Media Art 2

Media art is typically associated with technologically based systems of representation and communication. However the notion of media can also be thought more generally – as middle, as milieu (Serres), as paradoxical ontological condition. The strangely inert and active space of mediation gains critical attention, upsetting the precedence of source, message and receiver and suggesting a relational sense of identity. But it is not as though this more abstract conception of media is unrelated to the technological one. The field of technical media – as instrumental means, as the dumb and silent agent of any communication – engages with wider issues. It renders the supplementary, extraneous and inhuman aspect of mediation explicit (Derrida, Stiegler). In this manner technical media can become emblematic of mediality generally. The problem, however, is when media art is exclusively associated with technological questions, ignoring its wider implications and space of questioning.