New Media in Art - Essay Example

New Media in Art and Its Relation to the Concept of Time and Space Throughout the existence, the understanding of space and time has challenged mankind. During the last century the newest scientific theories and the researches in the structures of micro (quantum) and macro (the universe) seek to expand the boundaries of the visible space. As the result of the development of information and communication technologies, as we see today, the virtual space of the new media, the new frontier-free space stares at us. However, present reality, we unavoidably interfere with pervasive media, daily dividing the attention between the events in virtual (media) and physical (real) space. The merger of the digital and physical space alters not only our perception of space but also the sense of reality... (Space and Perception). Over the years, artists, scientists, media researchers and technology experts have shared their creative discoveries, theories and researches that have taken place in the fields related to space and perception. Identifying the common in these different views on realities and perception of space has lead to contextualizing and setting up the conceptual background for the development of emerging field of Mixed Reality. This has also activated the collaborative potential of art, and its relation to sciences, technology and other creative fields of present day society. In an attempt to root the theory of aesthetic experience of new media art, experiments to identify a "new philosophy" in a process to understand the new space have surfaced. The digital manipulation of space and time is indeed a revolutionary moment for philosophy (of art). Hansen has made his observations on the nature of embodied experience of new media (art) more precise in terms of philosophical aesthetics. (Hansen chapter 3-4) New media art is a genre that encompasses artworks created with new media technologies, including computer graphics, computer animation, the Internet, interactive technologies, robotics, and biotechnologies. The term differentiates itself by its resulting cultural objects, which can be seen in opposition to those deriving from old media arts, the traditional painting, sculpture, etc. New Media concerns are often derived from the telecommunications, mass media including the digital modes of delivery involving the artworks, with practices ranging from conceptual to virtual art, performance to installation. New Media generally applies to disciplines such as Digital art, Generative art, Hacktivism, Information art, Interactive art, Internet art, Performance art, Robotic art, Software art, Sound art, Video art, Virtual architecture and Video Game Art in the virtual space of the electronic media. (Wikipedia) Tracing the evolution of the concept of time in psychology from ancient to modern periods, a current and comprehensive review can be had on various physical, philosophical, and psychological theories and definitions of time, focusing on the methodological concerns of psychologists regarding the scientific investigation of time. Recalling the digital image, Hansen says : The image in a digital era is no more a cut into the flux of the real. It rather consists of processural realization of information in time where bodily intervention plays the constitutive, productive role of rendering of data. This fundamental reconfiguration of the image goes beyond many "interface" metaphors that have accompanied theories of new media claiming for "interactive access" to information. "In sum, the image can no longer be restricted to the level of surface appearance, but must be extended to encompass the entire process by which information is made perceivable through embodied experience." (Hansen 10) Following a notion of embodied perception, it is the human body that not only selectively filters images (Henri Bergson) but does create them in a process of enframing the digital information. Even though technical frames often appear to be primary they are rendered here secondary as a matter of principle. New media artists, in short, provide audience with laboratory environments in which "conversion of information into corporeally apprehensible images" (11) occurs, be these images visual, auditory or tactile. More significant, however, is a shift from the visual (perception-driven) to the affective registers that is explored in new media art and reflected throughout the whole book. Hansen tries "to tell the story of a fundamental shift in aesthetic experience from a model dominated by the perception of a self-sufficient object to one focused on the intensities of embodied affectivity, (12 - 13)" a phenomenological correlate of neural dynamics. It is affectivity of all human capacities that introduces the power of creativity into the sensorimotor body. Sensorimotor basis of the human body which is accorded a creative role to enframe digital information and generate images "independently of all pre-existent technical frames" (266). In his work, towards the final step linking bodily capacity to create space with a temporal basis of affectivity, Hansen concludes that contemporary new media art deals with digital images that are either absolute survey of bodily generated space, affective analogy of the warped space of the computer, or purely "subjective" images that can only be felt, being far from perceptually apprehensible objects. Visually impenetrable digital images, heterogeneous to the form of embodied human experience, catalyze affective