Rush's New Media

Very early in the introduction, Rush states that "while the use of new media in art does have a history, it is not easily delineated." I thought this was an interesting acknowledgement of how tenuous the relationship of an artwork or artist can be to the term "new media"; not because it doesn't qualify, or isn't good, but simply through how hard it can be to define the term outside of a highly contemporary view point.

Obviously, "new media" as a term is a reasonably specific category in the present day by virtue of artists who currently identify as new media artists, and discuss and reconstruct the term. However, numerous times Rush makes reference to creators, often filmmakers and photographers, who were "new media artists" before the term had come into existence, much less taken a place in the discussion of an evolution of art. The definition of "new media" then, in very strict terms, fluctuates as newer media is developed, and clearly has the potential to mean very different things as art evolves in the next decade.

Rush's thoughts on time, and several of the photoseries included in the introduction reminded me very vividly of time lapse art.Time lapse media -- which often combines both photography and video in a way that makes it not quite an example of either -- can either vastly slow down time, as in the example of time lapse photography of an athlete, or speed it up, as in time lapse footage of nature, or the sky. This example of timelapse video, Existence, evidently takes place over an enormous amount of time, in numerous locations, but it is compressed into something the audience can personally consume and perhaps more clearly understand.