Over the past year or so I have been going over memes, forced images and productions from artists studios.
I am targetting Damien Hirsts http://anthropology.net/2007/06/01/damien-hirsts-diamond-encrusted-skull-jeweled-skulls-in-archaeology/
bejewelled skull.
There is no doubt that this work now represents the idea of new media in the minds of the masses.
That's a given no matter where you place the work in your own pantheon. And no matter what your aesthetic determines.
But...,

Writers and critics across the globe herald this work as the embodiment of the new meme.
Death, money, so simply stated. A skull, resurrected and encrusted.
But how does this work expand the meaning of the individual in a distributed network of communal exchange and interaction?
It doesn't. it sits there like a whale waiting for a breach, or in this case a beach.
Where is the individual who manufactured this work? Nowhere to be found. Maybe that was the idea, except millions of euros are getting transferred as we read, Hirst is the author of these transfers. He is the enemy.
I read that he was the new Warhol, poor Andy, sucks to be. us
Behind a coff counting coins Hirst and his lawyers are raking in huge amounts of money. Yet you,poor new media artists think you can reinvent the world with a few lines of code and some photoshop.
Is the distributed image now new media? Make it memorable, make it easy to reproduce.
Does Second Life count?
What is Delicio?
Where are you for chists sake?
Get it together. Forget this list, forget your networks, make a meme, transcend all.
Then again, I could be wrong.
Eric