Arts 12 Paper 1
From using the hyperlinks in the papers I learned a lot about things mentioned that I had never heard of previously. One interesting thing that I took away from the reading was the idea of the redefinition of the image as a “figure-ground opposition between a non-interactive, passive ground and active icons and hyperlinks.” No longer is an image something one purely looks at but is also an interactive entity with hot spots that break up the image into regions that can be hyperlinked to connect with other pages. This is an example of Manovich’s fourth proposition that new media is a mix between existing cultural conventions and the conventions of software in that a “human-computer interaction is superimposed over an older representational convention.”
I agree that the gallery has an important role in making this art visible. By not displaying new media art it is as if the galleries are not acknowledging its existence. We can’t ignore the fact that we live in the 21st century where we use technology to do everything including to create art. The new media art revolution has begun and there’s no turning back. If we don’t display new media art, then we aren’t making any true artistic progression. Where will the future generations of artists find motivation to share more new ways to make art that they will discover if there is no formal acknowledgement of current revolutionary practices? If galleries aren’t properly equipped for displaying new media art as Gere states, they should be striving towards being able to do so because it would “enhance and deepen our understanding of artistic developments in the postwar era.”
While it is true that the internet has eased our navigation of art through hyperlinking, this doesn’t mean new media art shouldn’t be displayed in galleries just because we can easily access it at home on our computers. The internet can be a very informal place and if that is the only place we can find new media art I don’t think the artists will be receiving the full credit they deserve. It would be so easy for viewers to not realize the full potential of the work they view on the internet if they can be distracted by other webpages or computer programs they may have. I think that by including new media art in galleries it would legitimize these new artists and give them a distinct place to display their work away from the internet so that viewers can understand the true integrity of the artist and their work.
