New Media Art: Aligning Artistic Creativity And Technological Media

This article investigates the relationship between art and technology, pointing the constants of a process of cultural digestion which is mediated by the very sovereign technological environment – the Internet. Relying on the multiplicity and hybridization of the content formats, and also on the user involved interactivity as constructive vector-relationships, new media art and the internet art are natural consequences of the artistic practices of creative appropriation of contemporary technological media. As the complexity of the relationship between art and the technological environment becomes richer than ever, we assist to the creation of a contemporary ultra-technological culture, structurally dependent on the media and responsible for relativizing the critical positioning of the art consumer. Defining the premises of the interaction with a technologically interfaced world of art, the user (reader) of the Internet as a medium of expression is – equally – a consumer, and a producer of information (content).

Art

O presente estudo de natureza teórica visa sobretudo questionar a Internet Art, tendo em conta as hipóteses, estratégias e caraterísticas da expressão artística face ao meio de atuação. Este trabalho pretende demonstrar a correlação entre arte e tecnologia, com destaque a Internet, como meio e espaço de criação artística através da internet art ou net art. A internet art resulta de uma rede de comunicação global e tecnológica, sendo apresentada enquanto meio de criação artística de obras virtuais, interativas e ilusórias. A partir deste enquadramento, são apresentadas e analisadas as características deste meio de comunicação, exemplificado através de várias obras da net art, a forma como os artistas apropriam estas mesmas características nos seus trabalhos, destacando a relação entre meio e prática artística. A arte de internet é, por sua vez, apresentada através de um estudo, cujas características estão direcionadas a tipologias e temáticas no contexto do desenvolvimento de novas possibilidades para a obra, para o artista e para o público. A relação entre a internet, enquanto meio de comunicação tecnológica, e a arte de internet, enquanto expressão artística contemporânea é compreendida através da análise da produção com base nas características que definem a rede. Procura-se, desta forma, destacar a importância da net art no seio da arte contemporânea, promovendo uma nova perspetiva para a compreensão da internet enquanto meio e espaço de criação artística.

Lateral Thinking and Learning in Arts Education in the Post-Internet Art

Lateral learning in the last two decades can be seen in peer-to-peer learning that is being promoted by new technologies where there are apps that allow students to work together in real time through virtual space, a method which thereby shifts the focus from the solitary self to the interdependent group which lives an educational experience of a collaborative and distributed nature, whose focus lies in instilling the principle of the social nature of knowledge. The ideological bases of lateral thinking are sustained by issues such as emancipation of the student from the authority of the teacher, the relationship of collaboration, permitting the development of individual appreciations and ideas, based simultaneously on those of their peers, on the democratization of knowledge, and so on, which ultimately refers to a collaborative creative education, to a democratic education, and to an education for democracy that assumes the new technologized context in which we live. Because of this, lateral thinking is increasingly influencing everyday life and areas such as education and the arts, as it happens in the post-Internet art, and more specifically net.art (i.e., an online art), which is a collaborative creative experience that has become an instrument which allows us to see a “new type of art in the 21st century.” Net.art, Internet art and the most experimental design, therefore constitutes a community experience that hypertextualizes computerized languages and generates poetic perspectives as artistic practices of lateral thinking. It has bestowed upon us a series of mechanisms to devise collaborative development strategies for lateral learning based on those creative ludic educational experiences of using and interacting with new technologies. This is essential to bear in mind because, as Jeremy Rifkin says, collaborative learning helps students to expand their own self-awareness, including their “self” in reference to diverse “others,” and promotes in-depth participation in more interdependent communities. It extends the territory comprised within the boundaries of empathy.

