Taxonomies Of New Media Art – Real World Namings

Beryl Graham, University of Sunderland, United Kingdom

Abstract

This paper provides an outline of current taxonomies, categories and critical vocabularies for new media art or digital art. The examples are drawn from real-world art contexts, including the new-media curating discussion list.  The relationships between namings and the practical considerations of funding and institutional roles of arts institutions are examined. Particular institutions include San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and artworks include University of Openess [sic]. Conclusions on useful taxonomies include the characteristics of Interactivity, Connectivity, and Computability (Dietz), and "Medium-Independent Behaviours" (Variable Media).

Keywords: curating, art, new media art, taxonomies, metadata

Taxonomies Of New Media Art – Real World Namings

 "...I often groan when the issue comes up ..." (Dietz, 30 Sep 2004)

Taxonomies of new media art are a notoriously dry and gnarly issue for curators and others working in the field where simple definitions are in short supply. However, when these namings and categories are reflected upon in the context of real-world effects on funding, exhibition and institutional structures, the subject becomes a living issue, rather than "a dusty and boring place" (Midboe, 2004).

Surely, the particularly 'fluid' and 'new' characteristics of new media are the whole point – won't any new medium be necessarily disruptive of safe categories, and perhaps even more inherently worrying to the departmental territories of arts institutions?  With this in mind, the examples used here attempt to be led by the art itself. This paper presents some current working categories, and looks at how the definitions are affecting the way  the art is shown.  Starting with some basic namings, some more complex categories from the real world of art are explored. The paper draws from a chapter on taxonomies written for a book Theorizing Digital Cultural Heritage (Graham, 2005-), and adds new material from a discussion list theme of September 2004 concerning taxonomies (CRUMB, 2004). 

Basic definitions 

But, in all cases, I would never limit "new media" to "digital technology" for two reasons. One is, that analog electrical technology did change the paradigm of time-based art already a long time ago - and the introduction of formal and technical parameters implemented with electricity into the arts (gates, on-off, chaotic behavior, feedback, projection of images, loudspeakers etc.) is the basis for all digital technology and has had similar revolutionary consequences for the arts as digital technology during the past 50 years. And the second reason is that all digital signals have to be converted to analog signals before our senses/we can perceive them - we cannot create sense without this conversion. (Goebel, 2004)

The history of the field has included the namings of "computer art", "cybernetic art", "unstable media", "emergent media", or art "that you can plug in" (Gere, 2002; V2, 2002; Graham, 2002a). Each has a variable meaning in itself, and very much depends on its historical period and the background of the author, be that art, science or cultural studies (Gere, 2002; Packer and Jordan, 2001; Cook, 2004). Lev Manovich (2001) has even argued that we are now "post-media" and that the categories that best describe the characteristics of post-digital art concern user behaviour and data organisation rather than medium per se.

To very briefly summarise, namings in common current use tend to settle around "digital art" or "new media art". The former tends to have a very broad definition of any art using digital technology, and tends to be more inclusive of art/science or art/technology approaches. "New media art" tends to have its roots in the art traditions of video or lens media, but is prone to confusion with the commercial new media (interactive quiz shows and the like). This name, of course, may itself date relatively quickly, but is used here as the accepted art-world term.

To start with a definition of 'new media art', my own working definition is art made with, and for, digital media, including the Internet or computer-controlled installations. These definitions of digital art will therefore be considered through the wider lens of categories from the word of art.   

Should We Taxonomize?

Classification is always a form of power! (Berry Slater, 2004)

Perhaps it would be constructive to look at the general reasons why artists choose to work with the systems they do rather than seek to refine language distinct from practice. (Biggs, 2004)

Shulgin and Goruniova explain it like this:

Art naturally resists classification, but is nevertheless always classified and labeled when presented at, for example, exhibitions and festivals. By using the familiar interface of an online software database, Runme.org could play with the idea of storing, classifying, labeling, collecting, while at the same time taking advantage of the democratic possibilities of open databases. [from http://www.runme.org/about.tt2] (Dietz, 30 Sep 2004)

