New Media /Multimedia

Hi Roger,

A lot of it is semantics.

Lev Manovich points out that the term "digital" is pretty much useless as a distinguisher. What today isn't digitizable? So I have The White Album on cassette and CD. The CD is digital art, and the cassette is analog art? That's a facile distinction, just based on the banal technical nature of storage media.

also net art != new media. maybe it's a subset of new media, depending on how you define net art. But there are lots of forms of new media that aren't internet related.

* digital media is media stored digitally (no big deal).
* multimedia is media made up of more than one medium (a movie with a soundtrack is multimedia).
* new media is media that's new. Some would say post-film. Databases, networks, software, and reactive interaction may or may not be involved.

so multimedia (and new media for that matter) may or may not be digital. not all multimedia is new media, and not all new media is multimedia. If you call NN's or Mez Breeze's newslist posts new media (and many would), then they are just text, which is monomedia. Attack of the Clones is digital and multimedia, but I wouldn't call it new media.

"Interactive" to me is also a pretty useless term. Talking to my wife is interactive. Eating food is interactive. Even watching a movie is interactive (I turn up the volume, it gets louder).

"reactive," "autogenerative," "programmable" – these seem like more specific terms. even "non-linear" is open to a great deal of interpretation. Every web site with more than one link on its home page is non-linear. If I change television channels by punching in #53, then #21 – that's non-linear.

http://www.afsnitp.dk/onoff/Texts/broggernetart,we.html
might be useful to you.

good luck,
curt


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roger wrote:

> Hello all

I am currently writing an article on New Media art for a one-off, small publication in New Zealand. I have done a fair amount of research but am still puzzelled by something quite elementry: What distinction (if any) is there between New Media art and Multimedia?

I have identified the current usage of 'New Media' in relation to Multimedia as

-refering to the newest form of digital media- web art.
-closely related to, but not the same as multimedia.
-Developing out of multimedia a short time after the birth of the internet? Sharing a common lineage.
-More than work presented on the web, New Media art is made for the web, providing its primary context.
-emphasising the active role of the viewer/user

If anyone has anything to add, or a reading to point me to I would be grateful. Some texts I have read use New Media and Multimedia interchangably as with other terms such as Digital media, New Medium, Non-linear art, interactive art and web or net art.

I see that saying New Media emerged OUT OF Multimedia is problematic given that Multimedia by definition is interdisciplinary and inclusive…

Thanks
Roger Bymolt