regimes such as proprioception that receive "autonomy from and priority over perception. (206) In his review of Hansen, Pavel Sedlk reiterates : Indeed, what aesthetic experimentation with VR ultimately demonstrate is the capacity of new media art to accord the body new functionalities--including the extension of its capacity for self-intuition or spacing-- precisely by putting it into sensorimotor correlation with new environments, or more accurately, with unprecedented configuration of information. In this way, the body is transformed into a nondimensional, intensive site for a feedback loop with information, where, as we have seen, the output of the body and the output of information are locked into an ongoing recursive coupling. [] It is, accordingly, the body's affective autopoietic dimension--its capacity for absolute spacing--that accounts for the neurocultural function of new media art. (194 - 195)" For Hansen, virtual reality : "has the tendency to reterritorialize the body onto the face, or more exactly, to facialize access to datascapes with the result that, rather than being channelled through the body, these datascapes are (or appear to be) mediated by pure perception (vision unencumbered by anything bodily). (In this sense, VR helps demonstrate that the facializing logic we correlated with the human-computer interface draws its force less from specific technical limitations than from the longstanding ideological correlation of knowledge with vision.) This tendency places a fundamental constraint on the creative potential of the VR interface that, not insignificantly, coincides with a constraint endemic to Bergsons theory of perception: in both cases, the tendency to privilege vision has the effect of restricting what can be perceived (and thus what can be presented as perceivable virtual world) to what can be apprehended visually." (Consciousness, Literature and the Arts) It is interesting to quote Manovich here. He ratifies immobility of new media (cinema)as a default condition for human-computer interface in general and at the same time neutralizes its countertradition when including into a cinema definition also those "forms of visual culture that emphasize corporeal movement." (Manovich 34) But to few, the conventional constrain of rectangular framing that is assumed to co-define new media is not advocatable. In Hansens conception "data can be materialized in an almost limitless array of framings( boundless space); yet so long as it is tied to the image-frame of the cinema, this polymorphous potential will remain entirely untapped." (Hansen 35) Stephen Lawson, an other new media visual artist is one of the explorers of the very essence of the photographic medium. The materials and forms that Lawson sculpts are those of time and space. As his camera turns and incrementally records a scene as it transpires through time he shows changes in the subject, the light and the weather. According to him : "The concept of time and space constructed in the mind as much as in the eye of the viewer has brought me to the use of the camera for my art. These pieces (photographs) are four-dimensional in concept and execution, but are only two dimensional in their final presentation. The year, day and half-day length works could be thought of as a formal and concentrated gaze; the brief dynamic images as a glance, in the turn of a head, as the eye sees before the mind shapes this to a visual memory. The work is presented in a poetic mode that has one stand briefly outside the flow of time, hopefully causing us to reflect on our 'time-in-the-world', individually, culturally, and as a species." (Andrew Patrizio) However, the obvious differences between artists working in new media and the vast array of approaches taken within these forms (from cd-roms to light projections to large-scale sculptural installations) should not lead us away from the fact that the presentation of these works rely for their intended effects on the perceptual experiences of spectators accustomed to living in a society of spectacle and simulation. The works share important qualities with forms of consumerist spectacle ranging from the new interactive Science Centers for kids to themed restaurants designed in the fashion of cartoon worlds. The range of effects created by new media in today's world engages viewers in a unique manner, taking advantage of our fascination with novel forms of virtual experience. One result of the development of the new mediums of art (in consumer culture as well as in presentation) is that beliefs that may otherwise fall under scrutiny can be re-affirmed through spectacle while mesmerizing the audience. In the last century, the way we think about space and how we deal with it, has changed thoroughly. Until the end of the 19th century the notion of space was based on a material interpretation: the emphasis lay on its physical delimitation. Vermeirs installation 'Ambulante architectuur', at Netwerk Galerij in Aalst (1999), explores the boundaries of this traditional concept of time. The artist reconstructed the first blueprint design of the gallery as well as the renovations that were never realized, by using black elastic thread and aluminum capillary tubes. He created a delicate web of contours, inciting the visitor to start a spatial discovery that leads via apparent door openings, windows and partitions to the gallery's past, present and future. This way, the visitors developed a spatial insight through their own bodily presence. This complex perception