On the CRUMB discussion list, debate raged on the dangers and usefulness of taxonomies, namings and mappings. The hierarchical power structures of conventional taxonomies are very obvious, and were compared thoughtfully to the working clarity of common meanings and to the possibilities for alternative mappings, or the question of

"… how we can create counter cartographies of the relations between and among them that aren't controlled only by those with certain kinds of power.” (Dietz, 7 Sep 2004). The primacy of the art practice was a primary conclusion from the debate, both as a starting point for conventional taxonomies, and as a playful tool in the hands of artists who deal with data themselves. As mentioned by Dietz above, artists such as Alexei Shulgin have used the inherently participative potential of on-line mapping and definition tools to challenge static taxonomies. Furtherfield (2004) has also made collective naming tools, and the artist Saul Albert collaborated on setting up a “Faculty of Taxonomy” within the University of Openess [sic], which uses Wiki Web sites to gather tools and collections concerning taxonomy both academic and imaginative. Alternatively, less participative tools can map and make visible: David Rokeby's Giver of Names involves a computer connected to a camera, which, when shown an object, assigns a name which is sometimes illuminating, but often simply illustrative of the fascinating absurdity of machine logic; Josh On's They Rule, alternatively, maps the existing hierarchies of corporate animals.  As Spencer Roberts points out, these playful approaches can have serious taxonomic applications.

It is interesting to look at Duchampian strategies (signing/annotating objects - or playing with the formal context of exhibition) as a kind of subversive taxonomical practice. [...]

I think that the key point with respect to a taxonomy is whether we choose to view it as a means of capturing a concept (the essentialist/reductive approach) or whether we choose to view it as a kind of reading‚ (a more playful, pluralistic approach). (Roberts, 2004)

One of the key characteristics peculiar to new media is the 'immateriality' or otherwise of digital media (Cook, 2005), which is shared to a certain extent by the history of conceptual art. This does present particular challenges to conventional object-based taxonomies, but also perhaps makes the namings more important philosophically.

Charlie defends taxonomies because of the threat of disappearance (the ultimate "invisibility") of the art object, of an art (or not art) which, living in electrons, is both here and not here. (Turner, 2004)

In very practical terms, the argument as to whether to taxonomise comes to rest on the question of how 'the future audience' comes to understand the field, which is a fate common to all art forms, whether they are material or not:

The point of course is that the Tate or any other institution cannot act otherwise. There is no privileged access to the history of art or any other form of cultural activity, except through material traces, and that making any sense of this, such as in a museum, gallery or archive, requires making decisions, choices, about which traces to preserve, which in turn necessarily involves exclusion as well as inclusion. (Gere, 2004)

Where Are You Coming From?

I think that "media art" as "time based" art can benefit from looking at the performing arts (which have always been time-based) and specifically at music since music and technology have been wed for around 130 years ... (Goebel, 4 Sep 2004)

As long as processing in real time was not available, data always had to be stored intermediately somewhere on skin, wax, clay, stone, papyrus, linen, paper, wood, or on the cerebral cortex - in order to be transmitted or otherwise processed. (Gere, 6 Sep 2004)

… The orthodoxy appears to be to establish historical analogies with emergent practices. This seems useful but often too loosely applied - like Manovich's 'language of new media' reduced to cinema. (Cox, 2004)

Because digital technologies reach across multi-media boundaries, how new media is understood of course depends upon the history through which it is viewed. Hence music, computer history, or cinema may be a way of making sense of it, or, in the case of Michael Rush's book New media in late 20th-century art (1999), performance and performance art form the starting chapter of the book. As well as theorists, curators tend to arrive with pre-existing experience of existing art forms, and curators who have developed an interest in new media often come from a background in lens media, like  Steve Dietz (photography) or Barbara London (film and video). With the question of where the understanding is coming from is the obvious question of whether any one old definition can adequately cover the essential characteristics of the range of new media and whether historical understandings can cover future developments:

In the context of the latest iteration of transmediale and the removal of categories, my concern at the time was that the removal of the 'software' category would lose the critical impetus that had been established over the years. The point was really whether this was the right time to remove it. The category (like festivals and awards too) is, and was useful, only for strategic purposes but the time will come, or has come, when it loses its usefulness, or is recuperated. (Cox, 2004)

Some Working Categories

… new media art is characterised first and foremost by four technical qualities: interactivity and generativity, connectivity and multimediality[;] these qualities actually mark off common contemporary visual art (and other forms of media art like video art) from new media art. (Jaschko, 2004)

I have been trying to do my own list using the three moments of production, distribution and consumption ...

