INSTALLATION AND MEDIA ART

MONA HATOUM Sous tension, 1999
Installation and media art are new additions to art history. Both became popular in the 1970s and '80s when artists were looking for updated artistic expressions to convey the issues of their time.

Installation is a blanket term for an arrangement of objects which the onlooker walks through or is surrounded by. Installation art can be comprised of any artistic media and often more than one.

Media art is a general term too, covering the artistic means of expression that employ recent media such as computers, sound and video. Today internet art is an important branch of media art.

The pioneering days of video art were the early 1970s when the medium's low-tech and immediate use was employed principally to record action and progress as a part of performances. Subsequently media art has become more sophisticated, as evident from ARKEN's works.