New Art

On Monday, one of the TA's lectured the class on New Media, which is basically any art that involves a computer. A lot of the ideas she discussed we had already encountered in 115, but she brought up some new material for us to consider.
The most interesting piece was DJ Shadow's short assemblage, 911: State of Emergence, a collection of images spliced together to create associations between our leaders and the violent fundamentalists in the middle east. Because it was such a fast paced piece, it created these connections without a lot of reflection; it was like a typical Fox News production, except for its conclusions, which were opposite of the usual cable news network's. Of course, the fact that it was on the web also points to the community that's viewing it. It's for everyone w/access to a computer, and it's goal isn't to make money. The fear mongering practiced by the administration after 9/11 was mirrored by the media, attempting to keep people glued to their TV screens so they could make more money on advertising. There's no profit goal for the website on which DJ Shadow's piece was displayed.
What her presentation made me think most about was technology, and how it impacts the work that artists--especially filmmakers--produce. For example, the short film made w/a low pixel digital camera in 2003 was inspired by the blurry, blocky look of broadband video, which nowadays is much clearer. Her work is now pretty much irrelevant, but it makes a lot of sense for the time it was made.