Response: Lev Manovich-New Media, From Borges to HTML

New Media means “Computer based artistic activities.” The beginning of the idea of new media did not become popularized until approximately 1980. In the beginning the new media art world had many problems at gaining acceptance within the art community. There was much hesitation from not only the government but the fine art world. An interesting piece of information that I was unaware of that this article stated was that in the 1990’s the art world in the United States was the most conservative cultural superpower in the world. Places such as countries in Europe were far ahead of the United States. A great hesitation among the art community was the idea of distribution. The idea of the gallery or auction house was taken completely out of the picture. This was intimidating to the art world because of its long standing use of traditional practice. Another controversy was the idea of infinite copies. New media therefore requires one to be an interactive component in a work. This medium finally elevated itself out of the underground art community into the main stream of art. The complexity of the medium of New Media is still to this day a difficult way in which to solidly understand and break down. Also the discussion of cyberculture was intriguing in this essay. Its relation to our culture and how it can be used to edit down what it is we can see. For me the most interesting aspect of this essay is that our culture can not put a definition of the idea of new media because with each new year some other form of society becomes reliant on the computer.