ABSTRACT
Media art tests and ignores traditional conventions of artistic genres and invites viewers to playfully investigate boundaries and their norms. Media art primarily aims for a sensorial disruption through the overload of cognitive capacities and then seeks to stimulate an intellectual process of re-examining habitualized ways of perception. The media artworks have been grouped according to parameters of literary studies: voice and script; poetry, drama, and prose; and references to specific works of literature. Combined with the Russian Formalists' concept of ostranenie—making strange—and their idea of 'complicating form,' literariness sensitizes viewers to a work's peculiarity. Without negating the fact that the respective state of technology fundamentally shapes both the artworks' aesthetics and their reflexive stance towards media, the analyses did not focus on historical development. Media art not only challenges our assumptions about art and culture, but also about the scope of academic disciplines. It invites exploration, testing, and pushing beyond disciplinary boundaries.
