New media: The medium or the message?

New media: The medium or the message?

Paul F. Agusta, Contributor, Jakarta

An old question is raising its inquisitive head at a new
exhibition in the heart of this ancient city of Jakarta. The CP
Open Biennale now on at the National Gallery on Jl. Merdeka Timur
through Oct. 3 features 200 works of art in a wide variety of
media by 126 artists from Indonesia and abroad.

Indonesia's first ever international contemporary art biennale
offers a look at not only works of art done in the more
traditional formats of painting and sculpture, but also features
a number of installation pieces and works done in what is being
called the New Media.

What is the New Media? Photography and
cinematography/videography are wearing this new hat and begging
old questions in a thought-provoking manner. Although photography
and cinematography have been around for over a century and video
has been with us for decades, only in the last decade or so has
it been able to gain some validity as a vehicle for artistic
experimentation within the realm of visual arts.

In the CP Open Biennale 2003 a handful of artists are
experimenting with ideas about pushing technology based media to
creative extremes in the tradition of Andy Warhol or even Jean
Cocteau.

The works of the artists delving into the potential of the New
Media, in particular videography, seem hard-pressed to avoid the
old and nagging question as to which should take center stage in
artistic presentation, the medium or the message?

The work being shown by Italian artist Filippo Sciascia is a
case in point. Series of Kadek (Series of a Woman), consisting of
three oil paintings hung side by side next to a television
monitor set into the display panel, utilizes video footage of the
woman featured in the paintings in an attempt to comment on the
assumptions underlining stereotyping in relation to determining
individual identity.

Apparently succumbing to the ubiquitous temptation to play
with all the visual toys provided by digital video technology,
Sciascia lets the message slip away into the morass of visual
potentiality. The video piece opens with an undistorted close-up
of the woman into which the artist slowly introduces minor
distortive effects such as pixelization and blurring, as well as
playing around with the perception of focus to create an
impression of double-vision.

The artist then ups the dosage of technical tricks to a point
where the viewer's attention shifts from the subject to the
intriguing mechanizations of the technology.

On the opposite spectrum of this question of style and
substance is the piece by Herman Chong and Isabelle Carnavo
titled The End of Traveling (Trip to Asiatown and Back), which is
a critical commentary on the impact of globalization on
contemporary art in Asia in relation to the changes in the
societies and cultures existing here.

This piece is a video documentary on this very serious
subject, combined with snippets of footage of art happenings and
short-short films. By its very nature, a documentary must put the
message before any stylistic aspirations that the director, or in
this case, directors may have. This reality, coupled with the
relatively extensive length of the overall presentation, begs the
additional question of whether a work in this format can actually
fit into the definition of New Media.

Falling into a comfortable middle ground between these two
poles are works by Gabriele Stellbaum, Krisna Murti and
Arahmaiani. The work by German artist Stellbaum titled Make My
Day is a fascinating and effective examination on the impact of
violence on the human psyche. Throughout the piece, the artist
consistently employs the camera as a pair of neutral eyes
witnessing a human response to a disturbing occurrence. She
counters this somewhat distant, subjective view with the
effective use of audio exaggerations, sound effects and
suspenseful music to achieve an inescapable tension which brings
home the intended message.

In his work titled Empty Time, Krisna Murti, an Indonesian
artist, presents in slow motion actual audio/video footage of
nine dancers performing a ritual dance in front of a king shown
on a framed piece of glass through an LCD projector. Although the
complexity of the technology used to present this piece brings
with it the risk of obscuring the message, the artist never seems
to lose sight of the message he wants to convey.

Arahmaiani, an influential Indonesian artist who has been
creating art in a variety of media since the early 1980s,
presents a highly provocative work titled Human Love. This video
piece shows in turn two submerged faces. On the foreheads of the
faces are the words "human" and "love" respectively. As the
footage progresses, these words are washed away. The message that
love is a difficult thing, something that requires struggle to
maintain yet will fade away anyway, is clearly conveyed.

The hopeful spirit of the music that accompanies this piece
contrasts beautifully with the nihilistic imagery. Given that the
visual situation in the piece was highly contrived for the sake
of conveying a concept through a complicated technical medium,
the artist should be commended for resisting the temptation to
overuse the new toys provided by technology. She successfully
balances the medium and the message, a very difficult feat for
any artist working in either the traditional media or the new
media.