New Media to Social Media: The Evolution of Technology Use in the Art World

The use of technology in the art world hails back to the evolution and use of photography in the nineteenth century.  From the technological inquiries of Eadweard Muybridge's zoopraxiscope (early moving image machine, 1879) to Jean Tingueley's self-destructing kinetic sculpture entitled Homage to New York (1960), art has functioned as a reflective response to technological developments.  Postmodernism (1970-present) continued to fuel more interest in performance, photo documentation of conceptually-made art, video, and later experimentation in intermedia art (mix of tradition visual art--painting, sculpture, printmaking, etc.--mixed with television and early computer use).  Nam June Paik's inventive use of programmable television was self-evident as a predecessor for the Internet as an artistic medium,  as noted by his monumental Electronic Highway (video sculpture) as seen below.

Electronic Superhighway (1995-96)by Nam June Paik
Smithsonian Museum of Art
http://thinkvisual.wordpress.com/tag/nam-june-paiks-electronic-superhighway/

On the heels of Paik in the 1980's evolved installation art, which typically converted an indoor gallery space  into a three dimensional space mixing electronic media with traditional forms.  The even later use of the Internet in the work of electronically curious artists, proved to be an active conduit for interactive and real time projects.  International viewer access to the internet and its artistic use has some critics questioning if the internet as an artistic forum is replacing the traditional gallery space as well.

Social media is the latest investigatory forum for the 21st century artist.  Today,  artists use social media interaction as a dialectic and/or a form of documentation, such as the work of Man Battlock's use of Twitter as a form of sculptural documentation of the social media process in his piece called The People's Table.  http://www.thepeoplestable.com/  Clicking on the various Twitter pictures, links the computer user to the that person's Instagram profile.  In addition, online art journals query and critic the new use of social media as an art form, questioning its intellectual potential.  It may well be a half a century's time to determine its trajectory, but it certainly will prove to be a new threshold for cultural art production worldwide http://www.artpapers.org/feature_articles/feature1_2013_0708.htm