The Nature of New Media in Contemporary Art (With an Emphasis on Video Art)

Abstract

This study explores the nature of new media in contemporary art with an emphasis on video art. The present research is qualitative in type, theoretical in purpose, and employs a descriptive-analytical method. Data have been collected through library research and by extracting information from books and articles. In the electronic age—precisely at the moment when recording and playback devices became accessible to the public—these tools turned into a potential threat to artists. However, some artists adopted new media without fear of technological transformations, regarding themselves as part of these changes. The artist thus turns media into tools for creation and, through them, generates a new form of art. With the emergence of performances, installations, and ultimately video, the temporality of artistic form became a central issue. The history of media art became inseparably linked with the various forms of visual art in the late twentieth century. Through the introduction of new technologies into the realm of art, new perspectives on space and time also penetrated this domain, which had previously possessed a relatively traditional structure.