New Media Artists on the Internet :: Internet Net World Wide Web Media

New Media Artists The enormous success and popularity of the Internet and new media as a whole have changed society in many ways. Artists have begun to use new media to deliver their works. As the artists use new media such as the Internet, the medium in which the work is delivered has become part of the artwork itself. In old media the book in which a story was printed is not part the literary piece of art. Ed Falco’s â€Å"Self-Portrait as Child with Father† and Olia Lialina’s â€Å"My Boyfriend Came Back From The War† are examples of McLuhan's message that the medium is the message. Both artworks are examples of new media art as defined by Lev Manovich in â€Å"The Language of New Media†. The introduction of new media art forms have changed the role of the artist, as the medium of digital art has now become the message itself making the individual ideas, perspectives, and narratives of the artist less important to the artwork as a whole. Marshall McLuhan is one of the first to articulate some of the social consequences of the great technological advances of the 20th Century. In his book â€Å"The Medium is the Message† from 1964 he introduces the idea that with the use of the new media as forms of communication it is the medium itself that is the message and he explains that, â€Å"This is merely to say that the personal and social consequences of any medium†¦result from the new scale that is introduced into our affairs by each extension of ourselves, or by any new technology† (Liu 1). The message will therefore change according to the medium. As we will see with new media art, the message would clearly be different if Ed Falco’s â€Å"Self-Portrait as Child with Father† was read linearly in a traditionally printed book than when experienced in its actual online non-linear presentation. Olia Lialina’s â€Å"My Boyfriend Came Back From The War† is presented similarly as a n online non-linear artwork. These artworks are interactive in the sense that the reader must click on links to read the story, or using a traditional turn the reader must click the link to virtually turn the page. Since there are multiple links at the same time the different pages are read at different times and in different order from reader to reader. It is therefore the case that no two readers of the artworks will have the same experience and opinion about them.