From Photography to Neural Networks: History of Media Art

The history of media art does not simply run parallel to the history of media; it interacts with it on both a technological and a conceptual level. In part due to its interdisciplinary nature, the history of media art is reputed difficult to write. Furthermore, it has no clearly defined starting point. Usually referring to “digital media arts” the term “media art” suggests a fairly recent history, starting in the last decades of the twentieth century, around 1960. Yet, following strictly technological developments, its origins can be traced to the 19th century, with Étienne-Jules Marey and Eadweard Muybridge’s experiments with chronophotography. This is why the most influential surveys of media art (Rush, 2005; Grau, 2007; Shanken, 2009; Paul, 2015) emphasize the importance of a thematic approach to its historiography, paying attention to questions of time, movement, body and identity, virtuality, interaction or surveillance. Embracing the historiographical complexity of media art, this seminar will pay attention to historical moments when the developments of art, science, and technology have intersected and interacted in innovative ways. In the seminar, we will examine selected examples in the development of technology (for instance, in the fields photography, time-based media or digital media) and artistic genre (including installation, internet art or sound art), read accompanying texts and discuss some of the conceptual and theoretical debates that have marked the nonlinear history of media art. In doing so, our goal will be less to construct a narrative of the development of media art than to recognize the multiple facets of media art as they have emerged and formed through history and debates in the field of media studies, art history, and science and technology studies.