Disclaimer: in this essay I want to raise the topic why new media arts is perceived as such a closed and self-referential scene. Why can’t artists who experiment with the latest technologies be part of pop culture and the arts market? What’s the after-effect of the ‘exhuberant’ dotcom era? And why is there there such a subordinate attitude towards academic science within new media arts? And is the educational sector the only way out? In what follows, I am reluctant to list specific examples of artworks for fear of diluting the general argument. Each and every argument can be falsified with reference to specific projects that prove the opposite of what I am trying to prove. What I am interested in is the broader tendency in which new media arts currently exists—a situation I will argue is unnecessarily constraining at a time of rapid commercial development and social take of new media forms. The immediate call for ‘positive examples’ and ‘alternatives’ is not a constructive attitude but part of the problem because it averts to make an actual institutional power analysis.

Για ολόκληρο το άρθρο δες εδώ

(This essay was first published in Scott McQuire/Nikos Papastergiadis (ed.), Empires, Ruins + Networks, University of Melbourne Press, Melbourne, 2005, http://www.mup.com.au).