What is New Media Art?

ICAM is the only major, at least in the UC system, that is cross-listed/cross-diciplinary. Meaning that us (ICAM, Music majors) have to take some classes that are Visual Arts classes and same goes for the ICAM, Vis (short hand for Visual Arts guys). They have to take Music classes. So we both have to suffer through thing we aren't really good at to get our degree. Why is this such a reoccurring theme in education these days? I digress.

So as part of that, I'm taking a class called ICAM 40/VIS 40. (Notice the VIS part) This class is a an Introductory class to Computing Arts now also known as "New Media Art." This is all about how New Media Art emerged as well as a practicum of sorts where you create your own "artwork." But I'm finding a common theme here and that is: no one can really define New Media Art. (Even the bigwigs.) I'll throw out a name you've possibly never heard of: Lev Manovitch. He's huge in the New Media world, and he writes book about it. Unfortunately, (and he's even openly admits it) he says he'd "rather be the first than be right." Meaning he wrote these books that are pretty poor (I'm being nice here), but he did end up being first. Now that he was the first, his books are the established "textbooks" of New Media.

This is one of the reasons I believe that New Media is so jacked up... That's not the only problem though. You can see if you go to any of these new media festivals (ie ZKM [pronounced Zed Kay eM], FILE, Ars Electroica...) there is countless things people call as art which I and most other people around the world would consider garbage. (Though I do have to say a few things there are actually kind of cool.)

I'm going to close and show you what one group of "New Media Artists" calls art: http://0100101110101101.org/home/biennale_py/index.html. Ok... Since when has that been considered art? I don't know you decide.

CalIT2 Auditorum

Thanks to one of my courses I recently was able to check out UCSD's CalIT2 auditorium. CalIT2 in their words is "one of four California Institutes for Science and Innovation." CalIT2 houses the Center for Research in Computing in the Arts (CRCA) which is the driving force for the major which I am currently part of Interdisciplinary Computing in the Arts.

As part of the tour, they did a presentation of a few videos, but not in Standard-Def… Not even High-Def. This is in 4k cinema. 4k cinema (3840 x 2160) is 4x the resolution of high-def (1080p mind you). When the auditorium was built in 2005, CalIT2 was the first in the US to have a 4k projector. All the video samples (ranging from ~1 minute CGI animation to a ~15 minute Indie Film) were played back at either 24p or 30p uncompressed! The video assets did not reside in the building, city, state, or even country. It was all streamed from Tokyo, Japan via a fiber line.

Here’s a quote from SGI who does the storage for these humongous files: “SGI systems holding 4K DALSA camera files at the Research Institute for Digital Media and Content at Keio University in Tokyo, Japan were connected to the Calit2 auditorium, via 15,000 kilometers (roughly 9,000 miles) of gigabit optical-fiber IP networks, where a prototype Sony SXRD 4K projector”

Not only does it have 4k projection but 12.5 surround sound using Meyer Sound speakers.

This place is really sweet, and CalIT2/CRCA is an excellent resource. I’m sure I’ll be blogging a lot about things coming from both.