May 2001

art.net.dortmund.de

Daniel G. Andújar

New possibilities create new unknowns.
New unknowns create new possibilities.

Generally speaking, the debate about the new technologies, and particularly as they bear on art, continue to cover a wide spectrum, from blindness and the most absolute rejection, to the most stupidly servile acceptance and total affirmation. To me it seems obvious that the practise of art will be changed by the impact of new technologies, as will every other aspect of society, although it is possible that some values will remain substantially unchanged. The spectator, the audience for which a work is intended, is today more accustomed than ever before to highly sophisticated representational techniques as used in advertising and by television, but above all by the transformation of media consumption habits arising from the spread of the internet and the systematic introduction of computers into the private sphere. No one can now escape from the profound changes being wrought by the so-called new technologies and the parallel impact being produced by globalisation on our societies, economies, cultures, and perceptions of our surroundings.
Even so, I think that we have made rather a fetish of these new technologies, and I believe that -without taking apocalyptic positions of complete rejection-we must keep cool heads and pragmatic functionality when considering what is in store for us, and our scope for action and response to it all. Our attention to what we call new technologies should not be focused so much on the possibility of marvellous technological flights, but rather the battlefronts that are beginning to emerge in a society now immersed in a process of violent and fundamental change.