Subjective Media: A Historic Foundation for New Media in the Arts

One of the central criticisms of new media arts, especially in academic practice, is often aimed at the lack of historic connection between contemporary practice and early modern art of the 20th century. New media is generally viewed as an outgrowth of structuralism and the postmodern crisis, and thus by critics as an extension of the appropriation of art via technological advances up to the 1970s. While new media is defined in part by technology, this work aims to demonstrate that new media art maybe be strongly connected to the continuity of art as a greater embodiment of the challenges presented to artists in the 1920s. Through an analysis of meta-narratives in 20th century art, we show that media art is in fact part of a natural cycle between a rational and a subjective mode toward language- mediated creativity.