arises without any form of technology: with a few simple threads an intensive suggestion of the architecture is created. With this novel media installation Katleen Vermeir illustrates how little you sometimes need to bring about strong spatial experiences and physical sensations of space. This is the strength of new media. Wikipedia simplifies for us : The Internet, telematics, and interactive media are changing the ways artists and curators work. The origins of new media art can be traced to the moving photographic inventions of the late 19th Century such as the zoetrope (1834), the praxinoscope (1877) and Eadweard Muybridge's zoopraxiscope (1879). During the 1960s the divergence with the history of cinema came with the video art experiments of Nam June Paik and Wolf Vostell, and multimedia performances of Fluxes. More recently, the term "new media" has become closely associated with the term Digital Art, and has converged with the history and theory of computer-based practices. Some important influences on new media art have been the theories developed around hypertext, databases, and networks. Important thinkers in this regard have been Vannevar Bush and Theodor Nelson with important contributions from the literary works of Jorge Luis Borges, Italo Calvino, Julio Cortzar and Douglas Cooper. These elements have been especially revolutionary for the field of narrative and anti-narrative studies, leading explorations into areas such as non-linear and interactive narratives. (wikipedia) Digital art is art created on a computer in digital form. Digital art can be purely computer-generated, such as fractals, or taken from another source, such as a scanned photograph, or image drawn using vector graphics. Though technically the term may be applied to art done using other media or processes and merely scanned in, it is usually reserved for art that has been non-trivially modified by a computing process. The availability and popularity of photograph manipulation software has lead to a vast and creative library of highly modified images, many bearing little or no hint of the original. 3D graphics created via the process of designing complex imagery from geometric shapes, polygons or NURBS curves to create realistic 3 dimensional shapes, objects and scenes for use in various media such as film, television, print, rapid prototyping and the special visual effects is altogether a new booming art form. The new media has provided the technology that enables collaboration, lending itself to sharing and nurturing by a creative effort similar to the open source movement, and the creative commons in which users can collaborate in a project to create unique pieces of art while being separated by space and time. Nonetheless, digital art is yet to gain the acceptance and regard reserved for "serious" artforms such as sculpture, painting and drawing that have established and recognized spatial properties over centuries. In music, a concept of time is expressed and experienced in different structural properties, in the quality and quantity of sound and sound events, and most importantly in the relationships that govern the interaction and organization of these musical units. Concepts of unmeasured time, quantified time, linear and non-linear time (Kramer), cyclic time, spatial and durational time, are levels of perceived temporalities representing various philosophies and views of either physical and metaphysical realities. In musical discourse, time is reflected in the almost infinite variety of musical elements and concepts of organizational hierarchies and non-hierarchies. (Hajime Nakamura 81) Computers are also commonly used to make music, especially electronic music, since they present a powerful way to arrange and create sound samples. It is possible that general acceptance of the value of digital art will progress in much the same way as the increased acceptance of electronically produced music over the last three decades. Overnight, the prerequisites of becoming a good composer have reduced, as through the trial and error and frequent changes, you can manipulate the various instruments, the octaves, the rhythms, the notes needed to create a composition. These can be stored and infinitely worked upon irrespective of time barrier. These can be converted into electronic format and played over and over again, in the same fashion, without any ned for human interference for maintaining quality. Suddenly the real time has been pushed a long back as the new media reign. Some say we are now in a post digital era, where digital technologies are no longer a novelty in the art world, and "the medium is no longer the message". Digital tools have now become an integral part of the process of making art. As silicon-dry digital media converges with wet biological systems, Roy Ascott has pointed to the emergence of a "moistmedia" substrate for 21st century art. Digital Photography and digital printing is now an acceptable medium of creation and presentation by major museums and galleries, and the work of digital artists is gaining ground, through robotic installation, net art and software art. But the work of digital painters and printmakers is beginning to find acceptance as the output capabilities advance and quality increases. Internationally many museums are now beginning to collect digital art. It is interesting to learn that it is these pictorial effects which are first discussed in Classical antiquity as part of the theory of art. Plato in his Republic shows himself fully aware