New Media Art

Art in the age of digital communication

Artists have always been early adopters of emerging media technologies, from Albrecht Dürer and the printing press in the 16th century to Nam June Paik’s video experiments in the 1960s. In 1994, the advent of the internet as a popular medium catalyzed a global art movement that began to explore the cultural, social, and aesthetic possibilities of new communication technologies–the web, webcams and video surveillance cameras, wireless phones, hand-held computers, and GPS devices. This book addresses New Media art as a specific art historical movement, focusing on technologies, forms, thematic content and conceptual strategies. Often involving appropriation, collaboration, and shared ideas and expressions, New Media art frequently addresses issues of identity, commercialization, privacy, and public domain. Many New Media artists are profoundly aware of their historical antecedents, making reference to Dada, Pop Art, Conceptual art, Performance art, and Fluxus.

Artists featured: Cory Arcangel, Jonah Brucker-Cohen and Katherine Moriwaki, Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries, Vuk Cosic, Mary Flanagan, Ken Goldberg, Paul Kaiser and Shelly Eshkar, Jennifer and Kevin McCoy, Mouchette, MTAA, Keith and Mendi Obadike, Radical Software Group, Raqs Media Collective, RTMark, and John F. Simon Jr.

About the Series:
Each book in TASCHEN's Basic Genre Series features:

• a detailed introduction with approximately 35 photographs, plus a timeline of the most important events (political, cultural, scientific, etc.) that took place during the time period
• a selection of the most important works of the epoch; each is presented on a 2-page spread with a full-page image and, on the facing page, a description/interpretation of the work and brief biography of the artist as well as additional information such as a reference work, portrait of the artist, and/or citations

About the authors:
Reena Jana is a New York-based critic and editor. She has written on contemporary art and digital culture for numerous publications including Artforum, Art and Auction, Art in America, ARTnews, Bookforum, Flash Art, frieze, the New York Times and Wired.

Mark Tribe is a New York-based artist and curator. He is Assistant Professor of Modern Culture and Media Studies at Brown University, where he teaches digital media production. He has organized curatorial projects for the New Museum of Contemporary Art, MASS MoCA, and inSite_05. In 1996, he founded Rhizome.org, an online resource for New Media art.