Electronic art is a form of art that makes use of electronic media

Electronic media

Electronic media are media that use electronics or electromechanical energy for the end-user to access the content. This is in contrast to static media , which today are most often created electronically, but don't require electronics to be accessed by the end-user in the printed form...

 or, more broadly, refers to technology

Technology

Technology is the making, usage, and knowledge of tools, machines, techniques, crafts, systems or methods of organization in order to solve a problem or perform a specific function. It can also refer to the collection of such tools, machinery, and procedures. The word technology comes ;...

 and/or electronic media

Electronic media

Electronic media are media that use electronics or electromechanical energy for the end-user to access the content. This is in contrast to static media , which today are most often created electronically, but don't require electronics to be accessed by the end-user in the printed form...

. It is related to information art

Information art

Information art is an emerging field of electronic art that synthesizes computer science, information technology, and more classical forms of art, including performance art, visual art, new media art and conceptual art...

, new media art

New media art

New media art is a genre that encompasses artworks created with new media technologies, including digital art, computer graphics, computer animation, virtual art, Internet art, interactive art, computer robotics, and art as biotechnology...

, video art

Video art

Video art is a type of art which relies on moving pictures and comprises video and/or audio data. . Video art came into existence during the 1960s and 1970s, is still widely practiced and has given rise to the widespread use of video installations...

, digital art

Digital art

Digital art is a general term for a range of artistic works and practices that use digital technology as an essential part of the creative and/or presentation process...

, interactive art

Interactive art

Interactive art is a form of installation-based art that involves the spectator in a way that allows the art to achieve its purpose. Some installations achieve this by letting the observer or visitor "walk" in, on, and around them; Some others ask the artist to become part of the artwork.Works of...

, internet art

Internet art

Internet art is a form of digital artwork distributed via the Internet. This form of art has circumvented the traditional dominance of the gallery and museum system, delivering aesthetic experiences via the Internet. In many cases, the viewer is drawn into some kind of interaction with the work...

, and electronic music

Electronic music

Electronic music is music that employs electronic musical instruments and electronic music technology in its production. In general a distinction can be made between sound produced using electromechanical means and that produced using electronic technology. Examples of electromechanical sound...

. It is considered an outgrowth of conceptual art

Conceptual art

Conceptual art is art in which the concept or idea involved in the work take precedence over traditional aesthetic and material concerns. Many of the works, sometimes called installations, of the artist Sol LeWitt may be constructed by anyone simply by following a set of written instructions...

 and systems art

Systems art

Systems art is art influenced by cybernetics, and systems theory, which reflects on natural systems, social systems and social signs of the art world itself....

.

Background

The term electronic art is almost, but not entirely, synonymous to computer art

Computer art

Computer art is any art in which computers play a role in production or display of the artwork. Such art can be an image, sound, animation, video, CD-ROM, DVD-ROM, videogame, web site, algorithm, performance or gallery installation...

 and digital art. The latter two terms, and especially the term computer-generated art are mostly used for visual artworks generated by computers. However, electronic art has a much broader connotation, referring to artworks that include any type of electronic component , such as works in music

Music

Music is an art form whose medium is sound and silence. Its common elements are pitch , rhythm , dynamics, and the sonic qualities of timbre and texture...

, dance

Dance

Dance is an art form that generally refers to movement of the body, usually rhythmic and to music, used as a form of expression, social interaction or presented in a spiritual or performance setting....

, architecture

Architecture

Architecture is both the process and product of planning, designing and construction. Architectural works, in the material form of buildings, are often perceived as cultural and political symbols and as works of art...

 and performance

Performance

A performance, in performing arts, generally comprises an event in which a performer or group of performers behave in a particular way for another group of people, the audience. Choral music and ballet are examples. Usually the performers participate in rehearsals beforehand. Afterwards audience...

. It is an interdisciplinary field and so artists often collaborate with scientists and engineers when creating their works. The art historian of experimental new media art, Edward A. Shanken

Edward A. Shanken

Edward A. Shanken is an American art historian, whose work focuses on the entwinement of art, science and technology, with a focus on experimental new media art and visual culture. His scholarship has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies and has been translated into six...

 is documenting current and past experimental art with a focus on the entwinement of art, science, and technology, as are, in France, virtual historians Frank Popper

Frank Popper

Frank Popper is a historian of art and technology and Professor Emeritus of Aesthetics and the Science of Art at the University of Paris VIII. He has been decorated with the medal of the Légion d'honneur by the French Government...

 and Dominique Moulon

Dominique Moulon

Dominique Moulon is a historian of art and technology, specializing in French digital art. He is the author of the book Art contemporain nouveaux médias.-Background:...

