by Ceylan Önalp
[Teleport begins].
Stardate: 94624.59
Captain’s Log: This is an essay on the historical evolution of the new media scene in Turkey. “What is new media?” the 2D beings ask immediately. Before we begin, let’s pay inevitable homage to Wikipedia, a.k.a. Counselor Obvious, who explains new media art as the “genre that encompasses artworks created with new media technologies, including digital art, computer graphics, computer animation, virtual art, Internet art, interactive art, video games, computer robotics, 3D printing, cyborg art and art as biotechnology.”
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Thank you, Star Trek. The only proper way to salute you would be Vulcan Style, live long and prosper – for creating a new interface between mankind, the machine, and the world beyond galaxies. Shifting them to become one as the building rocks, or in other words, “for what we now increasingly think of as the social construction of reality.” Before we begin our voyage of imagination through the history of new media art in Turkey, there is a name well worth mentioning, Erik Davis. The author of TechGnosis, a witty masterpiece seeking to reveal the secret history of the mystical impulses of new age hyper-technologies. A book that predicates that technoculture is culture.
So here we are: Turkey. New media scene. [Press play].
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