Olia Lialina

In 1996, Olia Lialina created My Boyfriend Came Back from the War, a web-based interactive digital art project that tells the story of lovers reuniting after one has been away at war. The website uses simple text and images to tell the nonlinear story of these two people. The progress of the story is determined by the order in which you (the viewer) click on different linked text and images. 

The artist uses simple html for the text, images, and frames (which split into smaller frames as you continue to click). What is striking to me about this work is that in spite of its simplicity, it has a deep and evocative message. Traditional media have an easier time of being successfully poignant. Viewers approach painting, sculpture, and drawing with the expectation that they may have an emotional experience. In a culture where everything is digital and everyone has instant access to everything, it may be hard to separate digital art from anything else that is digitally accessible. When viewing Lialina's piece, you might forget that you're staring at a computer screen.

Jodi

 Jodi is a web interface that "can be seen as a formalist investigation of the intrinsic characteristics of Internet as a medium." When a viewer sees the webpage, it is just a jumble of fragmented code and what looks like a glitch. However, if they know HTML, they can enter it in to see a plan for an atom bomb, conceptually close to exploding the internet. Jodi.org gives viewers the opportunity to experience a "disconcerting" view of the internet.

This reminds me of other art that lets you see into its process. For instance, painters who leave some parts of the canvas unpainted and unprimed, or media artists working with electronics that allow you to see the plugs and cables. When this happens, the process becomes the art. Art has traditionally been known as something that should be experienced from the surface, but new media artists force you to enter into the experience of the making of that art in addition to the finished product.

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Shu Lea Chang

Shu Lea Cheang is an experimental new media artist. She works with combinations of video, photography, and what she calls "net-based installation" art. Cheang's work often confronts different sociopolitical issues, primarily including ones of gender and sexuality. Her most prominent works belong to the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis and the Guggenheim collections.

This particular piece is called "Brandon." Cheang was commissioned by the Guggenheim to create this piece of new media art based on the life of Teena Brandon, a transsexual who, in 1993, was raped and murdered because of her sexuality. "Brandon" can be found here. The viewer first sees the image of a baby becoming a woman becoming a man, which is a literal allusion to Brandon's life. When the viewer, clicks on the morphing image, the curser can be moved around the screen to illustrate different images relating to transsexuality, and more specifically, Teen Brandon.

As the curser is dragged around the screen, the images continue to change. It is unsettling and the viewer feels confronted or targeted. Phrases from newspaper headlines like "she's a he," "killed for," "romance," "all," "exposure," and "rage" make the narrative undeniably human and from there common. That the viewer can relate to the art is what is most disturbing and sad about the way in which Cheang has portrayed Teena Brandon's tragedy.

Ken Goldberg

Ken Goldberg is an engineering professor at University of Calfornia, Berkley. He creates video installation pieces that require audience participation and simultaneously operate without it. His piece Telegarden is an online based piece consisting of the image of a garden surrounding a robotic arm. The audience is instructed to water the plants and can then watch the robotic arm move to complete the action of the participant. However it is impossible to tell whether "the users' actions have actually contributed to the growth of the plants on the Telegarden website." Goldberg wants to challenge users to question the "suspension of disbelief" present when using internet programs such as this one. Audience members assume that they actually have control, but they also know on some level that they may not, that the entire thing could be "staged."

Goldberg's work reflects an interdisciplinary approach to new media art. For instance, his engineering background contributes to his ability to to construct the technical parts of Telegarden. This can be considered a quality of some new media art in that there is often an electrical, or more technical, knowledge necessary, which requires a different kind of training and background than more traditional forms of art. 

(from New Media Art wiki)