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Arts and Crafts

Page 6

The New Media Movement

Digital society connects many areas - science, academia, commerce, arts, politics, entertainment, education - yet there is still no single banner which unites them all. We are however, united by our very connection – the internet itself. The 19th Century British Arts and Crafts Movement was inspired by Ruskin and Morris to look to Nature for its forms and philosophies. Today, many of us add to Nature the potential of digital technology, finding within that combination a potent force for enrichment and empowerment. I wonder, therefore, whether we too are part of a Movement? And so I tentatively offer this volume to the New Media Movement, which might exist, and to all of you who might therefore consider yourselves to be part of it.

The New Media Movement has its own arts and crafts too, as well as a great sense of humour! Jay Maynard's homemade Tron costume, for example, has been doing the rounds in the past few weeks and attracting some affectionate responses to his rather cookie homage to this excellent film. I reproduce his picture here in the hope that he won't mind since it is a popular image across the web at the moment! For a full account of the making of his costume, see his website.

Acknowledgements

Writing acknowledgements must be the most stressful part of any print book, and these days I am so used to editing on the fly online that I was extremely worried about missing people out. Raw Nerve was unspeakably patient with my endless revisions but finally it became too late to add anyone else and so I really need this section to top up with people who continued to rise to the top of my consciousness, usually at that time of the early morning when the brain processes residual anxieties.

The first person to bubble up in this way was Andrew Hugill. Andy is a composer, writer and Professor of Music at De Montfort University, Leicester. We meet up rarely, perhaps once every two or three years, for a long and intense discussion about art, technology and life on the web, and each conversation has been significant for me in a variety of ways, so it is important that he is acknowledged here. (Recently he joined the Management Board of trAce, so I look forward to seeing him more frequently.)