A small collection of categories and keywords of new media art

As a starting point for discussion, here is a table of a range of working categories. These are not intended to be comprehensive, or even directly comparable (some are from databases, some are from books or articles). All discussion and contributions are welcome via the CRUMB web site forcurators of new media art.

Last updated 27 Aug 2004. Beryl Graham.

 

Rhizome Artbase <http://rhizome.org/>

 

Prix Ars Electronica <http://www.aec.at/>

 

Multimediale Award Competition <http://www.transmediale.de>

 

Frieling, Rudolf Dieter Daniels, editors (2000) Media Art Interaction: The 1980s and 1990s in Germany. Vienna: Springer.

 

Langlois Centre for Research and Documentation database: Artworks section <http://www.fondation-langlois.org/>

 

Manovich, Lev (2003) "New media from Borges to HTML." In: Noah Wardrip-Fruin and Nick Montfort (eds.) The new media reader. Cambridge USA: MIT. 13-25.

 

Wilson, Stephen (2001) Information Arts. Cambridge: MIT.

 

Paul, Christiane  (2003) Digital Art. London: Thames and Hudson.

 

Dietz, Steve (1999) "Why have there been no great net artists?" Through the Looking Glass: Critical texts. Available from URL: <http://www.voyd.com/ttlg/textual/dietz.htm>.

 

Manovich, Lev (2001) The Language of New Media. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT.

 

Tribe, Mark (4th June 2004) Mapping Intensities. [Seminar]. London: Centre for Cultural Studies, Goldsmiths College.

Categories

 

Keywords

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Art: linked or cloned.


Texts

3d
access
animation
archive
art world
artificial life
audio
bio
body
broadcast
browser
CD-ROM
censorship
cinema
colonialism
commercialization
community
conference
corporate
death
design
desire
digital
disappearance
education
email
exhibition
film
free software
fund
futurism
game
gender
globalization
hacker
identity
immersion
interact
interface
Internet
labor
language
live
machine
marginality
media activism
meme
memory
nature
net.art
network
nostalgia
open source
performance
posthuman
postmodern
privacy
public space
publish
queer
radio
representation
resistance
responsibility
robot
rumor
security
social space
space
surveillance
tactical media
technophobia
television
Third World
underground
utopia
video
virtual reality
virus
VRML
War
wireless

Digital Communities.

Computeranimation / Visual Effects.
 
Digital Musics.

Interactive Art.

Net Vision.

 

(pre 2004)

Image.

Interaction.

Software.

sonic
visual
tactile
interactive
reactive
auto-active
participatory
generative
performative
connective
mobile
portable
local
distributive
interface
database
hack
DIY
software
online
social
political
archival
installation
tool
instrument
device
game
documentary
immersive
communal
narrative
linear
non-linear
shared

other ____
other ____

Chapter headings:

 

Video/Concepts

Action/Music/Crossculture

Interaction/Art

Networking/Strategy

 

FROM accompanying CD (a database of artworks):

 

Users can search using three fields:

 

1. Medium/Context. Keywords include:

Public art

Multimedia

Stage

Film

Installation

Environment

Internet

 

2. Dates

 

3. Themes/Content. Keywords include:

East/West

Feminism

Closed Circuit

GDR

Document.

Individual.

Organisation.

Event.

Artwork.

DLF project.

Art:
Architecture
Choreography
Cinema
Collage
Computer Animation
Computer Art
Computer-generated images
Design
Drawing
Electronic Art
Film Installation
Hologram
Installation
Light Art
Multimedia performance
Mural
Music
Network art
New Media Installation
Painitng
Perfromance
Photography
Photomontage
Poster
Robotics
Sculpture
Sound Art
Theatre Play
Video
Video Installation
Web site

8 answers to "what is new media?"

1. New Media versus Cyberculture.
2. New Media as Computer Technology Used as a Distribution Platform.
3. New Media as Digital Data Controlled By Software.
4. New Media as the Mix between Existing Cultural Conventions and the Conventions of Software.
5. New Media as the Aesthetics That Accompanies the Early Stage of Every New Modern Media And Communication Technology.
6. New Media as Faster Execution of Algorithms Previously Executed Manually or Through Other Technologies.
7. New Media as the Encoding of Modernist Avant Garde: New Media as Metamedia.
8. New Media as Parallel Articulation of Similar Ideas in Post-WWII Art and Modern Computing.

 

Chapter headings:

Biology: Microbiology, Animals and Plants, Ecology, and Medicine and the
Body.

Physics, Nonlinear Systems, Nanotechnology, Materials Science, Geology,
Astronomy, Space Science, Global Positioning System, and Cosmology.


Algorithms, Mathematics, Fractals, Genetic Art, and Artificial Life.


Kinetics, Sound Installations, and Robots


Telecommunications


Digital Information Systems/Computers

 

Digital Technologies as a Tool: Digital Imaging; Photography and Print; Sculpture.

Digital Technologies  as a Medium:  Installation; Film, Video and Animation; Internet art and Nomadic Networks; Software Art; Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality; Sound and Music.

Themes in Digital Art: Artificial Life; Artificial Intelligence and Intelligent Agents; Telepresence, telematics, and Telerobotics; Body and Identitiy; Databases, Data Visualisation, and Mapping; Beyond the Book; Gaming; Tactical Media, Activism and Hacktivism; Technologies of the Future.

 

Interactivity.

Connectivity.

Computability.

 

Principles of New Media

1. Numerical Representation

2. Modularity

3. Automation

4. Variability

5. Transcoding

 

Tendencies of new media art (in groups):

Conceptual / Dematerialised / Encoded

Interactive / Participatory / Socialised

Non-linear / Hypertextual

Simulated / Virtual / Telepresent

Identity-play (disembodiment)

Sampled / Appropriated / Open

Distributed / Peer to Peer / Rhizomatic

Interdisciplinary / Convergent / Blur boundaries