“The stable foundation has shifted and in some cases even fallen away, not only in art but also in politics, economics, agriculture, the sciences, history, climate, the credit system, and so on.” Arjen Mulder stated this in his short essay “The Age of Instability”, and what he means is that we live in an environment where everything you can think of is constantly changing and new things are being created through out the years. This clearly affects how we way we organize, display, and archive new media or anything we want to keep records of to preserve them for the future. Furthermore, the Internet is the solution of how we view new media arts. Most would come to a conclusion that we need structure, but instability does not always mean chaos! With instability, there is an innovation of art and culture that “sparks your imagination,” which leads to new creations of an “unknown outcome,” “self-organization, and “finding your own path.” It is important to consider the artist’s and the viewer’s perspective of what they believe a piece can be placed as. An artist can all of sudden create a new type of art, but how is that organized?
Although it is difficult to place the different kinds of new media art into single categories, it is important to preserve and display them for the viewers experience of today and for the experiences of the future. This is the reason why the Internet is the best way to organize, display, and the archive new media. There needs to be paths one can choose to know what type of art they are looking at. The way to do this is by letting people have ways of accessing the new media art. In the past there have been several art pieces that not even galleries were able to keep track of; some art pieces were never revealed or were even forgotten. As technology changes, art has taken advantage of it and integrated technology in the final creation. Johannes Birringer mentions in the assembled articles that dancing is known to be dancing among other moving bodies whether in a rehearsal studio, on stage, or in the street but has transformed with an opportunity to “explore interactive environments, virtual places, and integrated methods.” Art is changing and the way they are being displayed has to change too!
A specific way the Internet can organize new media art is by having virtual galleries. Within those galleries, the artist can “tag” what they believe their piece falls under. There are many perspectives of an art piece and having one category is absolutely NOT going to be effective and sufficient. In Manovich’s third proposition “New Media as Digital Data Controlled by Software,” he states how the “principle of variability” may exist in potentially infinite different states. This is clearly saying that there will be several versions of a certain media art, which can be manipulated easily. Charlie Green mentions in “New Media Art and the Gallery in the Digital Age” how institutions have failed to consider the long history of artist using new technologies in their work. As mentioned before, this is why the Internet would keep an archive of anything the viewer wants to search for. The importance of having this organization is to have the viewers experience and interpret what they believe the new media art is portraying. Overall, with the Internet as the primary source of organizing technology, the “weight of contact” can be spread across several distances and create various emotional reactions.
Arjen Mulder: The Age of Instability
Charlie Gere: New Media Art and the Gallery in the New Media Age
Johannes Birringer: Dance and Media Technologies
Lev Manovich: New Media from Borges to HTML
