and New Media Artists. Conceptual art, where it is the thought or idea that is important, rather than the artefact is an important part of New Media Art. Participation or collaboration is also seen as important factors in the creation of this style of art. However, as Paul (Paul, 2003) points out, this participation and collaboration does not affect the form or structure of this artwork. Sometimes the interactivity is physically affecting movement through sensors, sometimes through navigation of the work, at times changing the data flow and occasionally the participant can also customise the work to suit themselves.
Digital arts seem to be strongly based on being able to understand and change software. This can create interesting juxtapositions and manipulations. Being able to understand and change code is a skilled ability. This is well beyond anything I can do at this stage. However this is not the way forward that I have planned. Most of the work that I have found so far are using found images rather than showing or creating original images. The work created is more like an event or performance art. The first artist that I felt reflected some of ideas I was seeking to explore was Cory Arcangel,who is also an active participator in social media where he encourages dicussion and participation in a form of new media or digital art,​
Cory Arcangel (Arcangel)
Cory has been called an artist and programmer and his ability to work with codes is very much part of his work. In an early piece; http://www.coryarcangel.com/things-i-made/SuperMarioClouds , Cory had worked on an old Super Mario Brothers cartridge. He took all images off the display except the clouds and thus you are left with clouds not floating but creeping across the screen.  It is very simple and witty but perhaps it would be less impressive if Super Mario had not been included in the title. What is impressive, to me, is the stripping away and reconstruction of the cassette itself. It is interesting to see someone playing or manipulating software. I do like the; http://www.coryarcangel.com/things-i-made/DancingStands , they are modified to work at slightly different speeds and they dance like mad stick insect people. This work is interesting but it is well beyond the areas that I can or do work in.
Eva & Franco Mattes
Influenced by looking at the work of Cory Arcangel I began to look at others working in this field. A lot of the work of Eva and Franco Mattes is based within video games and Second Life. I like the opening to their newest project, Synthetic Performances http://www.0100101110101101.org/home/performances/performance-state_of_mind.html  where they say;
Forget about museums, galleries and biennials, stay at home and play video games. 
However I find the Synthetic Performances very limited.  I know that the idea was to have pre-defined activity happening in Second life where visitors could participate with the final ‘performance’. The final piece itself seems very limited incomplete showing a lack of refined technical ability. Although this is possibly a choice it did make the final outcome insubstantial. I am not convinced that just because the final piece was done in Second Life it was worthy of viewing. 
‘I know that it is all a state of mind’, starts with two naked mannequins, or avatars, doing a repeated bending movement. I assume that the clothed figures in the room are visitors or audiences. The movements are repeated and repeated and done with no style or grace. Having watched Machinima where avatars are filmed within computer games, I have seen some very refined movement, I know that this is very simplistic. It did get a bit faster towards the end and there were by then four naked avatars falling over and over, and we did change camera angels. By then there seemed to be very few clothed figures watching so perhaps like me, they had given up. Yes it is technically beyond me, however, I was not sure the ‘participants’ were able to do more than watch and watch what?
Federico Muelas
Moving away from artists using video games, Federico Muelas used programming to influence how his sculpture performed. Dripping Sounds is a Visual Sound Installation by Federico Muelas. http://www.federicomuelas.com/index.html
Looking at the description of how drops of ink drop into water passing sensors that create sound, seemed very complex. The sound created was randomly determined by the way the drips fell. Sound is generated and differences can be made in the pitch. The technology seems interesting but in viewing the object you might be unaware that the outcome is created by software. Viewing the work online the machines that create the drops, then the sounds, look like compact scale models made for museums. I like the physicality of the objects but it is far removed from my online creative blog.
Olia Lialina  
Olia Lialina studied in Moscow and is a maker and theorist on Digital Art. She appears on the Unesco Digital Arts site with her work; My boyfriend came back from the war, http://www.teleportacia.org/war/wara.htm . This is a stark piece in black and white using a hypertext format. Clicking on text causes either more text or a division of the space. Clicking through the narrative ends in blank space. The participant chooses their own pathway through the narrative. It is simple but effective and the occasional use of images, especially of war, supports this. The use of the underlying squares or blocks format ending in the blank space also emphasizes this feeling of desolation. Although called 'Digital Art' the use of hypertext certainly moves it more towards the world of digital fiction. ​
Unesco
The Unesco Digital Arts site is a surprise and a small treasure. A link from the New Media Artist Olia Lialina led me to the Unesco site; http://portal.unesco.org/culture/en/ev.php-URL_ID=1391&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html. They had set up a digital arts project to promote digital work around the world. The website included links to groups and individuals who were creating digital artwork as well as a large area of information and supporting software for education. Although the project has been completed the recourses are still available to anyone to access and use to create digital artwork; http://digitalarts.lcc.gatech.edu/unesco/ .
Conclusions on the New Media Art
I chose to look at a small group of artists doing different types of New Media Art to see whether I could use similar techniques and styles in my work. I started with Cory Arcangel who calls himself a computer programmer, web designer and artist. It is the programming and web skills that are most prominent in his work. He is involved in stripping down codes from old computer games and handsets to create his work. Although the work is interesting it is set outside the web or blog page. The creativity is with the programming and the code which is not where I am working.
Eva and Franco Mattes were again working within the computer or on Second Life. I found their work interesting but the end product was less than impressive. It was almost as if doing the work in this style was more important than the work itself. The work was reminiscent of some forms of Performance Art where being there is more significant than the performance itself. Again this work helped me to decide what I would not do rather than the direction I would go in.
Federico Muelas work reminded me of a Kinetic sculpture created using advanced software. I liked the look of the machines he was using to create the work. There was something definitely interesting about this work but I felt it was more suitable for an exhibition space rather than a computer screen.
The work of Olia Lialina seemed the most logical, in style, for me. The use of the computer screen as the medium of display made this more easily transferable to my ideas for the blog. I liked the simplicity of the journey, for the viewer, through the narrative. The way the screen divided into smaller and smaller blocks until they went blank was uncomplicated. The reader/participant had choice but limited choice that made the journey possible. There were certainly things that I could learn from with this work.​​