Approaching a Material for Expression in the Aesthetics of New Media

Symposium:

• ISEA2008: 14th International Symposium on Electronic Art

• Approaching a Material for Expression in the Aesthetics of New Media

• Geoffrey Alan Rhodes
• Caitlin Fisher

Venue(s):

• Singapore Management University, Seminar Room, Singapore, Singapore

• In 1972, media theorist Rosalind Krauss described the new material for expression in emerging video art as a narcissistic circuit– a circuit that includes the performer and their own live mediation. With the current emergence of artistic expression in mixed and augmented reality, a new material for expression is offered that creates a circuit with the digital processor. This new circuit of expression both expands and frustrates the traditional relationship of artist to material: the translation of performance in to code forces the performer into relationship with the black-box of the machine, where the only true analogues occur in total failure: system crashes, noise, and other collapses. The embedding of the performer in the circuit of capture-process-render requires new attitudes for expression in media that can be found in a survey of current new media art practices; the filter as abstract expression, the virtual as the paranormal, and interactivity as identification are among the solutions found.

Category:

• Artist Talk