New Media Art, Postmedia Art

Andrey Kuznetsov

Freiburg i.Br.

2018

Content

The World is changingTransition to active media

From Duchamp to TuringFrom nonliving to living matter

New aesthetics - New worriesArthur Clarke & Isaac Asimov

New media artNo aesthetics foundNew Media Art vs. Postmodern Art

Postmedia perspectivePostmedia Art ManifestoCollect, remix, contributeMiniaturization & Embedded ArtDIY Art & Open Source Art

Conclusion

Simon Wachsmuth, Rain, 2000, fragment

The World is changing

INNOVATION in Culture, a smartplaces conference, ZKM Karlsruhe, Germany,

1-2 March 2018

Three phases of digitalization1) Mathematisation of Physics• Isaac Newton: Philosophiae Naturalis

Principia Mathematica, 1686• Joseph-Louis de Lagrange: Mécanique

analytique, 17882) Mathematisation of Logic• Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz: De

progressione Dyadica, 1679• George Boole: An Investigation of the

Laws of Thought, 1854• Bertrand Russell, Alfred North

Whitehead: Principia Mathematica, 1910-13

• Alan Turing: On Computable Numbers, 1936

3) Implementation of Electronics• Claude Shannon: A Symbolic Analysis of

Relay and Switching Circulus, 1937

From Duchamp to Turing

Duchamp Land Turing Land

Marcel Duchamp's readymades art Alan Turing's computational theory

idea algorithm

the Postmodern Art World the New Media Art World

content-oriented technology oriented

complex simple

ironic lacking in irony

From nonliving to living matter

Michelangelo, David, 1501-4

Eduardo Kac, Alba, 1999

New aesthetics

The New Aesthetics is a term, coined by James Bridle, used to refer to the increasing appearance of the visual language of digital technology and the Internet in the physical world, and the blending of virtual and physical

Google Maps image of a plane flying over Hyde Park, Chicago, 2010

New worries

• The New Aesthetics is a product of the collective intelligence. It was born digital, on the Internet. It’s diffuse, distributed, and made of many small pieces freely joined

• There is no separation between real and digital life

• We still suffer from complexity of software and our lack of metaphorical language to describe it. The code is usually bigger than a single human being can understand

• The unrepresentability of computation is a significant worry. This is incidental to undecidable problems in the theoretical computer science and with uncomputable functions

• The AI supplant the human, replacing him with digital automation, effectively removing living labor from the production process

Arthur Clarke & Isaac Asimov

Arthur Charles Clarke‘s three laws of science

1. When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong

2. The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is venture a little way past them into the impossible

3. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic

Isaac Asimov‘s three laws of robotics

1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm

2. A robot must obey orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law

3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law

New Media Art

New media art refers to artworks created with new media technologies, including digital art, computer graphics, computer animation, virtual art, Internet art, interactive art, video games, computer robotics, 3D printing, cyborg art and art as biotechnology

The New Media Art is an incubator for the other art worlds, creating the ideal conditions for the development of advanced, risky, financially unsustainable or aesthetically challenging works

No aesthetics found

The New Aesthetics Meme lives online, which means that any physical thing or event it holds is a digital representation of that thing or event

At the core of New Media Art is the question of how culture is accepting digital technology?

Representing digital artefacts in the physical world is a common artistic strategy to address this question

New Media could never be understood from a strictly art-historical perspective: the history of technology plays an important role in this art’s formation and reception

Aram Bartholl, Dead Drops, 2010-12

New Media Art vs. Postmodern Art• technique vs. idea

• science vs. business

• free vs. rich

• ephemerality vs. permanence

• blogpost vs. exhibition

• sharing vs. owning

• open source vs. property rights

• hacking vs. ivory tower

• algorithmic agents vs. artist

• practice vs. politics

Amy Karle, Regenerative Reliquary, 2016

Andy Warhol, Marilyn Monroe, 1967

Art + Experiment

“Make art that is smelly, engaging, alive, hypnotic, ironic, ephemeral, thought-provoking, not boring, post-human, unconventional, relaxing, growing, challenging, dark, unfinished, investigative, observing, and experimental.” -Theresa Schubert

