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Art and New Media: Practitioner's Perspectives Published

Article released: Friday, 17 December, 2004

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Emerging from a two-year collaboration between the Graduate School of Animation, Tainan National University of the Arts, Taiwan and Media Arts, COFA, Art and New Media is a book that profiles new media artists perspectives on contemporary practice, with a specific focus on the Asia-Pacific region.

Containing over thirty essays it presents and records dialogues between the diverse processes and creative agendas that currently feature in the field of new media.  These include considerations of interactivity, animation, computing and computer graphics, video and sound art. As COFA Senior Lecturer and co-editor Phillip George writes: "This book represents a collaborative collection of random processes."  The books usefulness and uniqueness is in the very diversity of experiences, viewpoints and knowledges that it encompasses.

Designed as a new media reader Art and New Media will be used in COFA courses.  It features many COFA voices, including staff members Phillip George, John Collete, Andy Polaine, Paula Dawson; Simon Hunt and PhD students Yi-Lan Yeh and Merlinda Rackman.  In addition, Professor George invited Australian and International specialists Stelarc, Jill Scott, Stephen Jones, Vibeke Sorenson and John Conomos to contribute.  The co-editor Yu Wei-Cheng selected the Taiwanese contributors, which include Pey-Chwen Lin, Yui-Tan Chang and Hhi-I Hu.  Featuring a bi-lingual text (Mandarin and English) Art and New Media will be distributed in Taiwan, and available through university libraries in Australia.

The official launch of the book took place in Tainan in November 2004, at the International Forum for New Media and Digital Art at which two COFA students -Yi-lan Yeh and Jamil Yamani - and several staff members including COFA Dean Ian Howard and lecturer Paula Dawson presented artworks and papers.

Art and New Media is a richly textured, vibrant and diverse account of contemporary new media practice and the first outcome of the unique collaboration between COFA and Tainan National University of the Arts.