Response to Introduction

The introduction to New Media in Late 20th century was a great art history lesson.  There were many artists and specific artistic movements that I had never heard of.  One of them was the Fluxus movement.  The book says, "It made jabs at the seriousness of high modernism and attempted, following Duchamp, to affirm what the Fluxists felt to be an essential link between every day objects and events and art."  Fluxus was basically a rebel art movement that was participatory action, it was intermedia.  The viewer is directly involved in the making of the art.  The viewer actually becomes the art.  A Fluxfilm with Yoko Ono in it called Disappearing Music for Face is an 8 second smile to no smile slowed down to 11 minutes.  These fluxfilms were meant to be very minimal and were "critiques of mainstream avant-garde film."
Another film called wavelength by Michael Snow was made with more creative and poetic intentions.

Although you may not want to watch the entire "film" there are four actual acting scenes in this 45 minute zoom.  Snow was was pushing the boundaries on what was an entertaining film.  In a way Wavelength had a plot and a setting and everything a "normal" film would have.  It used minimalist music, random paring of tones that varied with wavelength as the movie progressed.  It's definitely experimental but is it Fluxus (intermedia) or just avant-garde? I think it falls more into the avant-garde category and less in the Fluxus category as the book has it.  I say this mostly because Fluxus tends to use the viewers in the art.  This is just an experimental film.  However, I do feel like Fluxus can be a sub category in avant-garde, but there is no way to know that for sure.