Tim Gruchy: Electronic Media Art, Popular Culture and the Experimental Avant-Garde

Abstract

It has become something of a commonplace to remark on the pace of technological change, to talk of the communications revolution or the information society, and to position these developments as a positive advance for culture generally. However, within the more limited field of the arts, the faster, cleaner, brighter, better aspects of new technology also bring with them an underlying uncertainty, a worry that these new media might be dehumanising, or overly mechanical, perhaps a little too commercial and entertainment oriented - not really appropriate media for real art. This ambivalence towards the linking of art and technology has often forced this work in an awkward position, caught somewhere between popular culture and the experimental avant-garde, between art and science, or between the visual and the performing arts. Negotiating these uncertainties has been an important task for Tim Gruchy, whose work has been located within the fuzzy borders of art and technology since an initial involvement with black and white reel to reel video and (comparatively) basic electronic music in the mid 1970s.