Media Art Research Articles

Self-correction, digital art making and stress reduction

Art making with physical art materials has been demonstrated to reduce stress. Digital art making is utilized in art therapy but questions about its therapeutic and artistic attributes remain unanswered. We hypothesized that participants drawing on a tablet would experience less stress reduction and pleasure and that frequent use of the undo and erase functions would be correlated with higher negative valance, stress and neuroticism; and lower flow and positive affect. As an exploratory hypothesis we were interested in differences in formal elements of art therapy between a digital and physical artistic medium. We conducted a quasi-experimental study in which stress was induced and participants were randomized to create art using oil-pastels or a tablet. Formal art elements were coded, the number of erase and undo functions pressed on tablets was counted. We found that state stress was significantly reduced after art making with both mediums without significant difference between. Higher use of undo and erase was correlated with less relaxation and higher stress, agitation, agreeableness and conscientiousness, suggesting personality-based underpinnings of self-correction. Formal art elements were similar between mediums. We concluded that digital art making may be just as beneficial as traditional materials for stress reduction, creativity, and flow.

Illusory Interior: Public Housing as Uncanny Site

In 2021, Indonesia participated in the London Design Biennale, focusing on the theme of Resonance. The pavilion's response centred around public housing as an uncanny site, examining the psychological barriers faced by evicted communities during their transition to public housing. This study provides a conceptual analysis by exploring how the uncanny aspects of the occupants' experiences are expressed in installation using the illusory interior as a spatial metaphor. Through practice-led research, utilising ethnographic surrealism and narrative inquiries, data was gathered and translated into artistic mediums through various experiments. The study identifies several factors contributing to the uncanny sensation among public housing occupants, based on the occupants' experiences in public housing in Rancacili (Bandung) and Penjaringan (Jakarta), such as the shift from horizontal to vertical living, inadequate unit design, the absence of communal spaces, and a lack of ownership. The pavilion design attempts to integrate design theory and art practice, showcasing how installation art can express interiority within built spaces and extend it into installation art. Here, the uncanny acts as a methodological framework for critiquing space and transforming interiority into tangible forms by interpreting the actual conditions using installation art as a medium.

The Development Status and Countermeasures of Digital Media Art

This paper discusses the definition and characteristics of the art of digital media, introduces the application fields of digital media, and analyses the current situation faced by digital media art: the development of digital media art is facing the problem of rapid technological update and short life cycle; the knowledge and technology threshold of digital media art is high; the protection and inheritance of digital media art works have also attracted attention; the commercialization of digital media art is also an urgent problem. The commercialisation of art is also a problem that needs to be solved urgently. Finally, a series of countermeasures are proposed: the government and academic organisations should increase their support and investment in digital media art, and provide artists with a better creative environment and resources. Artists should strengthen their technical skills and interdisciplinary co-operation in order to adapt to new technologies and creative demands. Relevant departments should also strengthen copyright protection and market supervision to provide a good environment for the commercialisation of digital media art.

Daten, Atmosphären, Texte – Künstlerische Erfahrungsräume und Virtualisierungen des Literarischen

Daten, Atmosphären, Texte<b> – Künstlerische Erfahrungsräume und Virtualisierungen des Literarischen</b>

Videogames and the representation of men and women: an international perspective

In the last few decades, videogames have become a mass phenomenon and have progressively carved out an important space in society and culture. Today, they have growing capabilities to reproduce realistic scenarios, and are increasingly used as an artistic medium with significant narrative potential. In this context, players also need to confront with the representation of aspects of the Self, moving and interacting within video games’ parallel worlds. How these aspects are represented in media can be an important influence on a psychological, cultural and social level. Gender representation can be argued to be almost universal in media and reflects real-world beliefs and attitudes. Despite areas of progress, videogames often feature sexist, prejudiced or biased representations of men and women, both from an aesthetical and narrative point of view. This contribution will discuss the role of gender representation in videogames, aiming to summarize the main features and specificities of different portrayals. Specifically, men characters were over represented compared to women characters as a lead both in the narrative and in promotional material, although recent improvements were observed. Portrayals of womenappeared to feature lean-ideal body idealization, sexualization, objectification, as well as reduced agency. Moreover, portrayals of men appeared to feature muscular-ideal body idealization, restrictive emotionality, and the overuse of aggressiveness and assertiveness. These restrictive representations can have harmful consequences in the users’ reality, such as fostering sexist attitudes and beliefs, promoting restrictive gender roles and ideals of appearance, as well as increasing tolerance of violent behaviors. This analysis suggests that reducing stereotypical and sexist representations, promoting diverse and nuanced representations, and efforts for critical engagement with media portrayals may help reduce these negative effects.

