Boundaries between what we call media art and other genres such as product design or entertainment are getting increasingly blurred. In fact, most digital avant garde protagonists do not regard themselves as media artists, but rather as engineeers, architects, designers, hackers, etc. And those who do define themselves as artists usually do not mingle with contemporary artists. You don't find their work in contemporary art fairs, magazines or exhibitions.

There are two kinds of digital avant garde protagonists:
- those who work in an "advance technology perspective", the researchers of the MIT media lab for example,
- the "alternative" type who wants to find different ways to use the technologies than the one originally intended. They are more interested in the "misuse" of the technology and its appropriation for different purposes.

This research isn't meant to be exhaustive nor objective: it is only a selection of the works and topics i saw as the most interesting for the moment.

Another characteristic to take into account is its Western perspective. I admire Japanese or Korean artists (What are the Chinese doing, by the way?), contacted some of them in the context of this research and read as much as i could about their work. Still, there's not much echo about their creative work in english language publications (online or not). Besides, I felt that their concerns and are so different from their Western counterparts that it would call for a different study. It would be a complex one as well. The digital avant garde in Austria doesn't produce the same thing as the Seattle one. Nevertheless, you find some similarities and many common interests. You can't say the same about the “Oriental” or “Eastern” scene. How would one be able to compare the Jakarta avant garde with the Tokyo one?

In order to give some structure and to clarify things, I have presented the works into different categories. Of course, it's never as simple as that. The categories overlap, some projects -often the most interesting ones- could perfectly fit into, say, three different categories.