Computer art: the ‘orphan parent’ of media art

Abstract

The sadness of most art is that it does not know its future. The sadness of much media art is that it does not know its (computer art) past. We develop alternative histories of media arts because of new trends, techniques and ideas. But if these new dimensions apply well to some new media art, they may not apply well to the computer arts of the last 60 years. If the (important) dimensions of the social, collaborative, participative and techno-cultural aspects are applied to much computer art, it tends to disappear - or at least become emasculated, not being fit for a purpose that was invented post-hoc. Thus such art will not be well understood, its discourses, if any, will be couched in terms of what is understood today, about today’s art, not what was understood yesterday, about “yesterday’s art”. In turn, this means that certain dimensions and aspects of today’s media art will not be understood.

This, incidentally, is why computer art is still on the margins, at best, of contemporary art. The tools we use today to address computer art portray it as reformist, not revolutionary. But it was revolutionary and, crucially, still can and should be. An alternative to alternative histories will be proposed, one using the revolutionary, but mainly hidden, dimensions of “old-fashioned” computer art.