Focuses
on concepts of New Media and Postmedia. We will discuss the
relationships between technology, art and power. The lecture will
cover a number of specialised terms and concepts associated with New
Media and Postmedia including cybernetics, cyborg,
parahumanism/transhumanism/posthumanism and bricolage. The lecture
will then look specifically at controversial bio-art projects and at
the serious game and art game genres of video games.
- Although New Media has been conventionally understood as an art practice that utilises electronic technologies, it can be more broadly thought of as inclusive of interdisciplinary practices that combine forms of art, design, electronics and digital technologies.
- Postmedia references a process and a circumstance in which traditional disciplines, values and histories have collapsed into a single mediatised sphere. It no longer is relevant to distinguish between different ‘types’ of media. All art (and cultural practice) is now postmedia. (This doesn’t mean ‘after media’ as if media has ceased to exist.)
- Cybernetics, cyborgs, transhumanisms and posthumanisms all focus on the connections and transactions (and power dynamics) that exist between biological forms and electronic/digital forms.
- Bricolage is a term derived from the French word for ‘tinkering’. It has been used in art practice to reference works that are ‘cobbled together’ from whatever is ‘at hand’.
- Bio-art references work that utilises biotechnologies and biological systems in the context of art practice.
- Serious Games and Art Games are video games that promote alternative experiences in a video game environment. Serious games are used for everything from education to pain therapy to military recruiting. Art games blur the boundaries of gaming and art and don’t tend to follow the conventions of competitive or task-based gaming. Several powerful cultural institutions, most notably MoMA, have started collecting video games as examples of New Media.
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