.

Electronic art is often, but not always, interactive

Interactivity

In the fields of information science, communication, and industrial design, there is debate over the meaning of interactivity. In the "contingency view" of interactivity, there are three levels:...

. ." Artists make use of technologies like the Internet

Internet

The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...

, computer network

Computer network

A computer network, often simply referred to as a network, is a collection of hardware components and computers interconnected by communication channels that allow sharing of resources and information....

s, robotics

Robotics

Robotics is the branch of technology that deals with the design, construction, operation, structural disposition, manufacture and application of robots...

, wearable technology, digital painting

Digital painting

Digital painting is an emerging art form in which traditional painting techniques such as watercolor, oils, impasto, etc. are applied using digital tools by means of a computer, a digitizing tablet and stylus, and software. Traditional painting is painting with a physical medium as opposed to a...

, wireless

Wireless

Wireless telecommunications is the transfer of information between two or more points that are not physically connected. Distances can be short, such as a few meters for television remote control, or as far as thousands or even millions of kilometers for deep-space radio communications...

 technology and immersive virtual reality. As the technologies used to deliver works of electronic art become obsolete, electronic art faces serious issues around the challenge to preserve artwork

Art conservation and restoration

Conservation-restoration, also referred to as conservation, is a profession devoted to the preservation of cultural heritage for the future. Conservation activities include examination, documentation, treatment, and preventive care...

 beyond the time of its contemporary production. Currently, research projects are underway to improve the preservation and documentation of the fragile electronic arts heritage (see DOCAM - Documentation and Conservation of the Media Arts Heritage

DOCAM

DOCAM is an international research alliance on the documentation and the conservation of the media arts heritage....

).

Art Festivals that use the term Electronic Art in their Name

• International Symposium for Electronic Art
  ISEA
  ISEA, or Inter-Society for the Electronic Arts is "an international non-profit organization fostering interdisciplinary academic discourse and exchange among culturally diverse organizations and individuals working with art, science and emerging technologies." ISEA was founded in the Netherlands...
  
   (ISEA), organized approximately every two years since 1988, international;
• Ars Electronica Symposium, organized yearly since 1979 by Ars Electronica
  Ars Electronica
  Ars Electronica is an organization based in Linz, Austria, founded in 1979 around a festival for art, technology and society that was part of the International Bruckner Festival. Herbert W. Franke is one of its founders. It became its own festival and a yearly event in 1986. Its director until 1995...
  
   in Linz
  Linz
  Linz is the third-largest city of Austria and capital of the state of Upper Austria . It is located in the north centre of Austria, approximately south of the Czech border, on both sides of the river Danube. The population of the city is , and that of the Greater Linz conurbation is about...
  
  , Austria;
• Dutch Electronic Art Festival (DEAF), organized yearly since 1994 by V2 Institute for the Unstable Media
  V2 Institute for the Unstable Media
  V2_, Institute for the Unstable Media, or simply V2_, is an interdisciplinary center for art and media technology in Rotterdam, the Netherlands...
  
   in Rotterdam
  Rotterdam
  Rotterdam is the second-largest city in the Netherlands and one of the largest ports in the world. Starting as a dam on the Rotte river, Rotterdam has grown into a major international commercial centre...
  
  , the Netherlands.
• Electronic Language International Festival
  Electronic Language International Festival
  FILE - Electronic Language International Festival is a New media art festival that usually takes place in three different cities of Brazil: São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Porto Alegre and it has also participated in others events around the world...
  
   (FILE) organized yearly since 2000 in São Paulo
  São Paulo
  São Paulo is the largest city in Brazil, the largest city in the southern hemisphere and South America, and the world's seventh largest city by population. The metropolis is anchor to the São Paulo metropolitan area, ranked as the second-most populous metropolitan area in the Americas and among...
  
  , Brazil.

• The Prix Ars Electronica
  Prix Ars Electronica
  The Prix Ars Electronica is one of the most important yearly prizes in the field of electronic and interactive art, computer animation, digital culture and music...
  
   is a major yearly award for several categories of electronic art.

Artists

Notable artists working in electronic art include:

• Laurie Anderson
• Roy Ascott
  Roy Ascott
  Roy Ascott is a British artist and theorist, who works with cybernetics and telematics. He is President of the Planetary Collegium.- Biography :...
  
  
• Maurice Benayoun
  Maurice Benayoun
  Maurice Benayoun is a French pioneer new-media artist and theorist based in Paris. His work employs various media, including video, immersive virtual reality, the Web, wireless technology, performance, large-scale urban art installations and interactive exhibitions.-Biography:Born in Mascara,...
  
