Shifting polarities: Canadian electronic media art and institutional space, 1970-1990.

摘要

The interdisciplinary nature of new media art, or electronic media art, has proved perplexing for curators and art historians, evidenced by the dearth of literature about new media art from the generative period 1970-1990. Exclusion of electronic media artworks from the museum in the early days of art and technology can be traced to longer historical imperatives that suggest systemic and structural antecedents. This project addresses the absence of electronic media art from the Canadian art historical canon, through qualitative investigation of electronic media artists, and their artworks, produced during the analogue to digital cultural shift. The dissertation tracks the history of electronic media art in Canada through modes of artistic production, namely performance, interactivity, and screen-based new media artworks. A canon of Canadian electronic media artwork is theorized and explored by naming and analyzing works of art that are exemplary in terms of their innovation at the time of production, their influence on the burgeoning new media art community, and their revised art historical relevance.;Keywords: Canadian electronic media art, new media art, art historical canon, performance art, interactivity, material agency, the screen, machinic aesthetics.