<\/p>\n
My boyfriend was in the room with me as I viewed the new media texts on my laptop, and I bitched to him that I had signed up to be a literature major because I wanted to read books.\u00a0 We both had a good time making fun of this stuff, but then he asked me in all seriousness, “So how IS this supposed to be literature?”\u00a0 A serious question deserved a serious answer.\u00a0 I responded then that these texts were new ways of presenting a narrative, to get us to think about narratives in different ways.<\/p>\n
Now that we talked in class about these texts, I want to refine my answer, but I’m not yet sure how.\u00a0 For one thing, some of these texts don’t have anything to do with narratives.\u00a0 There is no traditional story in Nelson’s “Conversation” (Conversation<\/em>?\u00a0 What’s the MLA format for new media texts?).\u00a0 Some of these new media texts don’t even emphasize text.\u00a0 Harris’s “The Whale Hunt,” for example, relies on full-screen, high quality photographs to reveal the chronological events (we might even argue that it’s a story) of the whale hunt.\u00a0 Brief captions are available, but they are not a prominent part of the experience.<\/p>\n So if these new media texts don’t necessarily involve stories or rely on text, how can we justify talking about them in a literature class?\u00a0 I think we need to think about new media in broader terms, to analyze these new media texts as art pieces that don’t quite fit into the categories we already have (visual art, music, literature, etc.).\u00a0 For example, one of the articles we read in Pomo CoNo<\/em> <\/em>mentioned John Cage’s piece, “<\/em>4’33<\/a>,” which involves a conductor, an orchestra, an audience, and complete silence for four minutes and thirty-three seconds.\u00a0 We can’t accurately describe this as music, but we can consider it an interesting art piece that experiments with sound.\u00a0 Then there’s Marcel DuChamp’s “Fountain<\/a>,” a piece of installation art involving a urinal, which Marcel displayed and signed “R. Mutt.”\u00a0 Neither of these pieces requires much “artistic skill” or even effort, but both demonstrate the kind of innovative thinking that the art world thrives on.\u00a0 These pieces force us to ask and attempt to answer the questions:\u00a0 What counts as art, and why?<\/p>\n I have to remind myself that we once rejected the novel and impressionistic paintings, and now we take it for granted that they are legitimate art forms.\u00a0 Maybe the same will happen with new media texts in the years ahead.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" My boyfriend was in the room with me as I viewed the new media texts on my laptop, and I bitched to him that I had signed up to be a literature major because I wanted to read books.\u00a0 We both had a good time making fun of this stuff, but then he asked me … Continue reading Week 7 \u2013 Does New Media count as art?<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-249","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-week-1"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2008\/414\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2008\/414\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2008\/414\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2008\/414\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2008\/414\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=249"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2008\/414\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":252,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2008\/414\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249\/revisions\/252"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2008\/414\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=249"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2008\/414\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=249"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2008\/414\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=249"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![Fountain<\/a>,” a piece of installation art involving a urinal, which Marcel displayed and signed “R. Mutt.”\u00a0 Neither of these pieces requires much “artistic skill” or even effort, but both demonstrate the kind of innovative thinking that the art world thrives on.\u00a0 These pieces force us to ask and attempt to answer the questions:\u00a0 What counts as art, and why?<\/p>\nI have to remind myself that we once rejected the novel and impressionistic paintings, and now we take it for granted that they are legitimate art forms.\u00a0 Maybe the same will happen with new media texts in the years ahead.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"My boyfriend was in the room with me as I viewed the new media texts on my laptop, and I bitched to him that I had signed up to be a literature major because I wanted to read books.\u00a0 We both had a good time making fun of this stuff, but then he asked me … Continue reading Week 7 \u2013 Does New Media count as art?<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-249","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-week-1"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2008\/414\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2008\/414\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2008\/414\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2008\/414\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2008\/414\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=249"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2008\/414\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":252,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2008\/414\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249\/revisions\/252"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2008\/414\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=249"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2008\/414\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=249"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2008\/414\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=249"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}](\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Image:Duchamp_Fountaine.jpg\"){kind=link}