The particular phrase ‘New Media Art’ has been heard for decades or even longer. The academic debates about its definition and context never ceased as well. One of the influential milestones involved in the discourse of ‘New Media Art’ could be traced back to the invention and spread of photography in early of 19 century which produced an intense excitement internationally in artistic and scientific circles. The following photomechanical production method had revolutionized the entire art world and gave rise to the ‘mechanical reproduction age’, - a term coined by Walter Benjamin, which spawned many new art forms such as collage and photomontage. The rapid development of media technology in mid-1950s directly boosted the birth of mass communication which provided artists the access to audio, video devices and other electronics. Philosophy and social criticism theory gradually took a valued role in art composition after the Pop Art movement. From the late 20 century, philosophers and theorists, e.g., Jacques Derrida, Jean Baudrillard, Gills Deleuze, Felix Guattari, Jean Lyotard, Roland Barthes, whose deconstructive notions gave a continuing impetus to the elevating of artistic practices. With the global application of computation and internet, today’s art-making has became eminently diverse and pluralistic.

What can be learned from these chronological shifts is that the newness of ‘New Media Art‘ is transforming in consistence with change in times. Therefore,  some past definition of ‘New Media Art’ seem problematic and anachronistic today. With changes every few months, digital technologies are advancing at a speed that forces the ‘New Media Art’ field to redefine itself continuously, which leads us to a conundrum of trying to clearly explain ‘New Media Art’. One of the intentions of this exhibition is to present the existing circumstances of today’s ‘New Media Art’ by exhibiting artists’ newly-made works which range over many typical genres in ‘New Media Art’ - sound art, video art, bio-electronic art. Although they share the mutual digital techniques or electronic parts such as screen, speaker, chip and sensor, their narratives and themes are hugely diverse. Based on these recent practical outcomes, the other intention will dig deeper attempting to propose a cognition about ‘New Media Art‘, which is the term is no longer capable of describing a artistic category now or future. The theoretical method of this conclusion mainly inspired by Derrida and Lyotard’s deconstructive theories. Derrida was a pioneer in the postmodernism criticism whose innovative ‘Différance’ theory gestures the situation that number of heterogeneous features govern the meaning of one conception, hence rendering the conception ambiguous or even dissolvable. What shares many similarities with Derrida’s view is Lyotard’s ‘Meta-narrative‘ theory where he opposes the heterogeneity of ‘Little narratives‘ to the dogmatism of ‘meta narratives’. He believes what happened contemporarily is the emerging of ‘Little narratives‘ or ‘Local narratives‘ and their challenge and strike to the ‘Meta narratives‘ or ‘Grand narratives‘ that represents the Modernism culture. Re-considering the idea of ‘New Media Art‘ in Derrida and Lyotard’s critical methods, this artistic terminology may be losing its identity due to the art works’ pluralistic ‘little narratives‘. Each exhibited work is representing a distinct idea in its unique language, making every work a relatively independent system. The stronger each narrative gets, the feebler the general conception becomes.    

The title of this exhibition is an appropriation adapted from the mathematic field. ‘Hyper’ is a prefix used in geometry or physics to denote four or more dimensions. Combined with ‘seeing’,  this word is designed to delineate a multidimensional scene of today’s art works using digital media techniques. By exemplifying their diversified narratives, I am trying to raise the awareness of questioning ‘New Media Art‘ whose function of categorizing art works might be just a temporary existence. Hopefully this curatorial project will inspire audiences‘ comprehension and expand their perspective on this so called ‘New Media Art‘ and its essence.   
- Luo Keyi, Curator 

*image (left)
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