New Media Art One Liners

The new media one-liner (nmol) is a sub-genre of new media art. Enthusiasts and practitioners of the nmol are drawn to the practice by its "reference-pleasure." Reference-pleasure refers to the satisfaction one receives from experiencing the nmol who's "one-line" is a reference to some aspect of either internet/digital culture or media arts history/ critical theory.

These are usually puns or humorous "digitizations" of other artworks/practices. This can be a play on words, for example, switching, in a title of a work, the name of the Frankfurt school critical theorist/philosopher "Adorno" with the open-source hardware/software platform "Arduino". The nmol is often this kind of conceptual joke which could exist simply as a thought or tweet but is often an executed work of new media art. The nmol can be fully appreciated in an instant—at surface level—yet it is often the site for extraneous discussions/digressions for artists and critics alike.

When constructing a nmol it’s important to keep in mind the delicate balance that is “reference-pleasure.” The deeper the reference the more pleasure the audience will receive from being “in-on” the reference, however, if the reference is too deep you risk excluding too large a percentage of your potential audience. Keep it digestible; repost, retweet, recycle ( content ).