• Production: - performance - icons - text - browsers - spam-art - e-mail - software - code - algorithms - video - audio.
• Distribution: - Web sites - cell phones – discourse - CD/DVD - performance - chat - SMS - PDA's - e-mail – proprietary software.
• Consumption - home - school - galleries -  Web-zines - festivals - competitions - media centres - conferences - discussions lists. (Hazan, 2004)\

As outlined in Graham (2005), in order for the critical and journalistic coverage of digital art to move beyond the "can computers be art?" phase, it is necessary for some kind of shared critical vocabulary to emerge. A range of work is identified here, ending with works which have proved most workable in the context of curating.  The categories referred to below are just five from those tabulated on-line (Graham, 2004) as a starting point for the CRUMB discussion list theme of September 2004.

Table 1: Five sets of categories of digital art.  

To start with some competitions of digital art, the transmediale Award Competition had until 2004 the three categories of Image; Interaction; Software. However, the committee  then made the deliberate decision that these categories should be abolished, and that artists should define their own areas of work. As can be seen from both transmediale and Prix Ars Electronica, artwork categories include both specific media (Computer animation or Image) and characteristics which might range across various media (Interaction may be a characteristic of sound, image, new or old media). The interesting category of 'Digital Communities' acknowledges the wider interpretative role of digital media. 

When it comes to databases of digital art, the keywords used for searching reflect other ways of categorizing: The New Media Encyclopaedia simply lists the artists by name, whereas Rhizome's Artbase uses a long list of keywords ranging from "artificial life" to "death" (i.e. the keywords concern both media and content).  The Frieling/Daniels CD-ROM database of artworks separates the keyword searches into three options. The date field is an obvious art-historical tool, and the other keywords concern either  media/context or content/theme.  This division may seem a simple one, but it helps to clarify whether the artwork simply has technology as subject matter (as some art-science projects do) or whether the works use digital media and hence can be classified as digital art.  

Curators and writers including Christiane Paul and Steve Dietz have developed categories that reflect the needs of curating, where it is very important to be aware of both the artistic process as well as the end product. In the world of art organizations, it is also very important to be able to differentiate media (which may effect which museum department or funding body one deals with) from themes which may form the intellectual basic for a theme show, and also from the particular characteristics of digital art which may work across several media, but which present particular challenges for curator and audience.  Christiane Paul has usefully separated Themes from Media, and divided the digital technologies into those that are Media and those which function as Tools: "...paint is a medium and the brush is a tool ..." (Paul, 2001). This distinction also helps illuminate the difference between art and interpretation mentioned later in this paper. 

In 1999 Steve Dietz concentrated on the particular characteristics of digital art that present most new challenges to curators: Interactivity, Connectivity, and Computability. These three headings have been explored in the context of examples from current exhibition practice, including issues of control, immateriality, and authorship respectively (Cook and Graham, 2004).  Sarah Cook (2004) has gone on to identify three further art historical equivalents of Dietz's categories, and has named them Collaborative, Distributable, and Variable. She has also re-ordered the categories and placed them in relation to key issues for curators, thus usefully reintroducing factors of production and distribution.

Figure 1: Sarah Cook's taxonomic diagram (Cook, 2004, p.45)

These categories usefully highlight the key characteristic that certain technologies (such as computers networked to the Internet) are both a means of production and a means of distribution.  That is, artists may make their artwork using exactly the same reasonably accessible equipment that they use to make their art available to their audience. Indeed "New Media as Computer Technology Used as a Distribution Platform" is one of the eight answers that Lev Manovich has to the Question "What is New Media?" (Manovich, 2003, p.13-25). Thus the border of Production/Distribution is another land where digital art sits in provocative way, one which is picked up by Susan Hazan (2004).  Much has been made of the potential for net art to distribute itself outside of the traditional cultural gatekeepers or curators, and whilst net artists certainly can and do do that, they are also maintaining a dialogue with museums, who are still very much in charge of the publicity, promotion and collecting that bring digital art into the canons of art history.