of these so-called illusionistic effects, even though he deplores this possibility because it leads away from truth (Plato, 449). One of his examples is scene-painting, which, he says, is an exploitation of the weakness of our nature, because - we may supplement his argument - it is capable of conjuring up a three-dimensional building on a flat plane. (R.L. Gregory and E.H. Gombrich 139) We know from the Roman author Vitruvius that Democritus and Anaxagoras wrote about the theory of these effects which resulted in scene-painting achieving the illusion of reality. (Vitruvius 71) There are a number of passages in ancient authors which testify to the surprise and delight created by these effects, not only on the stage but also in easel paintings. Thus Pliny singles out for special mention a painting by the famous Apelles representing Alexander the Great wielding a thunderbolt, in which - as he says - the fingers appear to protrude out of the picture and the thunderbolt to hover in the air in front of the painting (Pliny 92). Here, in these references also, we are dealing with virtual reality but in an older medium which was novel in its own time and depicted space in a different than normal manner. Since Gutenberg's press, commercial printing had produced a flood of pamphlets, newspapers, and books, reproducing multiple copies of the artworks at a fraction of time. Lithography, a medium of making prints was overnight transformed into a fast, automatic machine. The new printed forms emerged. Newspaper, one of new media hybrid - accelerated the change with its narrow focus on now, overwhelming the historic sense of the past one might find in a handwritten manuscript. Its readers had the world brought to them - the space of everyone's world shrank, and their time horizons with it. Now with the advent of internet, we can have any required information sitting at any place on earth at any convenient time. (John Keane) This information is processed and developed further collectively. Virtual togetherness refers to the shared feeling of belonging to the same virtual community and being able to fully capitalize on its resources. Virtual togetherness illustrates the feeling of being "present" on the Web, despite time and space separation. Many argue that telepresence first referred to industrial remote control systems but that it now also implies virtual reality and interaction among geographically separated members of a group. They also refer to persons present in a conference only via telecommunications: "[A prototype of virtual reality teleconference] allows a person to sit at a table in front of a curved screen, put on a glove and a pair of glasses and find themselves in a virtual conference situation with other people with whom they can talk, shake hands and interact. The other people are not physically present any more than they would be if they were in a conventional teleconference." (Tiffin & Rajasingham 1995, 139) Social presence, in Tammelin's analysis (1998), is concerned with a larger social context, including motivation and social interaction both serve as good catalysts to produce artistic works of high caliber. (Tiffin & Rajasingham 139) Many theories about time have been formulated from a universal. as well as more specific and exclusive viewpoints, not only to explain time as both a cognitive and natural phenomenon, but more importantly, as one having a profound influence on the thinking, modes of perception, and in fact the entire conduct of societies and entire civilizations, but also on the nature and distinctiveness of their achievements and contributions to the life and history of mankind. As expressed in five levels of temporality', a scale of temporal cognition ranges from an absence of time (atemporality) to a consciousness of time in concrete segments and active units (noo-temporality). (J. T. Fraser) Another view is empirically supported by various ethnological and anthropological studies. This view holds the idea that each level of temporality may be perceived independently of, or more significantly than, another, such that this unique perception creates the cultural boundaries that provide identity and aesthetic particularity to different expressive practices. New media is giving us many such worlds at different levels of cognition, interaction and with different perceptions. The art in various games and virtual interactive worlds is a perfect example of such an independent space, neither true nor unbelievable but still existing and interacting with the audience. Time in such a world, presents a different realm altogether as in being a repetitive, finite and controllable entity that also interacts. A game may be played over and over again, in the same or a different fashion and the time and space for a particular junction at a particular scene in a particular level are preserved, they can be same for each time you visit them as their controls are fixed and behave equally with all the users in a similar fashion. New media can be a confusing experience giving our sense of traditional space and time a new perspective. Although a boundary between the real and virtual worlds exists but who can say it can not easily be subdued by overexposure leading to multiple psychotic disorders at times. To a reader of the 21st century, there is an obvious tone of anticipation for innovative technologies present in the text of The Invention of Morel, although it would have possibly been overlooked (or not viewed as such) by Adolfo Bioy Casares's