Media, New Media, Postmedia disponibile anche come ebook

Book, Texts

A dieci anni esatti dalla sua prima edizione, Media, New Media, Postmedia, la versione italiana di Beyond New Media Art, è ora disponibile anche come ebook alla metà del prezzo della versione cartacea. Il libro italiano, pubblicato nel 2010 da Postmedia Books, è stato oggetto di una riedizione nel 2018. Ora potete leggerlo anche in digitale, in formato Kindle e epub.

“Nel corso degli ultimi decenni, un complesso corpo di lavori è andato sviluppandosi all’intersezione tra arte, scienza e tecnologia. Negli anni Novanta, con la crescente accessibilità delle nuove tecnologie e lo sviluppo della cultura digitale, questa ricerca è esplosa, conquistando una massa critica di artisti e dando vita a festival, centri d’arte specializzati e a un’intensa attività editoriale e pubblicistica. Nasce la New Media Art. Ma nonostante questa espansione, la New Media Art non è stata in grado di conquistare il mondo dell’arte contemporanea. A che cosa si deve tale scollamento di tradizioni? Perché la critica d’arte ufficiale stenta a integrare la New Media Art nella sua lettura del contemporaneo? Perché il mercato dell’arte fatica ad accogliere software, computer e rete come mezzi artistici? Perché molti artisti rifuggono l’etichetta di New Media Art mentre altri vi si rifugiano, esaltando la sua distanza dall’arte contemporanea? Media, New Media, Postmedia è il primo saggio che tenta di dare, a queste domande, una risposta organica: ripercorrendo le ragioni storiche dell’isolamento della New Media Art, e spiegando perché oggi, in un’era ormai pienamente postdigitale e postmediale, questo isolamento non abbia più senso di esistere.”

Beyond New Media Art

Book

Link Editions is proud to announce the release of “Beyond New Media Art”, by Domenico Quaranta.“Beyond New Media Art” is the revised, updated version of a book first published in Italian with the title “Media, New Media, Postmedia” (Postmedia Books, Milan 2010). Through the circulation of excerpts, reviews and interviews, the book produced some debate outside of Italy, which persuaded the author to release, three years later, this English translation.

“Beyond New Media Art” is an attempt to analyze the current positioning of so-called New Media Art in the wider field of contemporary arts, and to explore the historical, sociological and conceptual reasons for its marginal position and under-recognition in recent art history. On the other hand, this book is also an attempt to suggest new critical and curatorial strategies to turn this marginalization into a thing of the past, and to stress the topicality of art addressing the media and the issues of the information age.

From the book’s preface: “So what is New Media Art? What does this term really describe? And what has occasioned the schism between this term and the art scene it is supposed to describe? And lastly, what accounts for the limited presence in critical debate of an artistic practice that appears to have all the credentials for representing an era in which digital media are powerfully reshaping the political, economic, social and cultural organization of the world we live in?”

Link Editions is a publishing initiative of the Link Center for the Arts of the Information Age. Link Editions uses print on demand and digital formats to create an accessible, dynamic series of essays and pamphlets, but also artist books, catalogues and conference proceedings. A keen advocate of the idea that information wants to be free, Link Editions releases its contents free of charge in .pdf format, and on paper at a price accessible to all. Link Editions is a not-for-profit initiative and all its contents are circulated under an Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0) license.

The Future of Art

Quote

What are the defining aesthetics of art in the networked era? How is mass collaboration changing notions of ownership in art? How does micropatronage change the way artists produce and distribute artwork? The Future of Art begins a conversation on these topics and invites your participation.

The Future of Art. An immediated autodocumentary was shot, edited and screened at the Transmediale festival 2011 in Berlin, Germany. More info here.

Jennifer Allen

Quote

In the last issue of Mousse Magazine (Issue 26, December 2010, pp. 196 – 200), German art critic Jennifer Allen published an interesting article titled “From Media to New Media”. Addressing some recent events and publications, from Free to CRUMB’s latest outputs, she argues that the most revolutionary features of digital media – both in terms of distribution and production – are having little or no impact on the contemporary art world. Definitely a worth reading. Here a couple of quotes:

“While describing the gradual acceptance of new media art and artists, the retrospective view of A Brief History points to a basic conflict: to remain true to techy origins or to become part of the museum and the art market.”

“If there’s a new democracy to celebrate in the new media, the most democratic dimension is hard to see. While anyone can be an artist, a photographer and a filmaker […] everyone will not make it into the museum and the art market. We all increasingly use the same tools to do different tasks, even the same tactile gestures of clicking, saving, copying, pasting, sending. But that radical equality has not quite movedbeyond the screen.”