Interpretation Or Art? Science Or Art?

“Museums consider having web presence as obligatory – as membership, information, e.commerce, etc. and then eventually an art space. The art space is not quite an afterthought, but it is not the prime focus.” Benjamin Weil (Sins of Change conference, 2000)

As pointed out in a paper for Museums and the Web in 2001, a member of the public, on seeing a piece of new media technology in a gallery or museum, is justifiably likely to assume that it is some kind of interpretative aid rather than an artwork in itself (Graham and Cook, 2001). The use of digital media as tools for interpretation, education, promotion or archiving is relatively common, whereas new media art is still rarely shown in mainstream art venues. This may sound like a very obvious difference, but there are still surprising confusions for the audience, and even for arts organisations.  The Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, for example, had for many years a particularly well-developed series of digital art exhibitions and events, including some of the first exhibitions of net art: The Shock of the View in 1998, and Art Entertainment Network in 2000. The Walker also had a particularly integrated approach to interpretation on the Web, including ArtsConnectEd. In 2003 it emerged that the Walker's plans for a new building no longer included a curator of digital art, and the argument for this was partially based on the factor that the use of digital media as tools for interpretation or archiving was to be retained (Halbreich, 2003).  This elision of digital interpretation and digital art is by no means confined to the Walker, and has had dramatic repercussions for budgets and departmental relationships at several arts venues. A certain amount of 'productive confusion' between interpretation and art, however, does not always work to the disadvantage of art, as long as the art is allowed to lead. Harwood@Mongrel's Uncomfortable Proximity for Tate Britain in London, for example, was the institution's first net art commission, and the artist very deliberately used the work to question the role of digital media in promotion and collection.  His Web site copied the Tate publicity site, with his own content inserted, causing substantial institutional disruption around the marketing department because the Tate's Web site, in common with those of many art museums, was seen primarily as a marketing tool, then perhaps as interpretation, but never before then as a venue for digital art (Cook, 2001).

The Science Museum in London is another venue that may be familiar to Museums and the Web delegates because of interpretational interactive computer-based installations and Web sites, including a finger-print operated device which tracks users through the exhibits and generates a personal Web page of data. This is also, ironically, the only museum in London (including art museums) with a permanently installed collection of digital artworks (including physical works by Gary Hill, Christian Moller, and David Rokeby). Some of the history of new media art or digital art is undeniably informed by the history of science and technology as well as by the history of art, and therefore some authors have explicitly excluded art/science projects from consideration as digital art, whilst Stephen Wilson in his book Information Art has used a series of chapter headings including: Biology, Physics, Kinetics, Telecommunications, and Digital Information Systems. 

Thus, not only are audiences still confused in their categories of art or not art, but institutions are also somewhat unclear in their presentation of the wide range of such work, as the following examples may show. The research of CRUMB has also looked particularly at the ways in which this confusion might even affect the ways that museums work. 

Changing The Working Categories Of The Museum?

I often hear Danish museum directors ask for a list of categories because it would make them feel more comfortable with digital art; it frames digital art in accordance with the principles of non-digital art. However, I think they misunderstand the challenges and do themselves an unintentional disservice. Digital art demands new ways of for institutional thinking about art works both in terms of curating and preservation; it's difficult, sure, but also a chance for the institution to develop.  (Lillemose, 2004)

What is interesting, however, is to see whether it is necessary to (re)define the boundaries of what constitutes media arts, whether segmentations within the relevant practices make sense, and how to negotiate between the natural bastardisation of practices, and curatorial and PR constrictions. (Broeckmann, 2004)

The whole show had this sense of blur to it, that was really nice in terms of curatorial blur, in terms of chronological blur, in terms of media blur, and in terms of the way pieces were either newly commissioned or loaned. I think that, to me, was the strength of the show; that it developed. Kathleen Forde, SFMOMA (Graham, 2002b, p.13)

