Aesthetics and Interactive Art

In 1991 Pauline Terreehorst described video art as something belonging to the past, a dead art form, and-what was worse--dead before it even had been properly identified. She thought that the uncertainty about the definition and context of video art contributed to its premature fall.

Course Description: This required M.A course is an advanced journey through the theoretical debates on film and media aesthetics. We will explore the ontological status of Cinema, its relationship to other media forms and its transformed nature in the digital age. The technological basis of cinematic and media practice will be central to the framing of aesthetic concerns. At the end of the 19th century, technologically mediated moving images ushered in a fundamental transformation in the spheres of public life and human experience. The aesthetic question no longer remained limited only to the formal and stylistic features of a tangible object but to a transformation of sensory perception. When viewed from the vantage point of the contemporary digital age, new issues come to the fore. In this journey from celluloid to the digital, the moving image will be positioned as a form of modern magic, as an indexical art, as an inter-medial surface, as a historical archive, as collage, as assemblage, and as a site of terror, thrill, and enchantment. We will focus on key theoretical formulations and specific historical conjunctures along with close analysis of filmic and media material. The course is only open to those who have already done Introduction to Film Studies.

Theory Culture & Society, 2007

Media Art Installations. Preservation and Presentation. Materializing the Emphemaral, 2013

Is the exhibiting of installational works of media art comparable to the staging of operas? This unusual comparison was drawn, in 1982, by none other than Nam June Paik: 'Video installation will become like Opera, which will be always subsidized by patrons and in which only the score will be ueberliefert to the next generation and the video curators in the next and subsequent generations will be re-interpretate and install them everytime new in their "anpassende" Place and the accents of the new incarnation will have the strong personal traits of the conductor, like Karajan's "Neunte" or Toscanini's "Dritte".' 1 At a time when it was not yet possible to foresee the problems that would subsequently confront museums with regard to the preserving of media artworks, Paik, who was one of the first (and most influential) artists to work in the genre, already outlined a scenario, of which the quintessence remains strikingly applicable to the debate conducted among experts today, some three decades later. When conserving and presenting complex installational and simultaneously technology-based works curators and restorers today must frequently find a balance between the historical materiality of the work and its artistic conception. They must decide on the extent to which the historical devices and technologies associated with the work should continue to be employed, even if doing so entails a restriction of functionality and, in consequence, of the way in which the work is perceived, or of the extent to which, precisely by means of contemporary appliances and technologies, it may be possible to successfully convey the artistic concept. In the case of installation art, however, it is not solely its equipment with appliances that lends presence to a work. Rather, it is the strikingly spatial formation that influences the reception of installations-including ones that are technology-based. Returning to Paik's comparison of the video installation and the dramatic opera, the appliances would assume the tasks of the orchestra and singers; by analogy, they would bring to performance the audiovisual material that corresponds to the libretto and score of an opera. According to Paik, the modes of presenting the audiovisual , and likewise the overall presentation of the video installation at the exhibition venue-equivalent to the musical interpretation and the performance of an opera on stage-would be left

2019

Within the systems of artistic curation, it is generally agreed that there is a shift taking place. It is a shift in the roles of the curator, artwork, and viewer, which are increasingly intertwined and inter-mediated. With the advent of hybridized artistic activities, the definitions of art, artist and curator are being blurred and therefore we must fundamentally reconsider traditional exhibition practices which would isolate them into separate activities and order them into hierarchies. In order to understand how to address this shift, we might begin with the work of Architectural theorist and critic, Sylvia Lavin. In her text, Kissing Architecture, Lavin describes the root of the shift as a reaction to Clement Greenberg's style of modernist contemplation where the "spirit of modernity was revealed when the viewer's response to an object was purely and laboriously cognitive without affect" (18). When the world began to recognize the biases inherent in that style of aestheticism (namely its hierarchical patriarchal and imperialist tendencies which ignore alternative viewpoints), there arose a need for a different type of approach. With Greenberg's Modernist aesthetic epitomized by architecture, Lavin suggests that this new approach may be connected to characteristics of media art-primarily in its ability to layer and create "slippage" with older forms of practice. Introducing this premise, she writes:

Revista Vista , 2022

This paper seeks to reflect on the emergence of video technology and its use as a medium for artistic expression. Focusing mainly on the period between the 1960s and 1990s, we analyse the relationship between television and other institutions within the cultural-artistic sphere and their role in developing artistic practices through video. Thus, we have established international and Portuguese examples for a plural and diverse analysis. Therefore, this work elaborates on some theories, main ideas and research concerning the role of video and television in late 20th-century society. Special attention is given to some ideological and philosophical traits transversal to the different artistic practices, authors and agents within the contemporary cultural sphere to reflect on some aesthetic elements of the works from this period. Based on a selection of works and artists, this study seeks to explore the social dimension of video, which has often operated as a democratic medium, an instrument of social and political contestation and a medium for the artist’s personal reflection. In this way, an approach to the presence and representation of the body in video works and other technical and aesthetic elements is articulated to understand the theoretical dimensions involved in the imagery production of this medium.

Vista, 2024

As its aesthetics, methods, and conceptual focus have, in many respects, merged with those of mainstream contemporary art, the boundaries of media art have become more unclear than when the use of technology in art was more of a rare occurrence. While the term "media art" may be helpful in designating a particular sphere of practice and discourse, its current meaning has shifted as a result of changing contexts surrounding the use of technology in art. From its close association with "new media" such as the digital computer, the internet, screen-based media, and interactive systems in the early days of media art as a field, this term now bears re-evaluation in light of the pervasive use of technology we are familiar with in the post-digital condition. As many of these defining forms of new media have lost their novelty and have also been adopted in mainstream artistic practices, media art may be defined less by its engagement with specific media than by stylistic and referential aspects derived from its historical lineage. This paper draws comparisons between early discussions on media art and recent developments in this area with the aim of developing insights into whether and in what capacity media art remains relevant as a term for addressing technologically engaged contemporary artistic practices. By considering media art in such terms, this investigation reconsiders what may be regarded as defining aspects of the field, enquiring into what potential this reframing may have for practitioners and theorists working with this topic.