Art in the new media: what is it and what are its characteristics

The world is in constant movement, and events precipitate and create new situations, which require a new language and a new way of looking at them. Art, a genuine expression of the human being, could not be left behind in this sense.

Already in the 20th century, hand in hand with the artistic avant-gardes, a new concept of artist had been born; the individual who not only owed nothing to anyone, but who rebelled against the world that, in a certain way, had created him. This feeling of rebellion shaped a need to restructure and renew the concepts of art and artistic creation. Thus, in the middle of the 20th century, popular art or pop art was born, which democratized the artistic object and put it at the service of the masses. From this new reality the art of the new media was born, called to become the artistic standard bearer of the beginning of the 21st century.

We propose an interesting journey through the transformation of art in the last century, which will allow you to better understand what it is and What are the characteristics of the so-called new media art or new media art.

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What do we understand by art in the new media or new media art?

We call new media art art that incorporates new technologies, either in its creation, in its use, or in both situations. In English, the concept is called new media art; in this case, the new refers to the use of strictly state-of-the-art technologies, to differentiate this art from that linked to the rest of the technologies that are already fully integrated into our daily lives.

What is important is that new media art not only entails the increasing use of the most innovative technology, but, at a deeper level, it implies the absolute democratization of culture. In other words, the use of new techniques in the realization of works of art allows greater public access to them; not only to the result, but also to the very process of creation. This, as we will see, is nothing new; It had already been predicted since the technological revolution that marked the advent of the 20th century.

New media art proposes a new example of an artist: the one who works in collaboration not only with other colleagues, but also with the great mass of the public. By often working with existing images, the new media artist breaks with the idea that creation is unique and linked to a single person. In the 1920s, and as we will see in the next section, Marcel Duchamp already did the same when he painted mustaches on a reproduction of the famous Monna Lisa.

The set of creations covered by this type of art is very broad. Throughout this article, we will analyze its most important manifestations; but first, let's see what its most immediate historical background is.

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The historical background: the avant-garde and the democratization of art

A movement or a style is not born spontaneously. Rather, it has a series of antecedents that, sometimes unintentionally, configure it and shape its meaning. Thus, we can say that dadaism, stridentism and pop art contain part of what would later become new media art. Let's look at it in more detail below.

Dadaism or the denial of art

The oldest precursor of the so-called “new media art” is Dadaism or the Dada movement, from which new media art gathers some of its most essential characteristics; especially, formal elements such as collages and photomontages, but also satire and mockery.

The Dada movement was born in 1916 at the Cabaret Voltaire, in the city of Zurich, Switzerland. Despite the fact that it has been inscribed in the so-called artistic avant-gardes of the 20th century, in reality Dadaism intended the opposite. Through their absurd and often nonsensical compositions, the creators of this movement made a bitter mockery of the corseted bourgeois world that surrounded them and that, ultimately, had led them to the horror of World War I World.

What does this avant-garde art have to do with new media art? Well, a lot, as we will now see. Suffice it to take as an example one of the most famous Dada works: the reproduction of La Gioconda by Leonardo da Vinci to which Marcel Duchamp, one of the standard bearers of Dadaism, added a pair of lustrous mustaches.

The Dada movement was based on reproductions, assemblies and "deceptions" to give shape to its claim, already as far back as 1916. In this way, this denialist movement was laying the foundations for future artistic expressions, such as stridentism and, above all, pop art, which are also among the precedents of the art of the new media.

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Mexican stridentism

Born in Mexico City in 1921, this movement is closely linked to the technological advance that marked the turn of the 19th century to the 20th. During the first decades of the latter Periodical publications proliferate all over the world, containing and nourished by the most innovative photographic and industrial advances.

In this sense, it is the Mexican magazine Horizonte that becomes the vehicle through which stridentism promotes its aesthetic ideals, a fact in which it helped, and a lot, that its members became part of the new government in one way or another. For example, Manuel Maples Arce, the founder of the movement, was secretary of the government of Veracruz.

How could it be otherwise considering the date it was born, Mexican stridentism was completely attached to the avant-garde. Through the pages of Horizonte and other publications, a heterogeneous group of artists and intellectuals (Maples Arce himself, but also the poet Germán List, the writer and diplomat Luis Quintanilla or the photographer Tina Modotti) claim the destruction of the "old" world and the emergence of a new social reality and artistic.

Pop art or “popular art”

But perhaps the movement that has most influenced the appearance of the new media art is the one known as pop art or art Pop, which emerged in Great Britain and the United States in the mid-20th century and which brought about a true revolution in the art of creation. The essence of this type of art is that it is based on everyday consumer objects., such as advertisements, comics and even cans of food.

By its very definition, pop art (from “popular”) is essentially linked to the general public, and therefore goes against elitist and intellectual art. At this point he shakes hands with the avant-garde of the 20th century; both Dadaism and Estridentism, which we have commented on in the previous points, as well as many other movements in which that we will not enter, they rebel against the official cultural theory, and use resources available to the masses to do so popular.

Pop art creates popular icons and multiplies them to infinity. To do this, he uses industrial and consumer techniques, such as large-scale printing. All this allows the introduction of pop images in all homes, and thus achieves the popularization of the art object.

As we can see, this has a lot in common with the internet and the new media, which allow the mass access to artistic productions. As early as the 1990s, the lower costs of computer products made it easier for personal computer users to could access easy image, sound and video processing software, which allowed media art to give its first Steps.

Types of new media art

The typology of artistic manifestations of new media art is vast and, in some cases, they can be included within each other. In this section we will only focus on the most characteristic ones.

1. interactive art

This type of art has as its main characteristic (on the other hand, common in almost all manifestations of new art media) the very high degree of interaction with the public (hence its name). In a time when art is no longer conceived as an isolated element in which the artist creates and the public only contemplates, interactive art uses all the technological means at its disposal to create a network that encompasses artist and viewer. As Luis Andrade Baldeón collects in his work Digital interactive art space: "Interactive Art designates artistic practices in which the viewer participates directly in the realization of the work, not simply as an interpreter or receiver."

We have, on the one hand, the interactive art that is based on gears and levers that are activated. It represents, of course, an early stage of interactive art. Secondly, we find interactive art based on electronic technology, which uses computerized images, sound and video to interact with the viewer. This type of interactive art is increasingly present in museums.

2. The net art

Under this curious name we find all the creations made expressly for the Internet, whose origin dates back to the 90s of the 20th century, just when the world wide web was beginning to be developed. One of the essential characteristics of a net.art work is that it must be created exclusively through elements of the network, such as hypertext, which allows linking information from different web sites Internet.

Many artists used and still use hypertext to restructure already existing works, following the so-called Hypertext Narrative.

Some of the best-known net.art artists are Mark Amerika, an art professor at the University of Colorado, or the artist duo Jodi.org, made up of Joan Heemskerk and Dirk Paesmans.

3. Artivism

The word is created from “art” and “activism”, and refers to the artistic manifestations that are created to protest against a fact or claim another. In general, the "artivists" use their creations to protest against politics and consumer society, and for this they have the Internet and other means of communication.

4. Augmented reality art

Literally, augmented reality art. As its name indicates, this type of art uses computer graphics technology so that the viewer is immersed in a virtual reality. The idea is to combine these virtual elements with physical elements, thus creating a unique experience. The basic purpose of augmented reality art is educational, and there are already many museums and cultural centers that use it for their visitors.

5. the metaverse

For many, the future of art. Closely linked to augmented reality, the metaverse system immerses the user in a 3D virtual world in which he is just one more element. There has been talk of the great possibilities that the metaverse could have not only as a playful element, but also as an educational one.