Lev Manovich Analyzes the Post-Media Age
Medium in Crisis
In the last third of the twentieth century, various cultural and technological developments have altogether rendered meaningless one of the key concepts of modern art-the medium. No new topology of art practice, however, has come to replace media-based typology, which divides art into painting, works on paper, sculpture, film, video, and so on.
The assumption that artistic practice can be neatly organized into a small set of distinct mediums has continued to structure the organization of museums, art schools, funding agencies, and other cultural institutions, even though this assumption no longer reflects the actual functioning of culture.