  
• Maurizio Bolognini
  Maurizio Bolognini
  Maurizio Bolognini is an Italian post-conceptual artist. His installations explore the potential and implications of new media technologies starting from the minimal and abstract activation of processes that are beyond artist's control, at the crossroads between generative art, public art and...
  
  
• Angie Bonino
  Angie Bonino
  Angie Bonino ia an artist and graphic designer. She studied at the ENSABAP Escuela Nacional Superior Autónoma de Bellas Artes del Perú , and has a degree in Painting. She has done an artistic labor inside the disciplines of electronic arts, such as video art, video installation, net art, performance...
  
  
• Douglas Cooper
• Heiko Daxl
  Heiko Daxl
  Heiko Daxl is a German media artist, exhibition curator and design / art collector. He lives and works in Berlin and Zagreb.- Life :...
  
  
• Elizabeth Diller and Ricardo Scofidio
• David Em
  David Em
  -Life and work:David Em is one of the first artists to make art with pixels. He was born in Los Angeles and grew up in South America. He studied painting at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and film directing at the American Film Institute....
  
  
• Ken Feingold
• Ingeborg Fülepp
  Ingeborg Fülepp
  Ingeborg Fülepp, born in is a Croatian artist, university teacher, curator and film editor.- Life :She studied film editing and film analysis at the Academy for Theatre, Film and Television at the University of Zagreb and later education, video and interactive media with Carol Chomsky, and Howard...
  
  
• Peter Gabriel
  Peter Gabriel
  Peter Brian Gabriel is an English singer, musician, and songwriter who rose to fame as the lead vocalist and flautist of the progressive rock group Genesis. After leaving Genesis, Gabriel went on to a successful solo career...
  
  
• Pietro Grossi
  Pietro Grossi
  Pietro Grossi was an Italian composer pioneer of computer music, visual artist and hacker ahead of his time...
  
  
• Perry Hoberman
  Perry Hoberman
  Perry Hoberman , is an installation artist who has worked extensively with machines and media. His career has included stints with Laurie Anderson and the USC Interactive Media Division....
  
  
• Jodi
  Jodi
  Jodi, or jodi.org, is a collective of two internet artists: Joan Heemskerk and Dirk Paesmans . Their background is in photography and video art; since the mid-1990s they started to create original artworks for the World Wide Web...
  
   (internet artists)
• Eduardo Kac
  Eduardo Kac
  Eduardo Kac is an American contemporary artist internationally recognized for his interactive net installations and his bio-art. Kac was born in 1962, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. He lives and works in Chicago....
  
  
• Knowbotic Research
  Knowbotic Research
  Knowbotic Research is a German-Swiss electronic art group, established in 1991. Its members are Yvonne Wilhelm, Christian Hübler and Alexander Tuchacek...
  
  
• Liu Dao
  Liu Dao
  Liu Dao Liu Dao Liu Dao (a Pinyin phrase meaning "island number 6" - , is an international multidisciplinary art collective based in Shanghai, China. Liu Dao was founded in 2006 by island6 Arts Center under the direction of French curator Thomas Charvériat. Liu Dao is an electronic art group...
  
  
• George Legrady
  George Legrady
  George Legrady is a multidisciplinary, interactive media artist. He began his photographic artistic practice in Montreal. In 1973, he received his first major project, a photo documentary in northern Quebec of four James Bay Cree communities in response to the James Bay Cree hydroelectric conflict...
  
  
• Rafael Lozano-Hemmer
  Rafael Lozano-Hemmer
  Rafael Lozano-Hemmer is a Mexican-Canadian electronic artist who works with ideas from architecture, technological theater and performance. He holds a Bachelors of Science in Physical Chemistry from Concordia University in Montreal...
  
  
• Chico MacMurtrie
  Chico MacMurtrie
  Chico MacMurtrie was born in New Mexico in 1961. He has been awarded four grants from the National Endowment for the Arts for Interdisciplinary Artists. In 1990 he received the San Francisco Bay Guardian Goldie Award....
  
  
• Sergio Maltagliati
  Sergio Maltagliati
  Sergio Maltagliati is an Italian Internet-based artist, composer, and visual-digital artist.His first musical experiences with the Gialdino Gialdini Musical Band in in early 70s.-Biography:...
  
  
• Jennifer & Kevin McCoy
  Jennifer & Kevin McCoy
  Jennifer and Kevin McCoy are a Brooklyn, New York-based married couple who make art together. They work with interactive media, film, performance and installation to explore personal experience in relation with new technology, the mass media, and global commerce...
  