Revisiting the Experience of Art Therapists and Drama Therapists Working in Schools Two Years after the First Lockdown: A Qualitative Pilot

This paper follows a preliminary study that examined how 6 (n = 6) creative arts therapists (3 art therapists and 3 drama therapists) coped with the transition to remote therapy in schools during the first lockdown in Israel due to the Coronavirus&lt;span dir="RTL"&gt; pandemic. The preliminary research explored the therapists’ experiences and views about working online upon returning to regular in-person meetings. The current paper adds a follow-up interview examining their perspective on this period, two years later. The 1&lt;sup&gt;st&lt;/sup&gt; set of interviews was analyzed using the Six-Key Model, which shed light on the various aspects of the therapists’ clinical experience as creative arts therapists. The follow-up interviews were analyzed through thematic analysis and informed by Lakoff’s views on metaphor. The results suggest that, at the time, the therapists were preoccupied with the viability of the treatment, considering their little experience in remote therapy and the need to incorporate their specific art medium into the therapeutic setting. The results also highlight specific similarities and differences between art and drama therapists. The follow-up reinforces the preliminary findings, reiterating the framing of this period as a liminal space, from which the therapists emerged personally and professionally transformed, and more resilient.

VR-driven museum opportunities: digitized archives in the age of the metaverse

VR technology has brought new prospects and energy to art museums, prompting the advancement of new technologies that can tackle future challenges while catering to the demands of the metaverse era. Today’s digital archiving and guided tours, which rely on VR and more portable information retrieval, provide optimism for museum development. VR technology overcomes the limitations of traditional museums constrained by space and time as digital archiving gradually becomes a reality. This study highlights the benefits of metaverse-driven online archiving from the users’ perspective, followed by a review of recent examples of using VR for media art archiving. We emphasize the importance of further research into unexplored emerging technologies in media art archiving and propose that VR technologies in the metaverse are essential enablers for online archiving purposes. Our work aims to help art researchers, archivists, professionals, and artists to comprehend the challenges and future needs of archiving media art in the developing metaverse. Furthermore, we discuss present cases of employing VR for media art preservation after outlining the advantages of metaverse-driven online archiving from the users’ viewpoint. We stress the need for additional studies on new technologies in media art preservation. Moreover, metaverse VR technologies play a crucial role in achieving online archiving goals. This research contributes to a better understanding of the challenges and future requirements of archiving media art in the evolving metaverse for art researchers, archivists, and artists.

Building Bridges: Translating Refugee Narratives for Public Audiences with Arts-based Media

ABSTRACT This paper presents ethnographic research from Journey: Bridging Cultures, a UK-based project that worked with school-aged youths with forced migration backgrounds. Between January 2020 and July 2021, participants and facilitators co-produced a multimedia chamber orchestra work about students’ experiences in countries of origin, transit, and destination to present to members of the Oxford community. Through this case study, we explore the translation of refugee narratives into artworks for public audiences, deconstructing the social processes and power negotiations inherent in its crafting and transmission. In conversation with scholarship on arts-based research with refugees, Michel Callon's theory of translation (1984) is mobilised to position translation as both the product and process of multiple mediations. The context of co-productive artistic creation highlights the extent to which marginalised populations shape how their narratives are translated and performed. Such participants may redirect the trajectory of an artistic project through strategies of partial- and non- engagement, but these are balanced against external influences including the parameters of the artistic medium, expectations of imagined audiences, and internalised narratives about what stories to tell.

Image/text/cliché/insight: analogical practices in the global art world

The special issue Analogical Practices in the Global Art World systematically examines for the first time the widespread practice of constructing global art and architectural histories through analogy. In addition to summarizing the essays presented and the pertinent literature on analogy across several fields, this Introduction marshals primary research alongside scholarship and observations from diverse disciplines to advance two overarching arguments. First, we claim that art world analogies both disclose and influence the axes along which art-historical and museological thinking is habitually oriented: national groupings or “schools” above all, but also chronology, gender, race, cultural identification, art media, and style. Second, we argue that the art world analogy paradigmatically involves collaborations of textual iteration with works of visual art. Proposing, ultimately, that visual analogy is never just visual, we build a theory of analogy-as-discourse for the visual arts.

Proposal for ‘Video Design Study’ to Train the Next Generation of Visual Creators—An Examination of Video Design Study and Its Influence on a Toyota Special Exhibition

Presently, in the video production community, large amounts of content are being created. Accordingly, both Arduino Uno and Raspberry Pi are significantly influencing the progression of media arts. Considering this matter, research on media arts is quite important with regard to the estimation and conception of future trends in video content and artwork. Despite this, all content that is created will eventually be forgotten over time. Therefore, when applying new technology and creating new video content, it is necessary to archive a particular movie creator’s hard work in order to save instructions for later generations on how to “design” video content. This study considers the example of projection mapping and elaborates on the importance of Video Design Study. Notably, “clarification of creating method and process”, which is a very important aspect of Video Design Study, is emphasized in this paper. In addition, a specific example of Video Design Study is introduced via the following special exhibitions: “Dreams of Kiichiro” and “Evolution of Toyota: Dreams of Kiichiro and After That.”

