So, what even is New Media art and visual culture?

New Media art is a broad term typically used to refer to contemporary works of art that utilize and/or engage with emergent technologies of the late 20th - early 21st century.

The term was first used in the 60s and 80s-90s to refer to television and personal computer technologies; but with the introduction of Web 2.0, the term is now colloquially used to refer to all digital media. It's often studied in the realm of Media Studies (a broad interdisciplinary field that explores the intersections of computing, science, the humanities, and the visual and performing arts). The works that fall under this category are diverse in both their formal and conceptual approaches, and tend to explore the use or the conceptual weight of recent technologies.

Hey... That kind of sounds like Contemporary Art, just focused on technology...

...Right? However, key theorists, scholars, and both artists and viewers of New Media art and visual culture all seem to agree on a shared concept: There is something about New Media that distinguishes it from other art movements. Great minds agree on the idea that New Media art isn't just delineated by being technology-based: the notions of New Media - the way it carries messages, the way individuals engage with this tech, and the way these media in turn shape our society - make us engage with the world differently.