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Abstract
The English expression media art and its Portuguese translation artemídia are used today to denominate forms of artistic expression that take control of the technological resources of the media and the entertainment industry in general, or that appear in its diffusion channels, to propose quality alternatives. This generic designation displays the disadvantage of limiting the discussion of the media art only to the technical plane (supports, tools, ways of production, diffusion circuits), without reaching the heart of the matter, that is the understanding of the imbrications of these two terms: media and art. What do they do together and what relation is there between them? To say media art suggests that the media products can be approached as art forms of our time, or that, on the contrary, the art of our time looks to mix itself in some way in the massive circuit of the media? In its own meaning, the media art is something more than a mere use of cameras, computers and synthesizers in art production, or than the simple insertion of art in massive circuits such as television or Internet. The most complex question is knowing how they can be combined, contaminated and be distinguished one from the other, institutions so different from the point of view of their respective histories, their subjects or protagonists and the social insertion of each one. The instrumental support seems to summarize the simplest aspect of the problem. Art was always produced with the means of its time. Bach composed fugues for harpsichord because it was the most advanced musical instrument of its time in acoustics and engineering terms. Stockhausen preferred to compose sonorous textures for electronic synthesizers, since in his time it didn’t have much sense to conceive pieces for harpsichord, unless it was a historical reference. But the challenge that both composers faced was exactly the same: to extract the most musical possibilities of two instruments recently invented and that gave form to the acoustic sensitivity of their respective times. Edgar Degas, born almost simultaneously with the invention of photography, used this technology widely, not only to study the behavior of light, that he transformed into impressionist technique, but also in his sculptures to freeze bodies in movement with the same freshness as that of the camera‘s shutter. The original series of Marcel Duchamp Nu descendant l’escalier is a direct application of the cronophotography technique (the precursor of cinematography) of Étienne Marey, with whom the artist had contact through his brother Raymond Duchamp-Vallon, cronophootographer of the Salpêtrière Hospital, in Paris. Why, then, should the artist of our time have to reject the video, computer, Internet, the design, processing and image edition programs? If all art is made with the media of its time, the electronic arts represent a more advanced expression of artistic creation, as well as best expressing sensitivities and knowledge of the man of the early third millennium.
References
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