Nota Bene: Viewing Media Art

2025

The artworks captured by the term ‘ Media Art. described in archives like this one, document activity across a range of technologies and practices occurring between the 1960s and 2000s. In most cases the media artefacts created have been transposed to digital media as simulations of the original, whether film, video, print or computer-based. Simulations are useful for giving an impression of the original experience of encounter, but seen on the screen of a laptop is a long way from the initial encounter in gallery or cinema, spaces for which the artist was making the work. Emphatically, artwork originating on film, intended for projection in a darkened cinema space, when screened as digital simulation require high quality digital projection. Video artworks were originally made for small monitor CRT screens, Cathode Ray Tubes of approx 21 inches diagonal.

When good quality digital copies can be sourced, the original viewing conditions should be considered.

link. related page: Liveness Performance and the Permanent Frame

PDF related paper by Louise Curham, Tending the Archive

See also Review, Re-Collection: art new media and social memory (Ippolito)