Abstract

An exhaustive amount of literature has been dedicated to the study, critique, and analysis of the modernist avant-garde movement, with a predominant emphasis on cinematic practices. Consequently, the research concern herein is not in discussing the avant-garde in the traditional sense, but rather, in re-contextualizing and redefining the avant-garde as it fits within the domain of twenty-first century art that is created, distributed, and/or consumed via digital means. To begin the process of re-contextualization, I trace the history of the avant-garde as an artistic movement, as well as discuss the advent of various digital technologies and the shift from analog art to digital. My hope is to not only outline the building blocks in order to develop a clear and concise definition of the digital avant-garde, but to also illustrate that an avant-garde movement is very much alive in the new millennium, but we may have been searching for it in all the wrong places.