Interesting post on Rhizome 'The Postmedia Perspective', which addresses the 'identity crisis' of new media arts - something that also started this website. Whether you agree with the analysis or not, it is an up-to-date analysis. Quoted from
Media, New Media, Postmedia,by Domenico Quaranta.
[LINK to read full article]
... any attempt to import on the contemporary art platform the idea of art and the system of values on which the New Media Art world is grounded (that is, New Media Art as a category based on the use – and, often, the celebration – of technology) has failed miserably, garnering criticism both about the suitability of basing an artistic category on the use of a medium, and on the cultural value of celebrating technologies. While, on the other hand, events that focused on the impact of the current techno-social development on art, without introducing any distinction of medium, as well as events that researched the way a specific, not technology-related topic (i.e., abstraction) was developed in both new media and old media art, proved to be quite well accepted.
and Catherine David:
New technologies are nothing other than new means to an end. Alone they are of significance; it always depends upon how they are applied. I am against naive faith in progress, glorification of the possibilities of technological developments. Much of what today's artists produce with New Media is very boring. But I am just as opposed to the denunciation of technology. For me technology in itself is not a category according to which I judge works. This type of categorization is just as outmoded as division into classical art genres (painting, sculpture…). I am interested in the idea of a project; ideally the means of realizing the project should arise from the idea itself
