Mesh 17: New Media Art

Shaun Gladwell, Storm Sequence 2000
digital video

Mesh 17: New Media Art in Australia and Asia


MESH#17: New Media Art in Australia and Asia attempts to create a partial and provisional map of the complex and at times fraught terrain of "new media art" in Australia and the Asian region.

We invited six writers from six regional centres – Adelaide, Bangkok, Beijing, Delhi, Singapore and Tokyo – to provide a local snapshot giving insight into the specific contexts – social, cultural, historical and political – that drive new media art practice in their location. We asked these writers to respond to the following brief:

What does "New Media Art" mean where you live? How are new media arts modifying contemporary art practice, particularly in local contexts? How does new media arts practice address issues of cultural specificity, translatability, collaboration and exchange?

We also stressed that:

"New Media Art" should not only be taken to refer to art which employs the most recent new media technologies, but should be also taken to mean art which explores new possibilities of working with old media. We are particularly interested in how old or even supposedly obsolete technologies are being reinvented in the context of new media practices.

These six keynote essays produce a complex picture of what "new media art" might be, showing how the same technologies can give rise to radically different practices and techniques. Complementing these six essays, brief profiles on a range of different artists and collectives from Australia and across the region explore this proliferating diversity in more detail.

tags