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.