Re: [-empyre-] Opening remarks on new media history

[Alan Sondheim <sondheim@panix.com>]

>
> >(1) new media is a field,
>

- This makes me very nervous. On a smaller scale, performance art was once
just 'performance' - along with the notion of field came institutional-
ization, expectations, etc.

Only in the sense of the field verse of Olson, of a loosely unbound domain
or Wittgensteinian language game, can I buy into the notion. Otherwise,
the expectations produce genre.

I've not been able to afford the book, but have read numerous essays in
it, and have taught new media. When there's no department (I was the
sub-department), the freedom's amazing, and the work can go in literally
any conceivable direction. Add requisites and 'field,' and the
expectations literally drown out everything else.

Is 'new media' going to be new 20 years from now? Does it include for
example experimental music? electronic music? experimental jazz? folk
music? folk music on electronic instruments? Where are lines drawn? What's
acceptable?

This isn't a post 60s rant, but I'd definitely argue for a fundamentally
anarchic approach to art and design here.

By the way, caught between (art) department expectations and the world -
the school chose to get rid of 'new media' altogether, termined my
contract and the professorship line itself.

- Alan