intro 2

In the second introduction written by Lev Manovich, I was surprised to learn that the United States fell behind other countries in developing new media art during the 1990s. Naturally, because the U.S. was the inventor of the internet and creator of computer networks, I assumed that our new media artistic output would be overflowing. But instead of slowing easing into the technology and being able to create art works that reflect on the true nature of the technology itself, the U.S. rapidly incorporated the internet into our daily lives. As a result, we were blinded by the efficiency of the medium and the art world chose not to fund new projects. I would be curious to see examples of early European interactive installation art, and how it compares to the commercially-driven art path that we took.

Also, I'm still coming to terms with Manovich's definition of new media. An abbreviated meaning is that it's a combination of old and new ways to represent data, the old way being images and text and the new being numerical (computer) data.