>> There are some core power dynamics being played out here ... on this
list as well as elsewhere in this nascent field.
Has some really scary truth to it, because in the single > arrow statement
the writer specifically infers that those people who don't see New Media as
a computer driven "new way of thinking, presenting simulated worlds, and
connecting and computing upon media in radically different ways" would be
best advised to sit on the sidelines of New Media and not participate
"directly in the investigations, explorations, and discussions that are
taking place."
Now, if there has ever been a statement that arrogates power over a range of
activities in art and privileges one narrow set of activity (working with
computer machines) over another and says that these others have no place at
the table, well, I'm sorry, I just can't hang with that, and that makes the
insight in the double >> arrow quote all the more accurate and poignant.
Personally, I have been considering the idea of "New Media", nebulous as it
is, as part of an even more ethereal sense of "Interdisciplinary Art", where
"New Media" is a kind of a technological subset of that broader grouping, so
as to distinguish, for example, "someone (A) who generates images for the
internet that are generated by data input by a site visitor, that can be
printed and framed, etc." ( brewed up in JAVA, for example) from "someone
(B) who sings songs in constructed environments" (say, made of forest
detritus).