I found the following passage interesting. It is from "New Media from Borges to HTML"
"Thus in my view this book is not just an anthology of new media but also the first example of a radically new history of modern culture--a view from the future when more people will recognize that the true cultural innovators of the last decades of the twentieth century were interface designers, computer game designers, music video directors, and DJs--rather than painters, filmmakers, or fiction writers, whose fields remained relatively stable during this historical period." (16)
I do not believe that Lev Manovich is saying that people like Shakespeare, Van Gogh, etc. should be forgotten, but he does make the claim that we are moving from the romantic notion of an individual artist or author to this wave of new media. He believes the technological advancements in these new media forms are worthy accomplishments. In addition, the creators of these new media forms are the Shakespeares and Van Goghs of this generation.
Is art dying or is it dead? Your thoughts?
These are the new generation of Van Goghs and Shakespears, the made for YouTube video episode. After searching for five minutes, I found Ask a Ninja and Hope is Emo. Both are really funny, but I don't know if I would actually give them Shakespear status. Is it even possible to relate artists of the new media with artists of past medias? (Can I really compare YouTube or Wikipedia to Shakespear?)
Overall I would say that there seem to be really new and interesting things happening all the time, so I feel like saying that art is "dead" isn't exactly right, since the art scene, both new media and old, seems very active. Artists often seem interested nowdays in tackling different issues in their work, and trying to communicate ideas that aren't present in works before them, so it's tough sometimes to make comparisons to older inights offered by works in the past that we're used to hearing. I like to believe that the human experience does change, and that consequently artists seek to represent and understand new aspects of being alive that are pertinent to their time.
New media also seem to sort of make ideas of authorship less and less relevant as ColoradoGirl points out , exasperating the problem of lauding the next Shakespeare or Van Gogh. I wonder if also we'd be able to recognize a really profound comment on the human condition at this point with new media evolving so rapidly. Maybe so; good art is, I guess, good art. Even so, there's an idea in the Manovich that I really though was interesting: the internet as a whole may be the most elaborate and conclusive cybertext work to date. This is a wild idea, one that sort of pulls the tablecloth out from under traditional notions of art and literature. But maybe we have moved into a world where what needs to be said/made isn't a profound statement by one person, but something that reflects the both hopelessly fragmented and interconnected nature of our telecommunications world and defies traditional notions of authorship and the sacred "thingness" of art.
As you pointed out, Manovich highlights interface designers, Dj's: people who mediate and maniupulate the interactions of "original" work with big groups of people. As he says, a program like Final Cut Pro may be the equivalent of the "great movie" of the new media world because it allows for an almost infinite re-arrangement of existing material. It's hard for me to wrap my head around this idea. I have a great deal of faith that someone or something will produce a cuttingly profound expression about being alive in our generation, but right now I'm unsure that I would be able to recognize it. Over time, though, hopefully I'll get hep to these crazy kids and their new tricks.