by Georgi Tenev (t.a.g.)


Every time they reach for the tools of new media visual artists find themselves in an extremely complicated situation of intervention and interpretation at the same time. Why intervention? Because the tool itself, the media in particular, is a genre belonging to a different sector altogether – television, computer and inter-computer space, single channel and double channel mobile communications… All of these various mediums of contemporary art’s presence are basically an area of which a different philosophy, a different operative logic are characteristic in the first place. They are utilitarian territories which have developed technologically due to logic external to art itself. The art forms realised in the conditions of one or another contemporary media in fact are somewhat strange to its flesh in result of an artistic intervention onto the body of the non-artistic. And thereafter the natural relationship between artistic project and the choice of media – which is a relationship of interpretation. The tool is subject to interpreting, but more often than not there is yet another, secondary layer on top of the basic meaning of the media. And the new artistic context of each message or even the vaguest mood contains the inevitable element of overturning, of “short-circuiting” the basic, functional logic. The sense of an artistic wink at least…

And so the organic character of the works located within the body of new media seems to start to give weight to the entire biography of the genre. Like an innate trait of which each next generation tries ever more fervently to get rid. The pathos is quite understandable.

Where would the principles of a potential novelty and otherness be found? We might start with a review of the “natural” efficiency of new media, i.e. of their original, practical logic. It is within the heart of that practicality that the line of artistic interpretation might be drawn for the artists working in the area have chosen it not for the sake of some technological convenience, but because they have realised that it is the nature and features of those tools in particular that best express them. How else could the expression of the artistic basis of a media which by definition was meant to be and has developed as non-artistic, be verbalized but through fundamental interpretation? Interpretation of its very basis as a media, of what sets it into motion and develops it, of what has brought it to life in the first place.

Should we confine to a somewhat narrower definition and taking the risk of depriving the practical examples of their variety, we would have to admit that there are three basic whales onto which new media are established. And they could be described in single words – more or less – as “communication”, “information” and “propaganda”. Fair enough, generating new concepts in modern visual practices seems most tempting when the projects aim for interpretation, denial or redefinition of these same fundamental super-goals of new media.

Non-conventionality has long become the trait of conventionality in the aggressive practices of modern visual arts. And the attempted novelty would not be achieved it seems through the ascetic refusal of aggressiveness. It would be most beneficial only when all three angles were to be actively and simultaneously interpreted through media art practices – the three ends of the logical triangle communication-information-propaganda, towards the establishment of a new, plot-based triangle now sharing the same earmarks.

In this vein of thought we should be asking ourselves – what are the chances of Bulgarian artistic practices to stand in the front of similar innovative strategies? Tough question. But in any case our nationally pre-defined situation has yet another trait which might be a positive addition as much as it could effect an aspect of atrophy. What is referred to here is the internal level of organisation of the utilitarian media sector. A zone of unshared responsibilities and experience, of technological risk and amorphous motivation. The slight dislocation of our local horizon in comparison to the “ideal” ultimate model, for instance, beyond doubt presumes many more loopholes in the dynamics and relationships of the three postulates of this functionality which we could repeat if merely to check whether it is being correctly quoted: “communication-information-propaganda”. Hereafter we could make an almost endless list of interpretational figures which could be inscribed onto the corpus of the new media and the external, the formal, the element of the tool itself would at that correspond deeply, organically to the essence of the problem itself. An essence, as hard to define as it is, still clearly located among several distinctive benchmarks. That our life functions at all levels in the virtuality of the media which bring it down to us, “pour” it down our senses and regardless of our will, give feedback, i.e. – we are witnesses of the phenomenon of us being both present in the media and in their communicative function, no matter what our intentions may be. That of this same source we draw our natural views of what is going on within the time-line of our time. And thirdly, that the issue of interpretation does not merely refer to our internal solitude, on the contrary – there is no such thing as pure information and a neutral message. They reach us processed one way or another, their lenses having been tampered with, now aimed at a particular sensitivity of ours or even at some prognosis for our future reactions.

Well, we have finally named a few of the powerful starting points, each in turn “calling” art back with an irresistible cry – virtuality, communication, sensitivity… And obviously art still responds to the cry.