Rinehart: A System of Formal Notation For Scoring Works of Digital and Media Art 1 A System of Formal Notation for Scoring Works of Digital and Variable Media Art

This paper proposes a new approach to conceptualizing digital and media art forms. This theoretical approach will be explored through issues raised in the process of creating a formal declarative model for digital and media art. This methodology of implementing theory as a way of exploring and testing it is intended to mirror the practices of both art making and computer processing. In these practices, higher-level meanings are manifested at lower levels of argument, symbolization, or concretization so that they can be manipulated and engaged, resulting in a new understanding of a theory or the formulation of new higher-level meaning. This practice is inherently interactive and cyclical. Similarly, this paper is informed by previous work and ideas in this area, and is intended to inform and serve as a vehicle for ongoing exchange around media art. The approach presented and explored here is intended to inform a better understanding of media art forms and to provide the lower level 'hooks' that support the creation, use and preservation of media art. In order to accomplish both of those goals, media art works will not be treated here as isolated and idealized entities, but rather as entities in the complex environment of the real world where they encounter various agents, life-cycle events, and practical concerns. This paper defines the Media Art Notation System and provides implementation examples in the appendices. 1 Digital / Media Art and the Need for a Formal Notation System Digital and media art forms include Internet art, software art, computer-mediated installations, as well as other non-traditional art forms such as conceptual art, installation art, performance art, and video. It is important to point out the inclusion of digital art in the approach explored here because of its unique nature, even among media art forms, and because of how digital informatics informs models that may apply to all the above art forms. It is also important to note that the types of works discussed here are not limited to the traditional meaning of "media" art as analog, electronic media (i.e. video, film, audio, and electronics). Here, media art is intended to include digital art and other variable media art forms. These art forms have confounded traditional museological approaches to documentation and preservation because of their ephemeral, documentary, technical, and multi-part nature and because of the variability and rapid obsolescence of the media formats often used in such works. In part due to lack of documentation methods, and thus access, such forms do not often form the foundation of research and instruction. In many cases these art forms were created to contradict and bypass the traditional art world's values and