Art Practices of the New Millennium

Melentie Pandilovski

The new generation of media artists dealing with immersive technologies, if nothing else in common, shares the following parameters:

1. Their work is not image based, as they have engaged in the process of which artworks outgrow the concept of images. Namely, virtual reality aspects of digital image production, where artists try to immerse in the latest technology, increase the phenomenological experience of the space by experimenting.
2. Their work, although utilizing the text, still cannot be considered text-based, similar to the fact that the web itself is not text-based although textually over-loaded.

How then do we describe the work of these artists?

We may technically say that their work represents a vibrant collection of interaction between data stacks moving from abstraction to representation.

We would not be wrong in saying that artists utilize integrated media communications where Internet becomes the space to be augmented, accented through the interaction of the viewer/participant, in the process of which wide-ranging visualization replaces imagery and textuality.

In order for the artists today to develop relevant new media projects they have to pass through 3 basic segments:

• Data Compiling
• Adaptation to technical issues
• Establishing of a relation between artists, producers, and technicians

As soon as the relation is established an apparatus satisfying 5 parameters has to be implemented:

• Providing of a Context
• Implementation of interactivity
• Networking
• Superior Graphics
• Quality Object Modeling

In this process the selected artists, including the ones utilizing VRML, are engaged in finding out the constraints of new technologies, while bringing the viewer to an increased awareness of the artwork, represented by samples through which visitors can move by navigating or clicking, as they are absorbed in virtual possibilities of space, interaction, and interface.

Further on, the new media artists, predominantly the ones dealing with interactive installations, betrothed in process of altering the concept of personal and community space, are attempting to organize it along the lines of a relationship between cyberspace and real space.

Finally I would conclude with the idea that in this process artists are speaking to us about a process of changing the critical viewpoint - away from a passive relationship often associated with art, in the direction of artwork through which we can experience virtuality.