Formulary for New Media

We are bored on the internet. We’re wearied from raindancing for the algorithms that manipulate our attention. We’re exhausted from every interaction selling us things we did not ask for and that do not inspire enthusiasm, mystery, joy.

We long for something deeper, richer, more surprising. Not “I see what you did there” surprising. Surprising in a way that transforms us from who we are to who we long to be.

The answer is not a new tool or technology. The answer is a new spirit. The world does not need more media, it needs New Media. But New Media does not exist. New Media must be built.

Old new media

In the 1990s and 2000s, “new media” was a trendy term that described the untrampled frontier of the digital — CD-ROMs, cable TV, and the internet. Compared to the “traditional media” of the physical world and its rigid “all the news that’s fit to print,” new media was undefined and infinite. New media was a new world.

In the early days of new media, the question of what media could and would be was truly open. But as the internet matured, “new media” came to feel redundant. The digital world reached ubiquitous forms that felt eternal, like Francis Fukayama’s “End of History” but for media formats. Human expression was perfected into pithy thought-capsules (Twitter, LinkedIn), glamour shots (Instagram), and performative soundbites (TikTok), all perfect carriers for human emotions and — most importantly — ADVERTISING, which we were also now expected to do, newly equipped with our “personal brands.”

The dominance of these formats and mindset made us think they were the only way to live and express in this new world. But they’re not. They’re limited canvases of tiny rectangles we’ve been trained to optimize our ideas, work, and selves to fit. These forms flatten every aspect of our inner lives into chicken nuggets of self-expression. New Media became traditional media. All the feels fit to sell.

Reviving “New Media”

Must our boredom stretch eternal? NO!

We’re trapped by these tools only as much as we let them. We can reclaim our agency to create new canvases to express our work.

We can make New Media once again.

We can free ourselves from the limited frames of the present and once again discover infinite worlds of possibility. We can give ourselves license to design and imagine anew. 

What does New Media look like today?

• New Media breaks out of existing platform boxes. Instead of optimizing for the algorithm, it empowers us to express our work in ways that feel true to us and our deepest intentions.
• New Media is not limited by the formats, genres, or business lines of the past. It sees the world with fresh eyes, hungering for new means of delivery and form.
• New Media invites the audience to engage with the work in different ways. It may shift from consumption to participation and turn the act of releasing inside out, blurring the line between producer and audience, generating creative, social, and even financial rewards.
• New Media is opinionated about the internet’s infinite scale. It chooses to reject or play with the internet’s scale, opting to be handmade, limited quantity, or geared towards small groups of people who actively choose to receive it. New Media is not something to be fished from a stream, but a sacred pilgrimage one may embark upon. New Media may feel closer to Ancient Media than what we’ve known in our recent past.

A New Media movement

New Media is not a dream. It’s a movement that’s already begun. Across mediums and styles, forward-thinking artists are establishing new languages and methods. Examples include:

• Chia Amisola, whose work blurs the lines between art, personal expression, and the old and new tools of the web today (see this talk)
• The Cindy Lee album, Diamond Jubillee, released earlier this year, which was kept off streaming services but made available as a .zip file download that listeners can pay what they want for.
• The new ENO documentary by Gary Hustwit, a generative film whose every version is a different selection of segments uniquely edited together for each screening, and reimagines film as a New Media form.

Each of these works and artists inspire audiences to question what media should be. They open our minds to new possibilities that make the status quo feel pale and obligatory in comparison.

Metalabel is one hub for this New Media movement. A next-gen post-platform designed from its roots to further a New Media future, Metalabel has already introduced New Media works like:

• Molly Soda’s “mollysstuff,” which released physical folders of images printed off the internet made collectible in both digital and physical form.
• Metalabel’s “Nine Creative Meditations,” which uses a PDF and video to express an idea in a new, medium-busting way.
• The Dark Forest Collective’s “Post-Individual,” a .zip of a single essay expressed in five different mediums at once, available only to those who choose to receive it.
• glbkst releasing a song that offers a designer a cut of the sales if they make the album art.

The New Media movement is starting small on the fringes. It will expand as more people recognize the power that comes with separating from digital monotony. It will accelerate as more of us realize that New Media can make our work once again exciting, unexpected, and, most importantly, truthful to our intentions. 

The New Media of tomorrow will modify present conceptions of time and space. It will not be fixed, but modifiable, and it will change with the needs of its inhabitants. New Media will once again introduce a new, infinite frontier for us all.