My Way_ Speeches and Poems - Charles Bernstein

74 I DON'T TAKE VOICE MAIL
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One of the hallmarks of formalist art criticism as well as media theory has
been an analysis of the effects of newer media on already existing media.
So we talk about the effect of photography on painting, or movies on theater;
or how movies provided the initial content for TV before it arrived
at its own particular formats (just as the content of the net is now largely
composed of formats taken from books, letters, and magazines). It is useful
to remember that in the early days of TV, many observers predicted
that such spectator sports as baseball would lose their stadium audiences
once the games were broadcast "live". However, the opposite occurred;
TV increased the interest in the live-and-in-person event. In a similar way,
art on the net may actually increase interest in seeing art in nonelectronic
spaces.
Formalist critics have wanted to emphasize how new technologies
"free up" older media to explore their intrinsic qualities-to do what only
they can do. But new media also have a corrosive effect, as forces in the
older media try to shift their focus to compete for the market and the cultural
capital of what they may see as their new competitors. Within the
visual arts, many of the most celebrated new trends of the last decadefrom
simulationism to multimediamania to the transformation of Artforum-are
symptoms of a fear of the specific and intractable materiality of
painting and sculpture; such fear of materiality (and by extension faceto-face
interaction) is far greater and long-lasting than the much more