The last time I wrote my blog post, I had just finished attending the ISEA2022 conference, the Sónar music festival, and exploring the Paris music scene during la Fête de la Musique. Since then, I traveled extensively across Europe, and I have just recently landed back in the States. After the stop in Paris, I went to Vienna, Prague, Berlin, Brussels, London, then back to Paris to pack and get ready for my flight overseas. In Vienna, I met with Sergiu Ardelean from the VR art company Artivive, then went to the XX Art Flânerie festival where I saw talks and performances by established artists and organizers. In Prague I met up once again with Marketa Gebrian to talk about her VR architecture projects in development, then went to the Kunsthalle Praha museum with an exhibition on display titled KINETISMUS: 100 Years of Electricity in Art. In Berlin I attended various sites of New Media art which often find home in the city’s variety of clubs or festivals (like Loveparade), with examples of VJing, projection, and sound installation. I was only in Brussels for a night, as a stop on my way to London, but in my previous visit there during the semester I had the chance to visit the Art et Marges Museum for the exhibit Within the Folds of Time with full-room installations, interactive rock-watering, and sensory art by the blind. In London I went to the Tate Modern and saw brilliant works like the Babel (2001) by Cildo Meireles, a circular tower of hundreds of different radios. Then lastly, before my departure from Paris I went to Musée D’Orsay to catch up on my classics.
I am now back in New York, attempting to find an apartment, a new job, the means to pay for next semester, and the motivation to pick back up an old life. I look forward to writing and reading more, reconnecting with old friends in the field, and viewing more art such as a new exhibition at ARTECHOUSE. I am also going to be working with the ISEA Symposium Archive and the SIGGRAPH Digital Art Show archive in an internship thanks to a connection made at ISEA2022.
After all this travel, I am now more interested in New Media art archiving, as it presents a huge challenge to the field with planned obsolescence and a giant portion of its early history largely missing due to bad documentation and deletion of early internet art. I am also more interested in the international scene of New Media art and would like to make sure I make this study as global as it can be. I am also very interested in the way that New Media art will be established into more regular life, like with VJing and projection in clubs coming in part from New Media art advancements, and with VR art design influencing the future (and present) of VR offices and Metaverse homes. It will not be long until the technologies of New Media art begin appearing everywhere, and the way it is used in art now will influence and predict the design, function, and impact of the tech’s future. These realizations have greatly influenced my work and will likely change my direction and focus.