Positive Psychotherapy and Art

Art therapy and positive psychotherapy have common points of contact, but differ significantly in their respective theoretical and practical concepts. Both are independent therapeutic methods that require extensive training or further education. Art therapy works preferably with artistic media, whereby psychodynamic processes are integrated depending on the therapeutic orientation. Conversely, Positive Psychotherapy has related approaches in a distinct form to art therapy. This applies above all to the creative process of the procedure. Both methods overlap at the point where psychological conflicts are expressed through artistic means or stories. While artistic therapies focus on this process, Positive Psychotherapy is a psychotherapeutic procedure in its own right. In this article, the approach to art therapy is presented against the background of the resource-oriented practice and theoretical approaches of Positive Psychotherapy.

Reprints, reboots and retcons: standardizing comics cataloging with the Best practices guide from the GNCRT

Response to a plethora of historical forces that devalue comics, including hostile cataloging standards, led to the creation of the Best practices for cataloging comics and graphic novels using RDA and MARC21. The guide supports comics cataloging using current standards, recognizing the great diversity in this sequential art medium, as well as needs particular to public, academic and special libraries. With this, and related current and future projects, the Graphic Novels and Comics Round Table (GNCRT) hopes to promote equity in comics cataloging, and improve patron access to comics.

독거노인의 집단미술치료 경험에 대한 질적 사례연구

The purpose of this study is to find out what the elderly living alone experience through the group art therapy program and the process of change due to participation. This was conducted as a program for self-awareness and emotional recovery by facing mental and physical changes expressed in life in old age and internal conflicts and anxiety felt in life. Participants in the study were selected as eight elderly people living alone who experienced bereavement over the age of 65 belonging to the elderly welfare center, and a total of 10 sessions were conducted. As a research method, Stake (1995) and Yin (2009)’s qualitative case study procedures were classified and analyzed into topics containing meaning among the total contents. As a result of the study, the empirical meaning of the group art therapy program of the elderly living alone gave flexibility to the rigid emotional response and showed active changes in the behavioral aspect. The progression of aging according to the characteristics of old age can cause a decrease in overall function, but by continuing self-expression through art work, the speed of cognitive awareness and work response has improved and language literacy has become abundant. Functional learning and emotional stimulation through the use of art media were found to have helped improve achievement and self-exploration, helping to perform positive flexibility, voluntary roles, and self-understanding and reflection processes in the bond between participants.

Contemporary Ukrainian Visual Culture on the Way to the International Cultural Space

The article is devoted to the visual culture of Ukraine since independence. It pays special attention to the trends and phenomena of contemporary Ukrainian visual culture that have entered the context of world culture through recognition on international cultural platforms (competitions, festivals, biennials, etc.). The considerations concern the development of various trends in contemporary Ukrainian art, which use various artistic media: photography, installation, performance and film. In particular, Ukrainian conceptual photography was the most interestingly represented by several generations of photographers of the Kharkiv School, who combined radical bodily imagery and social criticism. The Ukrainian installation is represented by the works of artists of the REP (Revolutionary Experimental Space) group, which is focused on the unity of art and politics and considers artistic creation as a political act. An interesting sub-direction of the installation is the video installation, which delivers an original combination of contemporary Ukrainian artists with site-specific art and artistic means of reflecting on the traumas inflicted on Ukrainian society by the war. The article pays special attention to the development of contemporary Ukrainian cinema. The author demonstrates the connection between the work of contemporary Ukrainian filmmakers and the traditions of Ukrainian poetic cinema. In addition, other trends in Ukrainian cinema are identified: the experimental search for a new film language, the development of documentary cinema, on top of the convergence of fiction and non-fiction artistic languages in the work of contemporary Ukrainian filmmakers. The dominant issues of contemporary Ukrainian films selected for screening at leading European film festivals are identified: inclusiveness, reflection on Ukrainian history, war trauma, psychological rehabilitation of combatants, etc.

Reconnecting with the Urban Vernacular through Post-New Order Visual Art

Abstract Indonesia’s urbanization and economic development projects during the New Order established regimes of visuality that ignored aspects of everyday urban life. Contemporary Indonesian artists attempt to share untold histories and stories of everyday life from the urban past or give expression to the social and creative challenges and opportunities of the urban present. This article focuses on multimedia artist Maryanto and new media art collective Ruang MES 56. Maryanto’s use of allegory and his notion of art as a ‘space of exception’ constitute thoughtful ways of engaging with the transformations of people’s urban environments and identities. MES 56’s work utilizes the critical and humorous potential of the ludic to deal with the new urban realities and possibilities under democratic reform. I argue that artistic exception does not exclude but in some ways strengthens, and in other ways contradicts, reconnection with the everyday realities of Indonesian urban life.

