Trendy Hybrid Talking Mantra

Continuing with the release of notes from the seminars as part of an open source gesture thrown out for the autopoietic world of the artificial intelligentsia to do with it what it will (that's you I'm speaking of, WWW-androids), here is an overview of what I see as some basic trends in contemporary media art:

• an explosion of hybridized art forms emerging out of interdisciplinary media arts practices (iMAP)
  
  
• more contemporary artists using new media technologies to both compose their art work as well as display it
  
  
• lively remix culture reassessing what is and is not potential "source material" and chops-driven coopetive environment spurring on debate on how to manipulate said "source material" (and possibly repurpose or "version" it) for a wide array of media genres and platforms
  
  
• the emergence of digitally constructed identities, fictional personas, meta-histories, narrative mythologies, and collaborative networks (both anonymous and pseudonymous) as strategic aspects of naming / performing the Artist-Medium-Instrument-Body
  
  
• openmindedness to alternative distribution schemes to locate audiences (festivals, Internet, club spaces, indie DVD labels, etc. in relation to and combination with traditional venues such as museums, galleries, print publications, and recital/dance halls) and art-research investigations into future models of "audience reception"
  
  
• exploring the connections between an iMAP and the "pure research" methods associated with cutting edge scientific research with particular emphasis placed on investigating the potential overlapping research agendas with these sciences (experimental neuroscience, medical imaging, biology, behavioral/brain studies, computer science, engineering, nanotechnology, telecommunications [digital rights management], wearable computing as fashion, metadesign, bioluminescence, etc.) but also taking into account research subjects usually outside the parameters of traditional academic contexts (paranormality, psychogeography, hallucination, pataphysics, etc.) while still maintaining a thematic focus on issues of potent value that have concerned artists throughout history (life/death, self-portrait, sexuality, landscape/nature, beauty, the body, religion/spirituality, aesthetics, pop or consumer culture, interpersonal relationships/love, gender, identity, the creative process itself, politics, collective and individual memory, dreamwork, etc.)

These are off-the-cuff and open up linkages to many potential threads of discussion. For instance, what is an iPhone except a new media art display device / performance prop / writing instrument / social networking tool? And why do we have to wait six months?

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Metadata: iPhone, artist, philosophy, theory, image, remix, art, writing, narrative, cinema, research