If you were taught a more physical, tangible type of art since a young age such as painting or sculpture, you feel safer knowing that you are in control and know how to work in that medium. But once you suddenly find that you can also create this art by using a digital program or media, the feeling is that you don’t know how to maneuver through it. You feel lost. “As soon as you learn how to navigate it, then it becomes effortless and actually inspiring and enlightening.” (Paul Levinson)
There are many different ways for one to interpret the term, new media. It can be any kind of art created with the use of modern technology. Digital art, the Internet, computer animation, robotic art, and virtual art, just to name a few forms of New Media, allow a viewer to interact and experience in a non-traditional way. Things that were considered amazing and very modern in the past are now considered Old Media. New media artworks can be further manipulated and changed through interactivity of an artist and the audience.
New media is ever changing and is ever lasting. People feel like new media can be a bad thing because they feel like it is taking over the world. New media for some artists is like culture shock. It can have its good points and have its negative points. Different theories and understandings of new media neither disagree nor agree but exist simultaneously.
Sources:
- “Media professor/expert Paul Levinson on new media influence“, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqZNGYit3kY
- http://ryerson.ca/undergraduate/admission/downloads/RU_ImageArts.pdf
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_media
- http://newmedia.engl.iastate.edu/about/what_is_new_media
- http://rebuildingmedia.corante.com/archives/2006/04/27/what_is_new_media.php
- Heartney, Eleanor, Art & Today, Phaidon Press, 2008
- Manovich, Lev, The Language of New Media, http://www.manovich.net/LNM/Manovich.pdf
Could you be more specific about who those people are who feel that new media is a bad thing? How can it be ‘taking over the world.’ What does that mean? What are the different theories that exist simultaneously? What do you think about this? If you were to synthesize your sources how would that expand your thinking about new media? Do you agree with Levinson? Does new media only refer to art? If it is ever changing how can it be ever lasting? Isn’t new media by nature ephemeral?