Tech art tango

The only people lagging behind are the collectors who still have their eyes stuck on canvases. But Mortimer Chatterjee of Chatterjee 038; Lal, a Mumbai gallery dedicated to new media that opened its doors this September, says, 8220;It8217;s a short-term view. People think they are making money off canvas but 70 per cent of the artists won8217;t even be remembered because they are not international names. Great new media artists will be seen as cutting-edge and go down in international art history.8221;

But what is new media art? This catchy term describes a whole gamut of practices that range from video art to digital art, from Internet art to electronic art. The canvas for a new media artist can be a television screen as well as a gallery wall. And the tools can range from a projector to bits and bytes and ones and zeros8212; the DNA of software programming. Gupta, for example, was the first in her generation to experiment with the Internet and create fake web worlds that question the cruel working conditions in the diamond industry, the cyber coolies in the IT industry or religion. Her blessed-bandwidth.net is website as cyber gallery, which invites viewers to enter, choose a religion, accept state control and get blessed for 8220;instant peace and happiness8221;.

In Untitled, 2005-2006 shown at the Bose Pacia gallery in New York recently, Gupta set up a group of touchscreens with alluring images of a countryside, laughing children and a misty window. But as the viewer touched each screen, the lush landscape turned into strife-torn Kashmir and the smiling children, the viewer saw, were posing near the remains of a bomb blast. Clearly, this is art that disrupts the traditional equation between artist and viewer and is more accessible8212;but not for that reason, dumbed down.

Technology is used by most new media artists with a political slant. Ashok Sukumaran, for example, is currently working with an electricity project, Recurrencies, in Bandra that looks at ways in which a light switch can become an interactive tool to get diverse communities and socio-economic groups to share electricity and communicate through lights.

But let8217;s not get ahead of ourselves. Where does this story begin? Painters like Nalini Malani and Vivan Sudaram are some of the pioneers of video art, which arguably was the new medium at the time they began exploring it. 8220;In 1992, after the Babri Masjid demolition and then the 1993 riots in Mumbai, artists like Navjot Altaf, Vivan and Pushpamala and I, began to look at new mediums to address our anguish,8221; says Malani whose video installation Remembering Toba Tek Singh was an important landmark and drew from a short story by Sadat Hasan Manto. Archival footage of the poisonous mushroom cloud exploding in Hiroshima was juxtaposed with large video projections of two women, one presumably Pakistani and the other Indian, trying to fold a sari across the exhibition space.

In 2002, the new genre got a boost when Priti Paul opened the Apeejay New Media Gallery. 8220;I was always interested in technology and the visual arts and I wanted to own an art gallery and this was a great way to combine the two.nbsp;Apeejay Media Gallery is a premier forum committed to showcasing high quality, experimental work in new media and emerging technologies,8221; says Paul. Her sister, Priya, has been buying new media art for Park Hotel, the family8217;s chain of hotels.

By the time artists like Shilpa Gupta began using new media, 8216;new8217; was no longer restricted to works shot on video. The Internet had become of an extension of our daily reality. 8220;To speak of politics, intimacy, cultural differences, love, tradition, gender, global capitalism, war, violence and the impact these have on the individual, the Internet is closer to my reality than the television,8221; says Gupta.

Sukumaran, who did a Masters in Fine Arts in new media art at UCLA, has a problem with the name. 8220;The term is confusing because some of the technology one is working with is over 100 years old. What is new, however, is the way in which we use it,8221; he says.
Now, a new generation of design school students, film school graduates, social science students and law students is also joining hands with young media artists like

Sukumaran and Shaina Anand by joining their CAMP Critical Art Media Practices, an artist8217;s collective recently founded this November. Art schools like the Sir JJ School or MS University are not teaching new media art but institutes like the Rachana Sansad in Mumbai and Shristhi School of Design in Bangalore are proving to be good places for young artists to grow.

Geetha Mehra of Sakshi Art Gallery believes that while there has been progress in the new media art scene much remains to be desired. 8220;Collectors are still tentative since many of them do not have enough exposure to international art trends. A lot of work still sells overseas to non-Indian collectors. There are also practical difficulties. Where in India can one dedicate a room to display a three-track projection unless you have an eight-bedroom mansion?8221;

The logistics of new media art demands that it is pitched as public art and not restricted to a few elite galleries. 8220;You need more public spaces for displaying this kind of work,8221; says Mehra. Paul agrees that collectors are hesitant. 8220;Because it is experimental and collectors need to create the infrastructure to showcase the piece, which adds to the 8216;expense8217; of the work, they are a little reluctant to invest. There is also this fear that the topical works can become obsolete.8221; Collectors are sceptical also because the quality of the art is uneven. 8220;There are only a few new media artists who are doing substantial work,8221; says Mehra, ticking off Malani Navjot, Gupta, Surekha and Tejal Shah on her list.

How does new media art sell? The artist makes a numbered edition of say five copies of a three-track or single projection, priced around Rs 3 to 5 lakh. If the piece is not meant to be sold, and is executed as a public performance, the artist gets a grant from a funding body like the India Foundation for the Arts. There are many bi-products from new media art, like drawings and studies of a project that collectors find a way of owning.

Sukumaran and Anand would rather question the chicness of the term 8216;new media8217; and its market. 8220;To sell new media like an object, really goes against its purpose. We would rather have public art interventions that take it beyond the realm of the gallery,8221; says Anand, who has tapped into closed circuit television and used editing software tools of surveillance to produce on-site 8216;televised8217; shows like Khirkeeyan, Rustle TV and Short-Circuit TV that involve the community.

The dynamics of the market aside, the strength of this art is that it speaks the language of our wired lives. 8220;New media art represents generational concepts that are talking to the kinds of life we live in, the here and now8212;traditional forms have a certain disconnect,8221; says Chatterjee. Or as Malini puts it: 8220;New media art is more public oriented than painting or sculpture could ever be. It8217;s like comic book versus the novel. Clearly, the former is more accessible than the latter.8221;
With inputs from Neha Sharma Bahl

A GUIDE TO NEW MEDIA ART
The Canvas: Anything from a television screen to a wall in a gallery or a factory
The paintbrush: The tools used to create are many8212;a camera, a microphone, computer software programming, small electronic devices like decorative lights, cell phones, projection devices, LCD and DVD players
The muse: New media artists choose subjects from contemporary issues plaguing society to more conceptual works that look at the process of making art
The age: New media art began, in the 60s and 70s in Europe and America, but in India it was a while before artists felt the political and ideological need to adopt the techniques. The first experiments began post 1993, with simple video projections of found and shot footage paired with installation art
The names: The pioneers of video and new-media art: Nalini Malani, Vivan Sundaram, Navjot Altaf, Sonia Khurana, Rashid Rana and Ayesha Abraham. The young guns are Shilpa Gupta, Ashok Sukumaran, Shaina Anand, Tejal Shah and Prema Murthy
The market: New media art today is not valued on a par with canvases. Limited edition copies of video art are valued between Rs 1 to Rs 5 lakh. Grants made available to artists by trusts can vary from Rs 4 lakh to Rs 6 lakh, depending on the credibility and portfolio of the artist
Will it ever be obsolete? Is retro chic out of vogue? Did video kill the radio star? The answer is no. So if you have acquired a piece of new media art, rest assured that if in 2020 there are newer ways of making art, your piece will be an antique