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New Media Art

Morgan S.'s picture
Thu, 09/06/2007 - 21:37 — Morgan S.

I was discussing the rhizome in relation to sites that randomly generate pages or screens when I discovered that Rhizome.org is an online resource for people who are interested in new media art. Interesting...

Comments

Fri, 09/07/2007 - 09:06 — lsoderlu
lsoderlu's picture

Art

I'm glad you created this link- I think New Media art might be key to some of our practices in the classroom. It seems to me that due to the still relatively "new" nature of New Media any classroom practice we do will necessarily have an element of experimentation. That's fine, but it does force us as educators into making the tough decision between emerging, exciting, and likely useful New Media lessons and the more traditional, habitually (if not convincingly) defended, stale expository writing lessons.

But the New Media stuff would be more justifiable, I think, if it carried with it the moniker of art, and the tacit understanding that its precise purpose is experimenting to get comfortable in the new, digital world.

Sun, 09/09/2007 - 10:53 — pepper
pepper's picture

Please, Let's Call it Anything BUT Art!

Lars, this is interesting because you are calling for my personal greatest fear! I worry that my 106 students will think that I'm trying to turn it into an art class. It seems that getting comfortable with new media (and I ask who really needs to get comfortable, our students who play video games, write blogs, watch or post on youtube, live on myspace, etc, or us?) by labeling it the very tricky word "art" is to instantly restrict the rhetorical situation and remove it from everyday usefullness. The connotations of the word "art' also place new media up on a pedestal of untouchability and perpetuates the "creative genius" stereotype-- when we should be encouraging hands-onedness and getting in there with sleeves rolled up and ready to work. Why is placing new media compoistion and visual culture under the lens of the rhetorical situation and composing skill not good enough?

And, yes, this is "how I wanna justify" my methods as you pointed out in class. Smiling