Reimagining the Iconic in New Media Art: Mobile Digital Screens and Chôra as Interactive Space

With the advancement of digital technology in contemporary art, new hybrid forms of interaction emerge that invite viewers to make images present in physical space as events that claim a life of their own. In breaking away from representational and performance art theories that have dominated the critique of new media artwork since the 1980s, this article analyses an iconic vision of mobile touchscreens based on the medieval Byzantine chorographic inscription of the sacred in profane spaces. As defined in recent art historical studies on Byzantine icons, chorography ( chôra/space + chorós/movement) builds on a multisensory spatial interaction between the beholders of icons that results in feeling the presence of a divine, invisible image. In light of postmodern critique of digital images’ capacity to manipulate notions of reality, new media aesthetic theory hardly addresses this Byzantine iconic vision that is fundamental to western visual culture. Jeffrey Shaw’s installation, The Golden Calf, is discussed to offer an alternative in understanding how digital and physical spaces function together to evoke something essentially real.

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Culture Industry

Advances in Media, Entertainment, and the Arts - Enhancing Art, Culture, and Design With Technological Integration ◽

10.4018/978-1-5225-5023-5.ch001 ◽

2018 ◽

pp. 1-24

Author(s):

Claudia Sandoval Romero

Keyword(s):

New Media ◽

Contemporary Art ◽

North American ◽

Culture Industry ◽

Aesthetic Theory ◽

New Media Art ◽

The North ◽

Theodor Adorno ◽

Martha Rosler ◽

Key Terms

This chapter examines some of the ideas that Theodor Adorno elucidated around the term culture industry, compiling mainly the ideas published in the text Aesthetic Theory of 1970. The term culture industry is also contextualized in the chapter with the reflections that Adorno previously exposed in 1947. A dialog is created with the proposal of the North American theoretician and artist Martha Rosler to understand the chronological development of art before, during, and after Adorno. Regarding the relation between art and autonomy, the ideas of Adorno offer elements to understand contemporary art production. This way, the author also discusses contemporary new media art manifestations, which are analyzed in key terms such as autonomy/culture industry in relation to the proposals of the Brazilian theoretician Arlindo Machado. Lastly, the chapter offers an approach to the artistic institution analyzing the museum in relation with Adorno's ideas.

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New Media Art and a Contemporary Revision of the Term ‘Cultural Industry’ of Theodor Adorno

International Journal of Art Culture and Design Technologies ◽

10.4018/ijacdt.2011070101 ◽

2011 ◽

Vol 1 (2) ◽

pp. 1-13

Author(s):

Claudia Sandoval Romero

Keyword(s):

New Media ◽

Contemporary Art ◽

North American ◽

Aesthetic Theory ◽

Media Art ◽

Cultural Industry ◽

New Media Art ◽

The North ◽

Theodor Adorno ◽

Martha Rosler

This article examines some of the ideas that Theodor Adorno elucidated around the term “cultural industry”, compiling mainly the ideas published in the text “Aesthetic Theory” of 1970. The term “cultural industry” is also contextualized in the article with the reflections that Adorno previously exposed since 1947. Concerning the relation between art and autonomy the ideas of Adorno offer elements to understand contemporary art production. A dialog is created with the proposal of the North American theoretician and artist Martha Rosler to understand the chronological development of art before, during, and after Adorno. To conclude, the author also discusses contemporary new media art manifestations, which are analyzed through autonomy/cultural industry in relation to the proposals of the Brazilian theoretician Arlindo Machado.

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Sea Urchins and Circuses: The Modernist Natural Histories of Jean Painlevé and Alexander Calder

Modernist Cultures ◽

10.3366/mod.2018.0205 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 13 (2) ◽

pp. 187-211

Author(s):

Patricia E. Chu

Keyword(s):

New Media ◽

Sea Urchins ◽

Life Sciences ◽

Three Dimensional ◽

Machine Age ◽

Avant Garde ◽

History Of ◽

And Performance ◽

The One ◽

Natural Historian

The Paris avant-garde milieu from which both Cirque Calder/Calder's Circus and Painlevé’s early films emerged was a cultural intersection of art and the twentieth-century life sciences. In turning to the style of current scientific journals, the Paris surrealists can be understood as engaging the (life) sciences not simply as a provider of normative categories of materiality to be dismissed, but as a companion in apprehending the “reality” of a world beneath the surface just as real as the one visible to the naked eye. I will focus in this essay on two modernist practices in new media in the context of the history of the life sciences: Jean Painlevé’s (1902–1989) science films and Alexander Calder's (1898–1976) work in three-dimensional moving art and performance—the Circus. In analyzing Painlevé’s work, I discuss it as exemplary of a moment when life sciences and avant-garde technical methods and philosophies created each other rather than being classified as separate categories of epistemological work. In moving from Painlevé’s films to Alexander Calder's Circus, Painlevé’s cinematography remains at the forefront; I use his film of one of Calder's performances of the Circus, a collaboration the men had taken two decades to complete. Painlevé’s depiction allows us to see the elements of Calder's work that mark it as akin to Painlevé’s own interest in a modern experimental organicism as central to the so-called machine-age. Calder's work can be understood as similarly developing an avant-garde practice along the line between the bestiary of the natural historian and the bestiary of the modern life scientist.

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