THE ROLE OF CLICHÉS IN CONTEMPORARY DIGITAL AUDIOVISUAL ARTS

В данном исследовании анализируется роль клише в современных цифровых аудиовизуальных искусствах. Клише в искусстве может определяться как формула. Основываясь на подходе к формульности Джона Кавелти и Юрия Лотмана, мы анализируем роль клише в формировании виртуального пространства и гиперреального вымышленного мира, которые являются характерной особенностью культурной парадигмы постмодернистского общества. Так как клише играет важную роль в современной массовой культуре, мы приводим данные исследователя цифровой визуальной культуры Льва Мановича, который анализирует цифровую составляющую в цифровом аудиовизуальном медиуме. Тем самым впервые мы связываем подход Кавелти и Мановича в анализе современного цифрового аудиовизуального искусства. Говоря о цифровой составляющей в искусстве, следует упомянуть ее важную характеристику, которой является интерфейс, определяемый нами как формульное построение. Клише в современном искусстве является одним из главных структурных элементов художественного произведения, который влияет на эстетическую форму и содержание аудиовизуального произведения. При помощи клише мы создаем виртуальные и гиперреальные миры, которые помогают зрителю почувствовать эскапистские чувства и погрузиться в эти вымышленные миры. Также клише дает нам возможность увидеть новое в уже знакомом при восприятии искусства. Видение «нового в уже знакомом» мы определяем как прием «остранения» Виктора Шкловского. Перечисленные свойства клише проявляются во всех цифровых современных аудиовизуальных искусствах кино, видеоигры, видеоарта и видеоинсталляции, примеры которых мы приводим в нашем исследовании. In this study, I analyze the role of clichés in contemporary digital audiovisual arts. The use of clichés in the author’s high art is considered to be a manifestation of a low artistic level. But the same use of clichés in folklore and popular art is not considered to be a “primitive” performance. Clichés in art are defined as a formula. The article presents an approach to formulaic art by John G. Cawelti and Juri Lotman. This approach is the methodology of my study of the role of clichés in the creation of virtual space and hyperreal fictional world. Since clichés play a very important role in contemporary popular culture, I present the data by Lev Manovich, the researcher of digital visual culture. He analyzes the digital component in the digital audiovisual medium. Thus, for the first time, I link Cawelti and Manovich in the analysis of contemporary digital audiovisual art. Speaking about the digital component in art, I should mention that the interface, defined as a formulaic construction, is its important feature. The article states that the cliché in modern digital audiovisual art is one of the main structural elements of a work of art which affects the aesthetic form and content of an audiovisual work. Using clichés, we create virtual and hyperreal worlds that help the addressee to feel escapist feelings and get immersed in these fictional worlds. Also, clichés give us the opportunity to see the new in the already familiar in the perception of art. I define the vision of “new in the already familiar” as defamiliarization by Viktor Shklovsky. The listed properties of the cliché are manifested in all digital contemporary audiovisual arts: cinema, video games, video art, and video installation. The examples are given below in the study. The obtained results are relevant for studying the new types of digital audiovisual arts such as Internet art, interactive cinema, science art, computer art, and others. These arts are now at the stage of their formal, aesthetic and content formation. The obtained results will help to understand the new processes taking place in our postmodern society

Post-Internet Art and Pre-Internet Art Education

Post-Internet art represents a challenge to previous artistic concepts that tended to view the utilization of networked digital technologies as either the fulfillment of utopian fantasies of ego destruction, or the dystopian realization of a posthuman nightmare. Post-Internet art oscillates between these two extremes, making use of numerous interrelated networks that are decentralized in nature. Formal schooling is generally centralized, and art education tends to operate in a similar manner within this system, regardless of attempts to substantially change the structure of the field. A comparison of these two different systems might offer art educators opportunities to rethink practices that have been virtually unaffected by decentralization.

Digital Art Events and Digital Art Museums

The development of information communication technologies and the increase in use have made it utilized as a tool for cultural and artistic production. Digital art, where technology and art coexist, has created a free working space for the artist. Digital art is a contemporary type of art that includes many different art methods such as sound art, computer graphics, virtual art, internet art, robotics, video, interactive art, computer animation, and it distinguishes itself from the old visual arts. The cities that have come to the fore with art in the world become the tourist attraction centers. In this context, tourist attraction centers can be created by developing digital art. The development of digital art and the increase in the number of artists interested in this art have led to the emergence of tourist attraction centers. In this chapter, digital art events and digital art museums are determined. And finally, digital art events and museum examples are given where digital art is an attraction.

Toward an Anti-Racist and Anti-Colonial Post-Internet Curriculum in Digital Art Education

This chapter examines how reframing post-internet art through anti-racist and anti-colonial lenses in digital art curriculum can cultivate critical and transformative artist practices for students. Anti-racist and anti-colonial approaches offer frameworks for critically analyzing identity, ideology, and power relations toward decentering the art canon and qualitatively shifting curriculum toward critical dialogues and social action. Through a retrospection of the author’s own active and ongoing transformation as teacher, as well as through an analysis of artist Tabita Reziare’s post-internet practice, this article builds a pedagogical foundation for students to generate their own critical consciousness in learning and artmaking through a digital art curriculum.

Aesthetic Practice as Critique: The Suspension of Judgment and the Invention of New Possibilities of Perception, Thinking, and Action

From the perspective of media education theory and aesthetic education, this article discusses some considerations of aesthetic practice as media-critical practice. Media-critical practice is described as a reflexive-transformative practice with and in media and no longer as a distanced, self-reflexive and rational critique of media or media use. It first shows that in this perspective, subjects no longer (only) intentionally deal with media, but first and foremost become subjects in relation to medial apparatuses. In a second step I shall relate to contemporary artists of the so-called post-internet art. Their aesthetic practices have the potential to criticize (to question, reflect, or subvert) the entanglement of human beings into contemporary media-cultural environments.