  
• Yucef Merhi
  Yucef Merhi
  Yucef Merhi is a Venezuelan artist, poet and computer programmer, based in New York.-Life and work:Yucef Merhi was born in Caracas, Venezuela. He studied at Universidad Central de Venezuela and New School University.. His artistic practice began in the mid 80s...
  
  
• Mez Breeze
  Mez Breeze
  Mez Breeze is an Australian-based artist who works with net.art. Born Mary-Anne Breeze she uses a number of avatar nicknames. She received degrees in both Applied Social Science [Psychology] at the Charles Sturt University in Bathurst, Australia in 1991 and Creative Arts at the Wollongong...
  
  
• Joseph Nechvatal
  Joseph Nechvatal
  Joseph Nechvatal is a post-conceptual art digital artist and art theoretician who creates computer-assisted paintings and computer animations, often using custom-created computer viruses.-Life and work:Joseph Nechvatal was born in Chicago...
  
  
• Yves Netzhammer
  Yves Netzhammer
  Yves Netzhammer is a Swiss artist who lives and works in Zurich. Born in Schaffhausen, he studied architecture there and later obtained a diploma at the Hochschule für Gestaltung und Kunst Zürich, department of visual design. He has been working with video installations, slide projections,...
  
  
• Graham Nicholls
  Graham Nicholls
  Graham Nicholls is an author, artist and expert on out of body experiences and spirituality. He speaks widely on issues around parapsychology, ethics and art at institutions ranging from the London Science Museum to the Cambridge Union Society...
  
  
• Melinda Rackham
  Melinda Rackham
  Melinda Rackham is an Australian Networked Media Artist, Writer and Curator, and founder and producer the influential -empyre- online media arts forum, which she initiated as part of her Doctoral thesis on Art and Identity in Virtual Reality Environments.Rackham studied sculpture and performance...
  
  
• Ken Rinaldo
  Ken Rinaldo
  Ken Rinaldo is an American artist and educator. He creates interactive art installations that explore the intersection between nature and technology...
  
  
• David Rokeby
  David Rokeby
  David Rokeby is an artist who has been making works of electronic, video and installation art since 1982.His early work Very Nervous System is acknowledged as a pioneering work of interactive art, translating physical gestures into real-time interactive sound environments...
  
  
• Stefan Roloff
  Stefan Roloff
  Stefan Roloff is a painter, video artist and filmmaker, living and working in New York and Berlin. He is a pioneer of digital video and photography.- Life :...
  
   and * Martin Rev
  Martin Rev
  Martin Rev is an American musician and the instrumentalist in the electronic proto-punk band, Suicide. He also has a solo career and has released several solo albums for a number of labels, including ROIR and Puu...
  
  
• Don Ritter
  Don Ritter
  Don Ritter is a Canadian installation artist and writer living in Berlin, Germany. He has been active in the field of new media art since the mid-1980s. His work consists primarily of large interactive video and sound installations that audiences control through their body position, body movement...
  
  
• Lillian Schwartz
  Lillian Schwartz
  Lillian F. Schwartz is an American artist who is known for being a creator of 20th century computer-developed art. One notable work she created is Mona Leo, where she morphed the image of a Leonardo da Vinci self-portrait with the Mona Lisa.She made one of the first digitally created films to be...
  
  
• Michael Snow
  Michael Snow
  Michael Snow, CC is a Canadian artist working in painting, sculpture, video, films, photography, holography, drawing, books and music.-Life:...
  
  
• Stelarc
  Stelarc
  Stelarc is a Cypriot-Australian performance artist whose works focuses heavily on extending the capabilities of the human body. As such, most of his pieces are centred around his concept that the human body is obsolete...
  
  
• Survival Research Laboratories
  Survival Research Laboratories
  Survival Research Laboratories is a machine performance art group credited for pioneering the genre of large-scale machine performance. After about 30 years in San Francisco, California, SRL spent most of 2008 moving to Petaluma, California....
  
  
• Gianni Toti
  Gianni Toti
  Gianni Toti was an Italian poet, writer, journalist, and cineaste. In the early 80s he created "Poetronica" .-Biography:...
  
  
• Bill Vorn
• Norman White
  Norman White
  Norman White is a Texas-born Canadian New Media artist and pioneer of using electronics and robotics in art.-Life:White grew up in and around Boston, Massachusetts, and obtained his B.A. in Biology from Harvard University in 1959...
  
  

See also

• Algorithm art
• Computer art
  Computer art
  Computer art is any art in which computers play a role in production or display of the artwork. Such art can be an image, sound, animation, video, CD-ROM, DVD-ROM, videogame, web site, algorithm, performance or gallery installation...
  