Postmedia Art Manifesto

1. New media art that cannot create any more an aesthetically meaningful or artistically inspirational works beyond a mere presentation of technological advancement2. The end of art took the art to run out of its authoritarian regime of intelligentsias, and toward the convergence of various cultural modalities and media. What we call the art today refers to not the object in a white cube, but the cultural practice encompassing various cultural phenomenon of the society3. Postmedia art incorporates contemporary cultural trends, tastes, and various cultural forms (game, movie, web, graphic design, etc.) and remediate them. Media and art are the mixture of different facets of our culture4. We throw away the authoritarian, pedantic and intellectual practices of the past in the contemporary art scene, while promoting artistic indefiniteness, uncertainty, and open semantic approach

Postmedia Art Manifesto

5. We pursue perceptual, emotional, conceptual and empirical interactions. 'Communication' can only be achieved through the interaction6. We admit the co-existence between human and machinery7. We are against 'spectacle'-obsessed modern culture, 'popular list entertainment' and totalitarian mass communication8. Our job is to find an answer to the question: What should be the art for in the present era?9. Technologies unleash our imagination10. We are in the pursuit of spiritual experience in the new media place

Collect, remix, contribute

• Every new idea is just a remix of one or more previous ideas

• “We don’t know where we get our ideas from. What we do know is that we do not get them from our laptops.” - John Cleese

Here is a trick: draw two parallel lines on a piece of paper:

How many lines are there? There are the first line and the second line, but there is a line of negative space that runs between them: 1 + 1 = 3. Amazing!

Mixed Media Art

• Art is about exploration, pushing boundaries and discovering who you are

• Mixed Media artists are the green artists. Reuse and recycle everything you can!

• Be influenced by scientific concepts and the nature of materials

• Put both realistic and expressionistic elements into the same painting

• See the potential in a piece with fresh eyes that can lead in a new direction

Sandra Duran Wilson, LAND OF OZ, 2012

Miniaturization

• Miniaturization is the trend to manufacture ever smaller mechanical, optical and electronic devices

• In electronics, Moore's Law predicted that the number of transistors on an integrated circuit doubles every 18 months. This enables processors to be built in smaller sizes

Embedded Art

Embedded Art is based on the miniaturization of electronic devices as well as on nanotechnology and biotechnology in global perspective. The idiom "embedded art" is formed from the terms such as embedded electronics and visual art. The aim of this concept and art direction is to bring the aesthetics and spirituality of art into everyday objects. Historical roots could be traced to the Russian Constructivism and the German Bauhaus. Embedded art can also be considered as a further development of Dada and Conceptual Art. This kind of contemporary art actively makes use of generative design and algorithms

Embedded Art, VHS Freiburg

Andrey Kuznetsov, Embedded Art, VHS Freiburg, Germany, 8.1-2.2.2018

https://youtu.be/T41L2KJi58k

DIY Art

• Do it yourself (DIY) is the method of building, modifying, or repairing things without the direct help of experts

• DIY is related to the Arts and Crafts movement, in that it offers an alternative to modern consumer culture

Open Source Art

• The open-source model encourages the open collaboration. A main principle here is the peer production with the documentation freely available to public

• The open-source movement began as a response to limitations of property rights

Leanne L, Cat and Bird, 2013, acrylic painting on canvas,

silhouette painting, YouTube

Conclusion

1. The New Media Art does not produce art, but tests the new mediums for the future

2. The major achievements happened outside the art, involving individuals who do not see themselves as artists, but as researchers

3. Technology is not good or bad, it depends on the use case4. Technology may provide new ways to art 5. Making art can be like finding the right puzzle pieces to put

together6. Sometimes the results are unstable and far from archival7. The ideas are endless. We want to create and have fun8. “Aesthetics is to artists what ornithology is to birds” - Barnett

Newman

Reading

• David M. Berry, Michel van Dartel, Michael Dieter, Michelle Kasprzak, Nat Muller, Rachel O'Reilly, José Luis de Vicente, New Aesthetic New Anxieties. Michelle. Book Sprint, 2012, P. 72

• Domenico Quaranta, Beyond New Media Art. LINK Editions, 2013, P. 290• Austin Kleon, Steal Like An Artist. Adams Media, 2014, P. 160• Darlene Olivia Mcelroy, Sandra Duran Wilson, Mixed Media Revolution: Creative

Ideas For Reusing Your Art. North Light Books, 2012, P. 144 • Andrew Kuznetsov, Microcomputing for art. Automation and Instrumentation:

Problems and Solutions, Sevastopol, Russia, 11-15 September 2017, P. 157-158

Future development

INNOVATION in Culture, a smartplaces conference, ZKM Karlsruhe, Germany, 1-2 March 2018