Always Already Just: Combinatorial Inventiveness in New Media Art

In this chapter I explore the creative aspects of combinatorial inventiveness in new media art practices and point to some of the conceptual parallels and shared methodologies in digital humanities. With regard to diverse manifestations of combinatorial inventiveness in new media art, I focus on generative artworks created primarily by processing the material from cinema, television, and the Internet. These artworks blend procedural thinking with bricolage, leverage complex technical infrastructures, foster curiosity, and encourage vigilance in our critical appreciation of the arts, technology, culture, society, and human nature. Throughout each section, I outline the theoretical considerations that can be abstracted from the examples and elaborate on them in the final section which examines the artists’ motives and circumstances of analogizing, generating ideas, and meaning making in relation to the cognitive implications of artifactual creativity.This is a working preprint version of a chapter in the forthcoming Handbook of Remix Studies and Digital Humanities, edited by Eduardo Navas, Owen Gallagher and xtine burrough. New York, NY: Routledge. ISBN 9780367361426