  
• Digital painting
  Digital painting
  Digital painting is an emerging art form in which traditional painting techniques such as watercolor, oils, impasto, etc. are applied using digital tools by means of a computer, a digitizing tablet and stylus, and software. Traditional painting is painting with a physical medium as opposed to a...
  
  
• Digital poetry
  Digital poetry
  Digital poetry is a form of electronic literature, displaying a wide range of approaches to poetry, with a prominent and crucial use of computers...
  
  
• Digital art
  Digital art
  Digital art is a general term for a range of artistic works and practices that use digital technology as an essential part of the creative and/or presentation process...
  
  
• Tradigital art
  Tradigital art
  Tradigital art most commonly refers to art that combines both traditional and computer-based techniques to implicate an image. It is related to digital art, traditional art, information art, new media art, video art, interactive art, and internet art.-Background:Artist and teacher Judith Moncrieff...
  
  
• Evolutionary art
  Evolutionary art
  Evolutionary art is created using a computer. The process starts by having a population of many randomly generated individual representations of artworks. Each representation is evaluated for its aesthetic value and given a fitness score...
  
  
• Fractal art
  Fractal art
  Fractal art is a form of algorithmic art created by calculating fractal objects and representing the calculation results as still images, animations, and media. Fractal art developed from the mid 1980s onwards. It is a genre of computer art and digital art which are part of new media art...
  
  
• Generative art
  Generative art
  Generative art refers to art that has been generated, composed, or constructed in an algorithmic manner through the use of systems defined by computer software algorithms, or similar mathematical or mechanical or randomised autonomous processes....
  
  
• Image development
• Interactive art
  Interactive art
  Interactive art is a form of installation-based art that involves the spectator in a way that allows the art to achieve its purpose. Some installations achieve this by letting the observer or visitor "walk" in, on, and around them; Some others ask the artist to become part of the artwork.Works of...
  
  
• New media art
  New media art
  New media art is a genre that encompasses artworks created with new media technologies, including digital art, computer graphics, computer animation, virtual art, Internet art, interactive art, computer robotics, and art as biotechnology...
  
  
• Intermedia
  Intermedia
  Intermedia was a concept employed in the mid-sixties by Fluxus artist Dick Higgins to describe the ineffable, often confusing, inter-disciplinary activities that occur between genres that became prevalent in the 1960s. Thus, the areas such as those between drawing and poetry, or between painting...
  
  
• Multimedia
  Multimedia
  Multimedia is media and content that uses a combination of different content forms. The term can be used as a noun or as an adjective describing a medium as having multiple content forms. The term is used in contrast to media which use only rudimentary computer display such as text-only, or...
  
  
• Music visualization
  Music visualization
  Music visualization, a feature found in electronic music visualizers and media player software, generates animated imagery based on a piece of music...
  
  
• Systems art
  Systems art
  Systems art is art influenced by cybernetics, and systems theory, which reflects on natural systems, social systems and social signs of the art world itself....
  
  
• Computer art scene
  Computer art scene
  The phrase computer art scene, or artscene for short, refers to a community of individuals and groups that are both interested and active in the creation of computer-based artwork.-Early computer art:...
  
  
• Computer graphics
  Computer graphics
  Computer graphics are graphics created using computers and, more generally, the representation and manipulation of image data by a computer with help from specialized software and hardware....
  
  
• Demoscene
  Demoscene
  The demoscene is a computer art subculture that specializes in producing demos, which are non-interactive audio-visual presentations that run in real-time on a computer...
  
  
• Computer music
  Computer music
  Computer music is a term that was originally used within academia to describe a field of study relating to the applications of computing technology in music composition; particularly that stemming from the Western art music tradition...
  
  
• Digital illustration
  Digital illustration
  Computer illustration or digital illustration is the use of digital tools to produce images under the direct manipulation of the artist, usually through a pointing device such as a tablet or a mouse. It is distinguished from computer-generated art, which is produced by a computer using mathematical...
  
  
• EVA Conferences
  EVA Conferences
  The Electronic Visualisation and the Arts conferences are a series of international interdisciplinary conferences mainly in Europe, but also elsewhere in the world, for people interested in the application of information technology to the cultural and especially the visual arts field, including...
  
   (Electronic Visualisation and the Arts)
• Artmedia
  Artmedia
  Artmedia, Seminar and Laboratory of the Aesthetics of Media and Communication, was one of the first scientific projects concerning the relationship between art, technology, philosophy and aesthetics. It was founded in 1985 at the University of Salerno...
  
  

External links

• Stephen Wilson: extensive list of "information arts" links
• newArteest, list of prominent digital artists
• New Media Art book (wiki edition)