March 08, 2008

The direct intervention of technology has become increasingly visible in the visual arts of Pakistan as more and more artists have begun to extend their expression with New Media Art.

This interdisciplinary art evolved with video projects by pioneers like Nam June Paik and Wolf Vostell to today’s sophisticated and complex works that push the boundaries of cutting edge inventions.

One thing it still shares with analog art or conventional art is the centrality of the image which in New Media Art is either created by the artist and integrated with scanners or digitally photographed. Direct drawing on the digital tablet can also be used but what has become its hallmark is appropriation from multiple sources and manipulation by digital software to give it a shared authorship.

It largely operates outside the gallery and can reach a vast audience through web pages that can be both art works and virtual exhibition venues. Hardware like printers and projectors and embedded with mini computers too play a vital role by expanding idiomatic possibilities.

For established artists of the conventional media, the new media was looked upon as an extension of their innovative space. Shazia Sikander was the first to combine two distinctly separate sensibilities, of the South Asian miniature painting and animation on a digital format that was projected in the gallery. In this work titled ‘Gopi Crisis’, frames from the court scenes of the Padshahnama come alive as gopies (maidens) gradually crowd the space only to exit it in small groups leaving behind just their long plaits. This way the miniature travelled from the manuscript to the wall and now digitally translated, it entered the cyber universe. Several years later at the Venice Biennale, the artist, combined hand drawings with digital projections in an interactive installation.

In recent time based video works of Bani Abedi, the audience while watching seemingly mundane and familiar rituals becomes engaged with the underlying nuances of its social and political commentary.

Hamra Abbas’s video which records people waited in long lines to see the MOMMA exhibition in Berlin attempts to convey the changing way how art institutions are branded and franchised by Europe’s burgeoning art industry.

The art of Canada-based Miniature artist Tazeen Qayeem and her husband Hanif share a website where they interface with new media artists around the world.

The inclusive and accessible nature of New Media invites amateur and professional photo enthusiasts to sites such as Flicker that constructs a cyber community sans geographical boundaries. Curators comb these sites for talent for their own cyber projects like ‘I have never been to Tehran’ for which Pakistan’s Rumana Hussain was recently invited to submit her photographs.

While galleries and museums are adjusting their facilities to accommodate New Media Art as was seen at the inauguration of The National Art Gallery last August where a good number of videos and animation art projects were on display.

Video installation is a popular form that combines space and other objects with projection as seen in Texas-based Simeen Ishaque’s work. The artist constructs an installation of fragile fabric silhouettes on the wall which then digitally records it fluttering in a gentle breeze. In the installation, the projection on fabric simulates movement to evoke ambivalent attitudes towards femininity and fabric as it brings into discussion the journey of the dupatta and hijab from symbols of modesty to those of repression and extremism.

New Media Art entered the commercial galleries with conventional shows but it will hopefully be given due importance as soon as concerns regarding exclusivity are addressed and the more avant garde collectors start investing in it. Some artists have already begun to tighten control over the reproduction of their work by limiting the number of editions to solve this problem. So within a decade it should not be too surprising to see plasma TV sets, monitors and multi-media projectors in homes and offices showing New Media works along side canvases and sculpture.

There is another school of thought among artists who prefer to share their work on the net without putting a tag on it. Expecting it to either disappear with time or be morphed into something different as it is appropriated and used by other artists.

With new work produced at an increasing speed New Media Art is gaining recognition as a significant global movement and is being monitored, documented and researched by institutions that have the technical knowledge and facilities to archive the work. Some museums like The Computer Art Museum in Berlin, one of the first of its kind, both archives and sells work. Some others operate only in virtual spaces offering online information and viewing of projects.

New Media Art presents a challenge to its audience for while it may use the visual grammar of television and internet sites, in its short duration it can cross many technological thresholds and be conceptually layered. Technologies like hypertext further add an interactive complexity. To understand this esoteric expression requires both exposure and a certain amount of knowledge of art and technology.

To give artists an opportunity to show their work and discuss it, recently a dialogue between Pakistani New Media artists and writers and visiting New Media artist from Germany, Florian Thalhofer was hosted by AICA Pakistan and Goethe Institut, Karachi. Feeling the need for similar programs, several more will be held throughout 2008 to focus on providing a platform where New Media artists can show their work and discuss it with an audience of art critics, artists, art students and other interested groups. Works of German New Media artists will also be presented to understand how artists there are working in this context.

In the new millennium, as technology has become an engine of progress and its all pervasive presence dominates our life, informs and entertains us with a connectivity never experienced before, it was only a matter of time that its path would converge with art. Perhaps the greatest challenge for New Media artists will be how they can use this new idiom to debate issues that are integral to our ‘humanness’ and not be seduced by the medium to create a highly formalised, sterile robotic expression.