Quoting Trent Reznor, the significant artist in electronic sound scene, he noted the on-going diversion in the music business and the attitude which will be helpful for the emerging musicians and the radiohead-wannabees. In my opinion, the key is the structure is changing and this change also undermine the stratum where all the common sense has been granted in the music business. And this change is not limited to the degree of the music business. It also transfigures the basic concept of the music.

The reason why I note and quote what Mr. Reznor says is on the transfiguration of the concept, in a sense, the episteme of art in changing. The prevailing of the new media, especially the electronic media, has rapidly threatened the traditional concepts of art form as a commercial object. This transfer weakens the solidity of the retinal art, and imposed the fluidity and dynamism to the visibility in art form. And sometimes, it has been spotted just as chaos, meaninglessness and finally all the vogue. In a sense, the materiality in the retinal are has been evaporated by the advert of the intangibility of artistic material. Though it looks like that the music has almost nothing to do with the materiality in its inherent features, it is hard to deny that the well-decorated LPs, CDs and its materiality has been regarded as the tangible illusion of the artist, who is ranged from the Velvet Underground’s packages even to that of Britney Spears’. As a result, the electronic traits in pop culture, at first, dematerialize the cultural productions and, secondly, change the structure of the producing in pop culture scene itself.

However, whatever the situation, the question has been all the same. What should I do right now for myself? If you are creator, you don’t need to care about what is art. Instead, you’d better care about what can be called as art.

For Roger F. Malina, the “hard humanities” are the arts and humanities disciplines essential to the cultural transformation necessary within the next two generation. And the intimate science by artists and micro scientist at all levels of society are important components of this, the hard humanities. from Intimate Science and Hard Humanities, Roger F. Malina, Leonardo 2009 42:3, 184-184

All these words are from the editorial note form Leonardo, one of the leading journal for promoting the collaboration of art and science. Throughout the long history of the techne, the doubled word which holds the combined meaning of the art and technology from the ancient Greek word. The adjectives, intimate and hard are the piercing view-point which analyze the current situation of our intellectual boundaries. This doubled trait of today’s technology and art also can be a hint for our next step for better society which escapes from our arrogant and bitter stupidity.
What we see is what we believe. but this does not mean that we believe as they are seen.

Turn the power off!

To recap the elements of electronic art, if we throw ourselves to the extent of the utmost analysis, finally we can reach to the electricity. Is it really impossible to imagine the artwork with interactivity and other machinic traits, but without electricity? And can’t we engross ourselves to create the interactive art form without electricity? I think it is not different from premising the illusion without artificial light. Regardless of the machinic traits which comes from the computing machinery and reality-augmenting devices, still we have chance to inquire the new media art without electricity. And still questions are remained. Is this question worth to ask in the area of new media art?

Let’s go back to the moment of the invention of internet. The inter-textuality that is regarded as bloomed from the advert of internet, was exactly mentioned by Bartes for more than 20 yrs before the internet age. In the same context, it makes sense that the retinal art in the age of computing machinery has its own aesthetic or philosophical concepts and novelty and has theoretical background.

The traits of new media art are always investigated from the aspect of electronic devices. But if those materialistic traits are engenders from the newness which lies inside the immaterial characteristics, It will be possible to re-posit the hidden aspects of electronic art as result of socio-cultural changes.

Richard Baquié. Sans titre. Étant donnés, 1°) la chute d’eau, 2°) le gaz d’éclairage (Musée d’art contemporain de Lyon, 1991)