contemporaries. They would have noticed the explicit discourse related to existing technologies (such as the radio, which for the narrator is a device with the purpose of satisfying the aural sense), but an underlying, implicit technological structure is present as well. In the widely disseminated treatise, "As We May Think," Vannevar Bush made a call for continuing developments in the world of technological innovations. Looking back on this work, today's reader can interpret Bush's words with more significance than the reader of 1945 likely did, assigning more value to the thoughts he presented because we see the physical manifestations of what were-at the time-only visions of his imagination. These two contemporaries, although unknown to each other, created works that nearly predicted some of the technologies that are available today. What they wrote came true, in a sense. The 21st century computer user has experienced a transformation to adapt to the new concepts of space and time present in the recently available technologies. Beginning with avant-garde video experiments as far back as the late 1960s and the early 1970s, artists have found new ways to treat space and time by manipulating what is viewed on a screen. One achievement of such experiments is the demonstration that technology allows its users to be "everywhere while really being nowhere" (Kathy Rae Huffman 203). In literature, "The fantastic", as a genre, created similar apertures for its readers. Along with other categories of literature-such as science fiction-there is a distinguishable acceptance of the "other," in this case another world in which temporal and spatial realities function in unanticipated manners. (Todorov Tzvetan) Space is no longer as concrete as thought about prior to experiments in new media. Our current "understanding of territory is undergoing rapid and fundamental changes," There are now non-spaces and non-places out there. You can go to these places, but not physically. We can travel through cyberspace and visit sites all over the world, but where have we really gone The answer to this question tends to be nowhere and everywhere. This occurs with participants in virtual environments as well. A consideration is presented by Craig D. Murray about the presence of people in a virtual environment. Their presence is sought out by computer users as an important quality for creating a sense of space. Without people, the space seems too empty or unrealistic. As Murray discovered in his study, people do bring real-world understanding to a virtual environment. In online massive multiplayer games we only see what the game engines produce in the game's "real" world, and as a user, we do not see the real, physical bodies of the other participants within the space that we occupy, the others were there in that space during a different time interval. What we view is the disembodiments of the people with whom we wish to interact. This virtual environment is created by all users of the Net, a society that includes those who are the hermits of the Net as well as the more sociable members. New media has transformed the perception of time and space to a new frontier for the next generations, the artists and masses of the coming centuries will be equally awed at the non-presence of media they are so used to and static perceptions of time and space of yesteryears as the prehistoric would awe at the advancements of technology, art and its media today. Works cited International Symposium on Mixed Reality. SPACE AND PERCEPTION: International Symposium on Mixed Reality, May 20-21, 2005, Riga, Latvia. Hansen, Mark B. N., New Philosophy for New Media. London, The MIT Press: 2004. Sedlk, Pavel. Consciousness, Literature and the Arts, Archive, Volume 5 Number 3, December2004. Manovich, Lev. The Language of New Media. The MIT Press; 1 Mit Pr edition, 2001. Patrizio, Andrew. "What Memory Looks Like", from Change by Degrees. 1992. Plato. Republic, X, 602, Loeb Classical Library, Vol. II, p. 449. R.L. Gregory and E.H. Gombrich. Illusion in Nature and Art, London: 1973. Vitruvius. Architecture, VII, 10, Loeb Classical Library, p. 71). Pliny. Natural History, XXXV. Keane, John. The Media and Democracy. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1991. Tammelin, M. 1998. From Telepresence to Social Presence: The Role of Presence in a Network-Based Learning Environment. In Tella, S. (ed.) Aspects of Media Education: Strategic Imperatives in the Information Age. Media Education Centre. Department of Teacher Education. University of Helsinki. Media Education Publication 8. Tiffin, J. & Rajasingham, L. 1995. In search of the virtual class: Education in an information society. London: Routledge. J. T. Fraser, F. C. Haber, N. Lawrence. Time, Science, and Society in China and the West. University of Massachusetts Press, Amherst, MA:1986. Hajime Nakamura, "Time in Indian and Japanese Thought", in J. T. Fraser, ed., The Voices of Time, 2nd ed. Amherst: The University of Massachusetts Press, 1981. Bioy Casares, Adolfo. The Invention of Morel and Other Stories. Ruth L.C. Simms, trans. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1964. Murray, Craig D., et al. Navigation, Wayfinding and Place Experience within a Virtual City. Presence 9.5, 2000. Bush, Vannevar. As We May Think. Electronic Culture: Technology and Visual Representation. Timothy Druckrey, ed. New York: Aperture, 1996. Todorov, Tzvetan. The Fantastic: A Structural Approach to a Literary Genre. Richard Howard, trans. Ithaca, NY: n.a. Read More