RE: [-empyre-] New Media Reader

["Jim Andrews" <jim@vispo.com>]

> Jim, thanks for the quote, question, and pointer to the NMR site.

It's exciting to have you on empyre. You and Noah have accomplished a great
deal with your New Media Reader. It's quite an accomplishment.

> > What is at stake, do you think, in the notion of 'new media'
> > constituting a 'field'?
>
> If I were to say "new media is a field" it would just be a shorthand for
> saying that the topic deserves to be studied on its own terms, with
> methodologies and appaoches that are native to new media. New media is
> important enough to our lives and our culture, and different new media
> works and systems are related enough to one another, that we should
> consider new media this way.

Yes, and one would hope that a part of the methodology would include
multi-disciplinarity. Not just among arts, either.

The sciences could benefit from more vital involvement in the arts, more
real involvement in the arts. The culture of mathematics, for instance, can
be very oppressive and actually quite dark politically. I remember one of my
fellow math undergrads, who got the inspiration for his masters thesis
blowing hash smoke-rings (did his masters on the math of vortices) going off
to work, somewhat later, in weapons research in the States. 'The beauty of
the weapons', as Bringhurst says. The finest minds of the coming generations
should be attracted to a multi-disciplinarity that celebrates and enables
synthesis of arts, media, and science. Rather than the bright ones going
different ways. The best minds should be attracted to the arts, to a
synthesis of arts, media, and science and attracted toward building a
culture of computing/art/app that creates among the more promising
possibilities, not simply more weapons. Or widgets. Or whatever.

Also, I agree that "the topic deserves to be studied on its own terms"
rather than pigeon-holed into old categories.

ja