Past, Present, and Future Tense

Abstract

Given the task at hand, "to select new media works that have changed or are impacting the course of new media art and music," the author, along with his colleagues, set out to identify the fullness of the digital spectrum. The article explains his selections of artwork by consciously establishing a past, present, and future media collection. He begins with a 1965 piece from Nam June Paik and ends with JODI.org, acknowledging the large jump made from past to present media. Concluding the article with a look at the history of digital art, the author raises comparisons and dilemmas that allow readers to question and reflect on the status of new media art.

Embodied in the original invitation for entries to the New York Digital Salon's Tenth Anniversary Exhibition is a sense of the fullness of the digital spectrum, over time and across media. By way of reply, we felt that our shortlist should reflect what can and has been achieved by artists whose contributions have enhanced the development of digital practice. There are many-more than we could hope to be included on such a short list. Instead, we opted for a group of artists and works that lend an air of history and a lineage that can be traced back through the 19th and 20th centuries-an age of mechanics, mechanisms, and profligate electronica. In other words, to support an argument for old, middle-aged, and new media.

There was an initial strength of feeling when we included Nam June Paik-composer, performer, and video artist who played a pivotal role in introducing artists and audiences to the possibilities of using video for artistic expression-on our list. Active throughout the 1960s and 1970s, Paik extended his vision through an interest in dance and performance, marked by a reverence for the work of John Cage. In the early 1960s, Paik explored ways in which music, video images, and the sculptural form of objects could be used in various combinations to question our accepted notions of the nature of television. A view embodied in Paik's seminal sculpture Magnet TV (1965) consists of a large magnet atop a television set. The magnet is then moved about by hand to create abstract patterns of light inside the monitor. The work's brutal simplicity further advances discussion around the all-consuming media of television.

Heralded as the "Father of Cybernetic Art and Video Art," Nicolas Schöffer was born in 1912 in Kalocsa, Hungary. Schöffer's work developed in three distinct phases: Spatiodynamism (1948), Luminodynamism (1957), and Chronodynamism (1959). He worked in a variety of media, often producing combined sculptural and electronic forms such as his 52-meter-high Cybernetic Tower of Liege, which consisted of 66 revolving mirrors, 120 colored projectors, photoelectric cells, and microphones. Schöffer's Microtime Sculptures were produced between 1968 and 1969 and consisted of black, neutral boxes containing stainless steel discs, conchs, and plates moved by programmed electric motors that reflected colored lights-some of which can be pulsed to produce a random light show.

Robert Adrian is represented for his pioneering work in the world of telecommunications. The World in 24 Hours (1982) was a worldwide 24-hour telecommunications project organized by Robert Adrian for Ars Electronica in Linz. Artists and groups in Vienna, Frankfurt, Amsterdam, Bath, Wellfleet, Pittsburgh, Toronto, San Francisco, Vancouver, Honolulu, Tokyo, Sydney, Istanbul, and Athens participated using any or all of Slow-Scan Television, fax, computer mailbox, or telephone sound. Each location was called from Linz at 12pm local time. The project ran from noon, Central European Time, on September 27 and followed the midday sun around the world, ending at noon on September 28.

In 1997, Slovenian-based Net artist Vuk Cosic shocked the art world when he created a complete copy of a Web site of Documenta, a major international art show held every four years in the German village of Kassel. The "theft," announced only hours before the closing of the official Web site of Documenta X, was officially denounced as an infringement of material copyright. The organizers of Documenta had planned to...