New media art (also known as media art) is a generic term used to describe art related to, or created with, a technology invented or made widely available since the mid-20th Century. The term differentiates itself by its resulting cultural objects, which can be seen in opposition to those deriving from old media arts (i.e. traditional painting, sculpture, etc.) New Media concerns are often derived from the telecommunications, mass media and digital modes of delivery the artworks involve, with practises ranging from conceptual to virtual art, performance to installation.

"New" in this context means

• the relative novelty of digital computing
• a belief in the computer as the future
• the unprecedented speed of evolution and mutation of devices and technologies
• undeveloped, imperfect and experimental environments
• subjective novelty, most of the artists and theoreticians currently studying digital culture have migrated from different disciplines.

History

The origins of new media art can be traced to the moving photographic inventions of the late 19th Century such as the zoetrope (1834), the praxinoscope (1877) and Eadweard Muybridge's zoopraxiscope (1879). During the 1960s the divergence with the history of cinema came with the video art experiments of Nam June Paik, and multimedia performances of Fluxus. More recently, the term "new media" has become closely associated with the term Digital Art, and has converged with the history and theory of computer-based practises.

Some important influences on new media art have been the theories developed around hypertext, databases, and networks. Important thinkers in this regard have been Vannevar Bush and Theodor Nelson with important contributions from the literary works of Jorge Luis Borges, Italo Calvino, Julio Cortázar and Douglas Cooper. These elements have been especially revolutionary for the field of narrative and anti-narrative studies, leading explorations into areas such as non-linear and interactive narratives.

Preservation

As the technologies used to deliver works of new media art such as film, tapes, web browsers, software and operating systems become obsolete, New Media art faces serious issues around the challenge to preserve artwork beyond the time of its contemporary production.

Methods of preservation exist, including the translation of a work from an obsolete medium into a related new medium, the digital archiving of media, and the use of emulators to preserve work dependent on obsolete software or operating system environments.

Digital art

Digital art is art created on a computer in digital form. Digital art can be purely computer-generated, such as fractals, or taken from another source, such as a scanned photograph, or an image drawn using vector graphics software using a mouse or graphics tablet. The term is usually reserved for art that has been non-trivially modifed by a computing process (such a computer program, microcontroler or any electronic system capable of interpreting an input to create an output); digitized text data and raw audio and video recordings are not usually considered digital art in themselves, but can be part of a larger project.

The availability and popularity of photograph manipulation software has spawned a vast and creative library of highly modified images, many bearing little or no hint of the original image. Using electronic versions of brushes, filters and enlargers, these "Neographers" produce images unattainable through conventional photographic tools. In addition, digital artists may manipulate scanned drawings, paintings, collages or lithographs, as well as using any of the above-mentioned techniques in combination. Artists also use many other sources of information and programs to create their work.

3D graphics are created via the process of designing complex imagery from geometric shapes, polygons or NURBS curves to create realistic 3 dimensional shapes, objects and scenes for use in various media such as film, television, print and special visual effects. There are many software programs for doing this.

The technology can enable collaboration, lending itself to sharing and augumenting by a creative effort similar to the open source movement, and the creative commons in which users can collaborate in a project to create unique pieces of art.

The mainstream media uses a lot of digital art in advertisements, and computers are used extensively in film to produce special effects. Desktop publishing has had a huge impact on the publishing world, although that is more related to graphic design.

Nonetheless, digital art is yet to gain the acceptance and regard reserved for "serious" artforms such as sculpture, painting and drawing, perhaps due to the erroneous impression of many that "the computer does it for you" and the suggestion that the image created could be infinitly repeatable.

Computers are also commonly used to make music, especially electronic music, since they present an easy and powerful way to arrange and create sound samples. It is possible that general acceptance of the value of digital art will progress in much the same way as the increased acceptance of electronically produced music over the last three decades.

Some say we are now in a postdigital era, where digital technologies are no longer a novelty in the art world, and "the medium is no longer the message." Digital tools have now become an integral part of the process of making art.

Digital Photography and digital printing is now an acceptable medium of creation and presentation by major museums and galleries, and the work of digital artists is gaining ground, through net art and software art. But the work of digital painters and printmakers is still not widely accepted by the established art community. It is not represented or collected by any major institution. Only the Victoria and Albert Museum print department has a reasonable but small collection of digital art.