Video between Architecture and Telepathy

On 6 January 1973, Chilean media artist Juan Downey exhibited Plato Now at the Everson Museum of Art in Syracuse, New York. A hybrid multichannel video installation and performance, this was Downey’s restaging of Plato’s Parable of the Cave—the “Now” registering what the myth might look like from the vantage of his own historical moment. And whereas Plato’s original operated through an inflexible division between the space of the mind and a derivative sensual reality, Plato Now explicitly sought to blur those philosophical lines by assembling a relay of invisible energies, brain waves, video signals, and telepathic communications, such that the space of mind and sensual reality became speculatively entangled. This article clarifies just how Plato Now did this, and situates its philosophical vision as a significant, if relatively unremarked, aesthetic prefiguration of the new materialist tendencies towards relationality, hybrid assemblages, and vibrant conceptions of energy and matter.

Photography as Cinematic Ekphrasis: Intermedial Study in Garin Nugroho’s Opera Jawa

The Opera Jawa (2006), directed by Garin Nugroho is an Indonesian film with unique hybridity of art media (music, dance, visual art installation, acting, photography). This study aims to provide an overview of photographic ekphrasis’s form, process, and function. This research used a descriptive qualitative method. Data collection was through observation with the note-taking documentation technique. Through intermedial studies, data analysis was carried out using Agnes Petho’s cinematic ekphrasis and photo-filmic theory. The results of the study show that Opera Jawa displays the characteristics of intermedial reference media through cinematic ekphrasis of photography in film. This matter is manifested at the diegetic media level through family photos of the character Setyo-Siti, and the extra-diegetic media through photographic frames introducing film characters. Cinematic Ekphrasis works with exchange strategies and crossing the borders of basic media modalities (material, sensory, space-time, semiotic) from film to photography. Cinematic ekphrasis ultimately forms a metaphor that mediates the experience and knowledge of film audiences toward the target media and the source media. Thus, Opera Jawa, as the target media, can offer its ideology as a result of Sinta Obong’s source media interpretation.

A Study on the Application of Chinese Cultural Elements in Digital Media Art Design

In the past few years, China’s digital media art has been moving forward rapidly, and this field has been developed rapidly. For digital media, it contains many aspects, just like the rise of the animation industry cannot be separated from the union of modern science and technology and animation elements, and of course the addition of Chinese elements, so it is important to conduct an in-depth study of these aspects. Adding Chinese elements to digital media art design is a good way because it allows the outside world to understand the teaching word media, and more importantly, China, giving the audience a better visual experience.

Literature Study of Learning Outcomes of "Pak Krumun" Cartoon Art Media in Readers' Lives

The communication media tools include the press, print media, film, radio, and television. Communication media has opportunities, challenges, and abilities in providing value to human society. One of the print media studied is cartoons. One of the print media in the form of cartoons is the "Pak Krumun" Cartoon. "Pak Krumun" is a cartoon that is in Utusan Magazine. This research aims to study the influence of "Pak Krumun" cartoon art media on readers' lives. The research methods used are literature study, interviews, and questionnaires. A literature study was conducted to find out about thoughts about cartoons, media, and the Church. Interviews were conducted with readers and Pak Bambang Shakuntala the creator of the "Pak Krumun" cartoon. The questionnaire was given to readers as many as 162 respondents, to find out the learning outcomes obtained from "Pak Krumun" cartoons. "Pak Krumun" cartoon is the work of Bambang Shakuntala who invites people to reflect on their lives. "Pak Krumun" cartoons provide real and concrete themes of people's lives.

Time as Duration in Artistic Communication

The article deals with epistemological, aesthetic and communicative aspects of time. The metalanguage of the study is the system of artistic communication. Understanding time as duration, the author uses A. Bergson’s theory of duration which has become relevant in the context of post-non-classical trends in the development of science.&#x0D; This study is based on a phenomenological analysis of the artistic communication of the twentieth century (avant-garde painting, media art, modern music, photography), and takes into account the concepts of time of G. Deleuze, multiple temporalism of I. Wallerstein and F. Braudel, ideas of E. Husserl and M. Heidegger.&#x0D; The study showed that in the conditions of the information society, the duration of social interactions changes, diachrony at the communication maximum is compressed into synchrony. Art objects, in which the reception of culture is carried out, display individual and social time, and also convey qualitative transitions and temporal layers through the procedures of duration compression and stretching.