The Challenge of New Media: Two Viewpoints

Abstract

The logic of our world, lying as it does in about a complex process in which there are two sides to the equation—the artist and the viewer—but no equal-sign. Moreover, the common currency of such words as medium, vision, and art, along with uncritical thinking about these concepts, have taken away their vitality. Because art most often has been talked about from the perspective of the viewer, we have both inflated and deflated our conceptions of art and the artistic process, reified medium into message. A confusion has developed between significance and imagery, on the one hand, and the physicality of experience on the other. Medium has been raised to the level of content, causing vision to lose its central place in thinking about the creative process. In an effort to clarify these relationships, I shall re-examine some aspects of the interaction between vision and medium. It will be necessary to reflect upon this process more from the point of view of the artist than that of the viewer, in order to resto...