Thirteenth International Conference on The Arts in Society

Abstract

Referring to the use of advanced digital technology, a discourse on New Media Art has focused on interaction-related issues—the relation between the human and the technical system, the active participation of the viewer, and the processional of artwork. Considering the widespread use of interactive technology in everyday life, even though interaction has changed the way people appreciate an artwork, it cannot be defined as the main attribute of New Media Art. Hence, this paper pays more attention to the outcome of interaction—the participant’s improvisation gestures, a wider range of sounds, multi-hued lights, rhythms, duration, and a stimulating atmosphere. These signs are nondiscursive and cannot just be reduced to Saussurian semiology coupling of signifier and signified. Rather, the sign is categorized as “assigning semiotics” in Deleuze and Guattari’s terms, and it exposes itself on the material plane of forces. Being a nonlinguistic signaling material, the sign is understood as an affective force instead of a signification. With this sign’s status, New Media Art is weighted on experimentation of the real mode of life rather than interpretation. On the other hand, the sign combined with material flow takes into account physical sensation and perception without mediation through signification, denotation or representation. In this semiotic process, the subjectivity takes on a new sense, which “‘is added to’ matter” in Deleuze’s terms that involves practical, passionate, and empirical features. Accordingly, this paper argues that New Media Art grounds its aesthetic value to produce subjectivity in terms of difference, variation, and metamorphosis.