"New media" art is the new darling of the modern art scene in Australia.
One of the centerpieces of Melbourne's multi-million dollar Federation Square project will be the Australian Centre for the Moving Image, which plans to showcase moving images in many formats.
There is also an Australian Network for Art and Technology that supports artists working with multimedia and new technologies.
Melinda Rackham is a new media artist who publishes on the Internet. You have to interact with her work in order to appreciate the outcome. Rackham likes having the global reach of an Internet-based gallery.
Even in the more traditional art galleries, there's a place for "new media" works. Ian Haig's "Web Devolution" invites the viewer to point and click, while it parodies the digital utopia.
Laurens Tan combines computer animation and sculpture in his "Vegas of Death", an interactive work that bears a distant resemblance to a slot machine. Like many "New Media" artists, Tan examines the way people use machines. "Technology has actually aided storytelling and complex ideas, complex notions. And it's bringing all of us along with it", Tan says.
Curators and artists both admit the art is in a constant state of transition, because of the pace of evolution of new technology. They're even looking at ways to archive the old technology, so that the works they create today will still be viewable after the technological platforms have moved on.
Digital artists are hoping to create space on the Internet for art, amid the clutter of e-commerce and information. They want people to become more aware of the Internet as more than just a place just to shop and read.
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