As explored in Graham (2005), the most obvious question for art museums is often 'Whose department should this be in?'  At SFMOMA, director David Ross took the radical step of getting curators from the departments of Media Arts, Painting and Sculpture, Architecture and Design, and Education and Public Programs to work together on 010101: Art in Technological Times.  Research on this show (Graham, 2002b) illustrated that as well as the obvious cross-fertilization between knowledge areas, the work demanded a critical crossroads where the Web sites were used as both interpretation tools and venues for the net artworks.  Like the Walker Art Center, SFMOMA is a museum with a good reputation for digital interpretational work, including extensive Web sites on Bill Viola and on the sculptor Eva Hesse.  This crossroads caused a certain amount of anxiety over roles; for example, the question of how the net art commissions could be found amidst the interpretation in their only 'venue' (the net art was shown only on the Web site, not in the galleries). Were conventional concerns over 'usability' affecting the intent of the artwork?  Were the interpretation screens in the galleries being confused with the art?  The categories of Art/Interpretation and Production/Distribution were therefore recurring themes in the show.  

The 010101 exhibition also illustrated the potential and challenges of communication among all departments of the museum.  The need for excellent relationships with installation, technical and archiving staff is an obvious factor for digital media, and one that SFMOMA successfully developed collaboratively over a number of years.  This approach, which necessarily crosses the boundaries between departments in museums, can be an anxious one for institutions, but the collaboration of archivists, technicians and curators can help to achieve more long-term stability than the shifting grounds of curating alone.  The history of curating digital media at art institutions has been a rather unstable one, often driven by visiting curators or the strong enthusiasm of individual curators such as Jean Gagnon at the National Gallery of Canada.  What tends to remain after institutional change is the departmental structures, the heritage of critical coverage, and the archives of the institutions themselves.

What is unusual about digital art is the involvement of artist/curators in work that is usually strictly in the department of conservation specialists: this again reflects the pattern of more collaboration and communication across museum departments.  Benjamin Weil, for example, came to San Francisco Museum of Modern Art with the experience of the äda'web collection of net art.  The Conservators also actively developed knowledge alongside the installation staff, with seminars such as TechArcheology in 2000.  Consequently, SFMOMA's espace on-line gallery of net art and design remains one of the longest-running institutional collections of such work despite the departure of the curators who were originally involved. 

Other archiving projects have also been significant in naming characteristics which are highly useful not only for archives but for general working taxonomies (Cook and Graham, 2001; Graham, 2005). Rhizome's Artbase, for example, is a specialist database of digital art, and uses tactics of preservation as useful categories. The artworks are either Linked (linked to a URL) or Cloned (an archival copy of the artwork is stored on the Rhizome server).  The naming of their tactics for preservation in the wider field are: "...  migration (updating code), emulation (running outdated software on new platforms), or reinterpretation (re-creating the work in new technological environments)." (Depocas, 2003, p.41)

The Variable Media project has brought together some key examples of the problems of showing work from collections, covering a range of challenges that cross physical media. In drawing up a questionnaire which aimed to preserve the intent of the artist for future showing of the work, the project made a list of "Medium-Independent Behaviours" (Depocas, 2003, p.48) including  Networked, Encoded, Duplicated, Reproduced, Interactive, Performed, Installed, Contained.  These "behaviours" are important namings because like the "characteristics" of Steve Dietz, they work across media and yet summarise the major new differences for arts workers.  'Interactivity,' for example, is something that is seldom adequately documented in the traditional gallery installation shot, and is an intent which must be discussed with the artist.  As Jon Ippolito says: "Among the important questions for interactive behavior is whether traces of previous visitors should be erased or retained in future exhibitions of the work" (Depocas, 2003, p.50).  As well as being independent of medium, notes Caitlin Jones, a Daniel Langlois Fellow in Variable Media Preservation, the skills needed may also be "occupationally independent" (Depocas, 2003, p.61), echoing the cross-departmental experience of SFMOMA and others.

