Along with the New Year came the crossing of a threshold. Once the champagne and beer bottles had been dumped in the trash, we awoke to find ourselves in the latter half of the first decade of the 21st century. The Millennium is quickly fading into the distant past and rapid advances in technology push us to look to the future for inspiration.
This week Artshub is focusing attention on new media art and digital art to find out what is happening at the cutting edge of contemporary art, and equally important, what can we expect as we delve deeper into the 2100s?
One of the best places to discover new trends is at festivals, where progressive souls congregate to check out the latest innovations, keep a virtual eye on what’s hot, and get embroiled in some intense theoretical discourses.
This year Canada’s international New Forms Festival 06, to be held in the world’s most liveable city, Vancouver, looks at ‘the transformation of culture, art, and movement in media arts.’’
Among the many themes that will be explored during NFF 06 are Paradigm Shifts, Media Bending, and Traditions moving into technology. One of the aims of the NFF 06 conference series is to develop ‘a “post-traditional” framework for approaching the rich diversity of contemporary media arts as it bridges contemporary and traditional perspectives in broad intercultural and interdisciplinary terms.’ Suggesting that in the future we can expect digital art to reflect on the common source from which all art originates, and the notion of community that such an idea inevitably promotes. The deadline for submissions to NFF 06 is 1March.
To Germany now, and the submissions are all in at the Festival of Art and Digital Culture taking place at the Berlin Art Academy, 3 February to 19 March. The 19th ‘transmediale festival’ will explore the impact new media and technology has had on shaping society and contemporary art.
A central theme is Reality Addicts. Artists utilizing technology ‘to subvert the technological paradigm of reality.’ According to festival organisers, Reality Addicts ‘commit themselves to nonsense, and seek to multiply reality by means of exaggeration, rupture, distance, and ever new diversions.’ Are these people street artists, culture jammers, or hackers? The blurb is sufficiently vague that anyone around Berlin next month should spend the time and go check them out.
Of course, the other option is to look them up online. New media by its very nature has is very much at home on the Internet.
Communities of progressive artists, writers and media critics flourish all over the web. One of the first to emerge was the Fine Art Forum founded by Mark Amerika. Among the many impressive accolades to be accorded to Amerika, is that he earned the distinction, in 2000, of having Grammatron chosen as one of the first works of Internet art to be exhibited at the Whitney Biennial of American Art.
In an interview with Alt-X, Amerika says that after ten years creating digital he is now focusing on how that information is archived. Perhaps in a few years time we will start seeing a glut of online retrospectives?
Another excellent starting point from which to explore the world of new media art is Rhizome.org at the new museum of contemporary art. The front page works like a blog, containing posts about interesting happenings in the world of new media. It’s not uncommon for there to be ten new postings each day, which gives some indication of how fast the new media world is revolving on its axis.
New media art is like a hyperactive kid in a constantly evolving toy store. Prepare for pandemonium.
