What are the "new" media arts in history?

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Like sofas and tanks, the concept of contemporary art is a foreign word. As early as 19 13 years ago, Duchamp had put The wheels on wooden chairs, and new york also started the now famous "armory art exhibition" (The

armoury

Therefore, modern and contemporary art has a hundred years of orthodox history in the western world, and its theoretical level, artistic expression ability and mass aesthetic level are all experienced in time and quantity. And in their view, it has become commonplace, even the New media art (New

Media art is still little known in Chinese mainland. Many students majoring in new media art don't know how to explain what they are learning to their family and friends.

So, what is the new media art doing?

First of all, new media art is a very big concept category, which belongs to a new form of expression of contemporary art, and as the name implies, new media technology is an indispensable part of it. According to the professional interpretation, new media art mainly refers to those artistic works that pay attention to the use of modern technology, new media forms and new ways of watching to express the theme of the works. The concept of new media art can be subdivided into many specific branches according to different media, mainly including: digital art

Art), computer graphics, computer animation,

Keywords virtual art, network art, interactive art,

Video games, computer robots), 3D printing,

There are also works of art using applied biotechnology (as the art of biotechnology).

Every concept listed above can be taken out as a professional subject. In western art colleges, it is usually a semester of professional training and art experiments to learn a certain form of expression. The complex, accurate and effective subdivision just shows the development degree of western contemporary art in the new media art form; Just like the Hollywood film industry, the degree of specialization of each job directly represents the benign development level of the whole industry.

There are many media branches that intersect, and general new media works of art will also use a variety of technologies, making use of multiple impressions of viewers, involving several professional fields. Therefore, in a broader understanding, people usually refer to new media works of art as "Digital art" (digital

Art); Or according to another more fashionable definition, new media art also belongs to "time art"

Art). In the definition of "time art", works of art introduce the concept of time into the process of creation and understanding of works. In our three-dimensional life, there is an invisible dimension that actually plays an important role. This invisible but ubiquitous "fourth force" is time.

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Time has always been the research theme of various scientists and humanistic artists. In astrophysics, time is a concrete unit, while in humanities, time is mostly a perceptual concept. Invisible and intangible, it affects individual life and human history all the time. With the development of modern art and the influence of science and technology on human understanding, visual artists are more and more aware of the existence of time as an objective unit, so more and more visual art works regard time and its influence as their own expression and discussion content.

At present, important modern and contemporary art institutions in the world, such as new york Museum of Modern Art, Guggenheim Art Museum, London tate modern and so on, all classify "time-based art" as their conventional art media classification. "Time-based New Media"

Media) in the concept of art in western developed countries, it keeps pace with the conventional art categories such as painting, sculpture, photography and installation, and is regarded as a general direction of art collection, art editing and art theory research. The public in China may be unfamiliar with this concept. So, what does this time-based art that sounds full of science fiction mean?

According to the definition given by Guggenheim Art Museum in new york, time-based art is "including videos, movies, slides, audio and contemporary works of art based on computer technology; These new media art works regard time as the creative dimension of a work, and let the audience participate in this process through the passage of time. " [1] In this definition, we can see that the fluidity of time and the participation of viewers play a very important role in time-based art.

In the traditional classification of art, we can simply divide art into two-dimensional works and three-dimensional works. Two-dimensional works are best understood, which are often called easel works, including painting, photography, collage, printed matter and so on. Three-dimensional works, such as sculpture and installation art, will come down from the wall and extend in a long, wide and high world. Time art is based on the length, width and height of three-dimensional art, plus the abstract coordinate axis of time. With the passage of time, the audience's participation and body perception are introduced into the expression and creation of contemporary art.

So it sounds that the time-base art of describing time seems a little mysterious. But in fact, new media art should be one of the most easily understood and attractive art forms based on its novel expressive force and audience participation. This will involve the change of human viewing mode.

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In the long history of art, people's interpretation and viewing of art are passive. Take the oil paintings that we are most familiar with, artists can create and choose to let them never see the light of day; The oil paintings exhibited by collectors and art institutions also stay quietly and seriously on the snow-white walls, with good quality, good thermal insulation and quietness. When the audience comes to it, they just observe it carefully, ponder it, imagine it with their eyes and brains, but can't touch it, let alone talk to it. This way of viewing art that we have become accustomed to is actually a wishful investment and a very passive artistic aesthetic experience. We rack our brains and think in our own minds, trying to understand the intention and story behind the works of art, but so much effort is actually not as good as a word from the artist himself or a word from an art critic.

However, with the development of new technology and the emergence of new ways of human communication, new media art is breaking this passive way of art appreciation, and an interactive way of watching dialogue is emerging. Under the attraction of image sound effects and the bridge of time, time-based works of art are bringing audience participation and interaction into the context of contemporary art. If traditional works of art are static, then new media art is dynamic. If the expression of traditional art is one-way, then the spread of new media art is two-way.

In this two-way viewing mode, time has become the key context of new media art. The passage of time, the time spent by the viewer in a work, and the influence of light, sound, space and activities on the viewer during this time all need a work of art based on time to control and show. Therefore, the ideal type of watching a new media art work should be a four-dimensional, two-way and whole-hearted experience.

