Technologies in contemporary Art
In recent years, I've dedicated significant time to contemplating the role of technological arts and how they connect with and integrate into the realm of contemporary art. As both a communicator and an artist, I find it fascinating to delve into these dynamics—whether obvious or subtle, historical or emerging. Here, I’ll share some brief reflections on this intricate web that I am slowly attempting to unravel.
Nearly all artistic practices rely on technology. Many works, regardless of their medium, engage in aesthetic and/or conceptual dialogues about the techniques and technologies of their time and environment, addressing everything from their usage to their ontological implications.
The ubiquity of technology is evident in art in many ways—some so deeply ingrained that we hardly notice them. The first person to dip their hand into colored earth and press it onto a rock was using technology and inaugurating a technique. Imagine the awe it must have inspired in its first viewer!
Since the late 18th century, the Industrial Revolution—with its mechanization of production and exploration of new forms of energy—brought machines to center stage. Technologies such as the steam engine and the loom caused radical changes in human life, impacting both daily routines and the broader sociocultural fabric. These shifts were so significant that they have led to the proposal of a new geological epoch to replace the Holocene: the Anthropocene.
Today, particularly since the mid-20th century, we are witnessing an accelerated, exponential growth in technological development—and art, always a reflection of its time, is deeply intertwined with this. The tensions between society and technology inevitably extend into the arts.
While technological art practices—often referred to as new media art or technopoetics (even their definitions are fraught with uncertainty)—have found a place in the more traditional and hegemonic circuits of contemporary art, they still face resistance and scrutiny.
There are specialized spaces and niches that focus solely on these expressions, bringing together artists and various agents to create, exhibit, and promote technological art. However, these spaces remain few and marginal. Is this a problem of categorization? Can the contemporary art world embrace installations, performances, paintings, and sculptures but still struggle to fully incorporate technopoetics? Should they be given exclusive spaces, or would they benefit more from the dialogue, friction, and counterpoints that arise from interacting with a contemporary art world that alternately embraces and resists them?
What hybrid practices emerge from these exchanges? Perhaps the issue lies in materiality—unstable supports that require maintenance, specific know-how, and are susceptible to obsolescence. Or perhaps it’s a market issue—the difficulty of commercializing or collecting a corpus of works that defy a single canon due to their diversity.
Maybe it’s a symptom of a broader societal dilemma: a culture that uses and abuses the conveniences provided by machines while simultaneously choosing to ignore and fear them. Or, conversely, a society that becomes alienated, subservient to devices that, in essence, serve as the piggy banks for corporations. These corporations, to which we pay in coins, minutes, and data, entertain us, disconnect us from the physical world, and help us become who we aspire to be.
As the cyberpunk genre once prophesied, a few corporations now occupy the role of major owners of the means of production and reproduction. The paradigm of cultural industries has shifted: large, publicly traded conglomerates—driven by profit—create the hardware and software for both production and consumption while also providing exhibition platforms like social media. On these platforms, closed algorithms bombard us with stimuli. But here, quantity doesn’t mean variety. The algorithm homogenizes, censors, and seeks the predictable, steering clear of uncertainty and chaos, leaving us overwhelmed, depressed, and alienated.
What, then, is the role of the artist navigating these tumultuous waters—laden with silicon, cobalt, and lithium, along with the ethical challenges they entail? In my view, far from adopting a Luddite stance, we must embrace and appropriate these technologies, exploring their unexpected paths and navigating the interstices of our era to communicate, grow, and connect. We must harness the most advanced technologies to envision and project possible futures.
This text, originally written in Spanish, stems from my work for the course History, Theory, and Aesthetics of Technological Arts, led by Jazmín Adler, as part of the postgraduate program Technologies in contemporary Art at the University of Buenos Aires (UBA)