Taxonomies In Practice

The move from media to "behaviors," as it's been labeled here, seems to be more a move toward contemporary art discourse. This seems tactical if we're talking about longevity and continued funding for artists (or cultural producer, or whatever) working with "New Media." (Griffis, 2004)

The taxonomies that new media art curators, academics, artists and critics are dealing with go much deeper than the structuring logic of a museum's collection or exhibition programming schedule, they permeate the entire culture industry such as funding institutions like the Rockefeller Foundation and other grant awarding bodies, and more visibly they shape or determine the structures of art schools and graduate programs within research universities so that the definitions of new media art are made or shaped before the art is even produced. [...] So unlike earlier moments when definitions were usually connected to individual artists' practices, new media art has sort of, in my estimation, been reversed engineered so to speak. (Sutton, 2004)

As well as affecting the working categories of museums, the naming of new media has obvious repercussions for competitions, commissions, the production and educational structures of new media art. As Grant Kester (2004) points out, there has been an "enrollment driven" boom in the development and fashionable naming of courses in higher education. The sexiness of the naming of new media also has obvious relationships to arts policy and funding, leading, as Sutton points out, to a danger that artworks could be "reverse engineered" to fit a category, rather than being led by the artwork itself:

I have to use "new media" and "media art" in a non-scientific environment, when dealing with people who have power and money to support "new" and who are for whatever reason highly motivated to do so with their power and their money. (Goebel, 5 Sep 2004)

I have spent years insisting that this area must be more about art than about technology, and naming something for its technology (and isn't 'new media' just a euphemism for 'touched by computers and stuff') has got to be a bad move, though it's a start. I note now that the Arts Council in the UK removed all the categories of funding that they used to have, and now you have to define your own funding requirements. (Pope, 2004)

When taxonomies are practically applied to real-world art, particularly to an open submission database such as Rhizome's ArtBase, then the true rigour needed for art is illuminated.

One of my roles at Rhizome was to determine if the categories/metadata that we used for cataloging the works in the archive appeared sound, and if they didn't, make the proper adjustment for works newly added to the ArtBase. I quickly found that there was very little room to maneuver [sic] when the terms that were first laid down for organizing the work (a process that pre-dated my tenure at Rhizome) became over-used, unspecific, more arbitrary as time progressed -- like interact, interface, Internet, machine, net.art. (Williams, 2004)

Therefore, pre-existing metadata standards are challenged in their turn. Some have criticized the Dublin Core standard for being primarily object-based, whilst others in new media art find the minimalism useful, in the struggle between specificity and fluidity.

Moreover, unlike MARC records, which more or less require items that fit into traditional library contexts, the Dublin Core is totally non-prescriptive and open-ended.  The most directly applicable Dublin Core fields, for our discussion, are Creator, Format, and Type.  Format is defined simply as "The physical or digital manifestation of the resource" and Type can be one or more of the following: Collection, Dataset, Event, Image, Interactive Resource, Moving Image, Physical Object, Service, Software, Sound, Still Image, Text. (Turner, 24 Sep 2004)

In looking at real-world taxonomies, this paper has illustrated some of the ways in which digital media are reworking taxonomies whilst being characteristically in a state of flux.  There is, however, at least the start of a structure. The particular namings of "Medium-Independent Behaviours" and "occupationally independent" skills can be usefully applied to the widest range of contemporary artwork, and form useful tools for a wide scope of institutions. The creative cross-disciplinary approaches adopted by some organizations mean that collecting and archiving can be the beginning rather than the end for the critical life of an artwork. The cross-media nature of some of the most useable categories for digital art also reflects the ways in which some disruption of borders can lead to workable and creative categories which can be led by the art itself.

For a field which typically "flows around and avoids institutions" (Schleiner, 2003), digital art has to some extent already moulded some aspects of the way that even conservative art institutions and taxonomies work.  The blurring of departmental boundaries is just one of the ways in which this happens. To end on a quote which looks forward to a positive future for naming, categorizing or taxonomising the fluid field of new media art, Bosma suggests asking some simple but revealing questions ...

What do your students think net art is?

What is the difference between your definition and that of your students (if there is one) and how do you work with it in the classroom? (Bosma, 2004)

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Editor's Note: Text corrected April 28, 2005: erroneous use of "Multimediale" changed to "transmediale" at the request of the author.

Cite as:

Graham, B., Taxonomies Of New Media Art – Real World Namings, in J. Trant and D. Bearman (eds.). Museums and the Web 2005: Proceedings, Toronto: Archives & Museum Informatics, published March 31, 2005 at http://www.archimuse.com/mw2005/papers/graham/graham.html