I’ve been pondering this question a lot recently whilst writing my PhD stuff recently (it covers this area a lot).

Fortunately the Near Future Laboratory explain why with their Top 15 criteria that define “interactive” or “new media” art. It’s worryingly spot on, which makes me suspect the writers have made a few of these themselves.

I’ve been guilty of some of these and my students have definitely been guilty of all of them. What’s worse is that I’ve seen plenty of multi-thousand dollar grants go towards much of that crap too. (I’m just jealous of course – I want someone to fund my lame ideas to the hilt too).

In answer to my own question, I think it’s because it takes itself and the medium too seriously. That makes any kind of art shit in my book.

(Thank Nik)

Not really a post that may be of interest to lots of you, but I have started a new blog for those of you who are/will be my students from the Bauhaus (or anyone who is interested in what we’re up to).

It’s called GMU (for Gestaltung medialer Umgebungen) and it’s here.

Anyone who has a del.icio.us account and wants to send us some links can add the username gmu to their network and tag their posts ‘for:gmu’ and we should see it. You can add apolaine and tag them ‘for:apolaine’ too if you like and I’ll get them too. (Without the quotes of course in both cases).

I’m off to Weimar tomorrow to start a six-month stint as Guest Professor “Gestaltung medialer Umgebungen” at the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar in the Faculty of Media.

It feels quite odd (and rather flattering) to be following in the footsteps of luminaries such as Josef Albers, László Moholy-Nagy, Walter Gropius, Vassily Kandinsky and Paul Klee (to name but a few), though things have changed quite a bit since then. There are still plenty of the original buildings though (including original murals and relief sculptures on the wall).

Photo stolen from Hello World.

My predecessor, Ursula Damm set a project which resulted Bernd Hopfengärtner’s excellent Hello World! work – a Semacode measuring 160 x 160 meters was mown into a wheat field near the town of Ilmenau. I’m planning some playful interactive works (I hope!).

So, if any of my exchange students from Weimar or other folks that read this blog are there, get in touch. I’d love to meet up and see the sights.