article
Tactical media are the field being worked by artists adopting a positive
attitude towards contemporary digital technology, in a critical,
innovative spirit. Media artists reveal a preoccupation with aesthetics
as a concept, not with a particular style. This trend is part of the
creation of a new language for the communications network era, a user
language which is successful as art because it transmits an effective
activism. Media activists are a hybrid of artist, scientist,
theoretician and political activist that shuns labels and
categorizations. Their creations are characterised by integration of
user and machine in the work itself, so that interactivity has an
important place within it. The concept of tactical media allows Art with
a capital and grassroots political activism to be combined and, in this
sense, we could include in it the tactical struggle that is part of
anti-globalisation movements. Media activists point to the power of
tactics as a means of breaking down the barriers between mainstream
values and alternative ones, between professionals and amateurs and even
between people who are creative and those that are not.
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