Therefore, in the development of contemporary art, one of the main trends of new media art creation is to highlight the "dialogue" of art works and the viewer's sense of participation by using time and human senses on the basis of time-based media, digital art and installation art. Therefore, Interactive art (interactive

Art), a new branch of media art, shines brilliantly in major art fairs and annual art exhibitions. More and more professional colleges and art institutions study and discuss the interaction between works and audiences as a special topic. For ordinary people who don't understand art theory and art genre, interactive works of art are also very interesting. They either attract the audience with outstanding visual and auditory effects or communicate with the audience with advanced technology. In short, the interaction of the work itself will always make the new media art attract people quickly, and convey the theme and emotion that the artist wants to express in the activities that individuals or groups participate in.

The "interactivity" of this art can be understood in different ways. For example, let a robot's arm shake hands with each visitor, which is a direct and visual interaction; But artists can also create a visual illusion, using space and experience to confuse the audience's nerves and perceptions. Obviously, the second kind of interaction is more "intangible" and "poetic", which is an artistic expression I appreciate more, but at the same time, this subtle interactive art also has certain requirements for the experiencer, and the integrity of the meaning of the work requires the audience's appropriate participation, aesthetic foundation and speculative ability. However, no matter what form of interaction, most new media arts use the role of time, physical participation and our perceptual ability to realize the exchange and interaction of meaning and content.

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The passage of time, audience participation and body perception, these three new media elements have different proportions in different works of art, or the steps taken are different. More complex and large-scale new media art needs a larger proportion of audience input. For example, a video clip is displayed to the audience on the display screen. What the audience needs is to stand in front of the display screen and spend a few minutes reading the work, and gradually understand the artist's intention with the passage of time and companionship; However, many new media interactive devices need more audience input. You not only need time to experience the environment created by the artist, but also need to touch, operate and complete a device with a real knife. Finally, you need to digest the meaning of this experience according to the information obtained by your eyes, ears, nose and hands.

Then, according to the order of the audience's input from shallow to deep, the early works of new media art, including video art, slide art, audio art, and later video art, all just need the audience to see and listen, using our audio-visual senses; In the contemporary art world, more and more new media arts use all senses of the audience on a large scale, and even some works simply do not exist without the participation of the audience. The proportion of these audiences' participation has increased, one is brought about by the interactive innovation of new media technology, and the other is caused by the continuous prosperity of mass media, network environment and social media-the way modern people watch and experience is very different from that of decades ago. On the one hand, artists use their works to convey this information, on the other hand, they make the audience aware of such times and cultural changes in experiential viewing behavior.

However, looking back at the initial stage of the emergence of new media art, many artists predicted the current media viewing mode more than 70 years ago. For example, NamJune Paik, a Korean-American artist who died in 2006.

Paik), praised by Americans as "the father of video art", is a well-deserved pioneer of new media art.

NamJune Paik foresaw the coming of the Internet era and the inevitable trend of information globalization in his article 1972. He also represents a common feature of early new media artists-obsessed with studying science and technology and the potential of new visual expression language. These people are called "image engineers" by later generations (image

Technician) Artists, such as NamJune Paik and Japanese engineer Shu Ya, bury themselves in the laboratory all day to study the direct influence of new image technology and new playback technology on art.

The video synthesizer jointly developed by Abe uses a video recording device controlled by radio channels to successfully recombine and process images by electronic means, and combines timely TV signals for artistic creation. At the same time, NamJune Paik also integrated very fashionable and advanced hand-held video equipment into art, had an interesting dialogue with traditional cultural integration and viewing mode, and created a series of TV cellos (TV

Cello, 197 1), TV Buddha, 1974), TV Rodin (TV Rodin,

1978) and other important works. Among them, his TV Buddha is the most famous. NamJune Paik used a set of Sony video equipment to make closed-loop video works, and put his antique collection-a Buddha statue-in the postmodern style context. A Sony video recorder is aimed at the Buddha statue with eyes closed and meditation, and the images taken appear on a modern round TV. Combined with the video images played in time, the Buddha statue in real life and the Buddha statue "reflected" on the flashing TV screen had an interesting face-to-face meeting. This is a very conflicting but Zen work, which makes people constantly think about important artistic themes such as East and West, past and present, truth and reappearance.

In addition to video recording, timely broadcasting and TV display, another technology is often applied to the creation of new media art, that is, projection technology. Tony osler, American artist 1957 was born in new york.

Oursler) is an artist who has long used image projection technology. Although his works include painting, sculpture and performance art, his projection installation works are the most representative. In osler's creation, he often projects part of his face and five senses onto the surface of a self-made sculpture, which makes a grotesque object show vivid emotions. With the help of the lighting effect of the projection environment, osler's projection sculptures often give people a very amazing visual effect. Deliberate visual tension, familiarity and uneasiness of human organs and strange vitality all constitute osler's artistic language. Through the dynamics and sounds brought by the superposition and projection of modeling, the new creatures, new nightmares and new fairy tales created by osler are vivid and exaggerated, and the anxiety and whimsy in contemporary life are expressed by using the viewer's sensory cognition and rational anxiety and discomfort.