How did installation, performance, video, and digital media expand what art can be, making space, time, and experience into the medium?
New media, installation, and performance: how installation transforms a whole space and immerses the viewer, how performance makes the artist's actions and the body the work, how video and digital media introduce time and technology, and how these forms make the viewer's experience central.
Covers non-traditional media in AP Art History Content Area 10, explaining how installation transforms a space and immerses the viewer, how performance makes the body and actions the work, how video and digital media introduce time and technology, and how these forms center the viewer's experience.
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What this topic is asking
This topic covers new media, installation, and performance in contemporary art. The College Board wants you to understand how installation transforms a whole space and immerses the viewer, how performance makes the artist's actions and body the work, how video and digital media introduce time and technology, and how these forms make the viewer's experience central.
Installation: transforming a space
The first new form is the installation.
Performance: the body and action as the work
A second form makes the artist the medium.
In performance art, the artist's body and actions become the work itself. Rather than making an object, the artist does something, often in real time before an audience, so the art is an event rather than a thing. A performance may exist only as a live experience and survive afterwards only through documentation (photographs, video, description). Performance puts time, presence, and the body at the center and dissolves the boundary between the artist, the artwork, and the moment of its making.
Video and digital media: time and technology
A third strand brings technology and duration into art.
Video and digital media introduce time as a medium, the work unfolds over a duration, like film, rather than being grasped at a glance, and they harness the tools of mass media, the screen, and the computer. This lets artists engage directly with the media-saturated contemporary world, using its own technologies. Video and digital works can loop, move, and change, so the viewer's attention over time becomes part of the experience.
The centrality of the viewer's experience
What unites these forms is a shift to experience.
Why this matters for the exam
New media are central to Content Area 10 and a strong continuity-and-change case (how art expanded beyond painting and sculpture), with the viewer's experience a key point for visual analysis of installation and performance.
Try this
Q1. How does installation art differ from a traditional painting or sculpture? [Recall]
- Cue. It transforms a whole space and surrounds the viewer, who must enter and move through it rather than viewing a single framed object from one fixed point, so the viewer's presence and movement complete the work.
Q2. Explain what unites installation, performance, and video as contemporary media. [Short explanation]
- Cue. All three make the viewer's experience central, the work is completed by the viewer's movement, presence, perception, and time spent with it, rather than being a finished object contemplated from outside, and they often serve the conceptual aims of contemporary art.
Exam-style practice questions
Practice questions written in the style of College Board exam questions on this dot point, with worked answer explainers. The year tag is the paper they imitate, not the source.
AP 2019 (style)5 marksAn image of a contemporary installation is shown (image provided). Using specific visual evidence, identify TWO ways it differs from a traditional painting or sculpture. Explain how the viewer's experience becomes part of the work.Show worked answer →
A Visual Analysis short-essay style task, 5 points.
Two differences: cite concrete evidence, for example the work fills or transforms an entire space rather than hanging on a wall, and the viewer moves through or is surrounded by it rather than viewing it from one fixed point.
Viewer's experience: explain that the work is completed by the viewer's movement, presence, and perception within the space, making experience itself part of the medium.
Markers reward naming specific differences from traditional media and explaining the centrality of the viewer's experience.
AP 2021 (style)6 marksEvaluate the extent to which new media expanded the definition of art in the contemporary period. Support your argument with specific evidence from at least TWO required works using non-traditional media.Show worked answer →
A Continuity and Change long-essay style task, 6-point rubric.
Claim: for example, "New media such as installation, performance, and video expanded the definition of art by making space, the body, time, and the viewer's experience into the medium, well beyond traditional painting and sculpture."
Evidence (two works): for example an immersive installation and a performance or video work.
Reasoning: explain HOW these forms expanded art, then add complexity by noting roots in earlier avant-garde and postwar experiments.
Related dot points
- Contextualizing Content Area 10: the 1980 to present timeframe, the global and diverse character of contemporary art, the dominance of concept and new media over traditional painting and sculpture, and the recurring concerns of identity, politics, globalization, and the questioning of art itself.
Sets the scene for AP Art History Content Area 10, explaining the 1980 to present timeframe, the global and diverse character of contemporary art, the dominance of concept and new media, and the recurring concerns of identity, politics, globalization, and the questioning of art itself.
- Identity and the body in contemporary art: the exploration of race, gender, sexuality, and cultural identity, the use of the body, self-portraiture, and personal experience as subject and medium, and the strategy of challenging stereotypes and dominant narratives.
Covers identity in AP Art History Content Area 10, explaining how contemporary artists explore race, gender, sexuality, and cultural identity, use the body, self-portraiture, and personal experience as subject and medium, and challenge stereotypes and dominant narratives.
- Globalization and contemporary art: how artists respond to migration, borders, cultural exchange, and an interconnected world, the negotiation between local heritage and a global art world, and the use of appropriation and hybridity to comment on a connected, unequal globe.
Covers globalization in AP Art History Content Area 10, explaining how artists respond to migration, borders, and cultural exchange, negotiate between local heritage and a global art world, and use appropriation and hybridity to comment on a connected, unequal globe.
- Art as activism and social critique: the use of art to confront political power, injustice, and inequality, the critique of the art world and its institutions, the move of art into public space and direct action, and how the idea and the cause often matter more than the crafted object.
Covers political and activist art in AP Art History Content Area 10, explaining how artists confront power, injustice, and inequality, critique the art world and its institutions, move into public space and direct action, and prioritize the idea and the cause over the crafted object.
- The early twentieth-century avant-garde: how Cubism fractured form into multiple viewpoints, how Expressionism and Fauvism used distortion and bold color to express feeling, how Dada attacked the idea of art itself, and how Surrealism explored the unconscious, driving art toward abstraction and concept.
Covers the early twentieth-century avant-garde works of AP Art History Content Area 4, explaining how Cubism fractured form, how Expressionism and Fauvism used distortion and color for feeling, how Dada attacked art itself, and how Surrealism explored the unconscious, driving art toward abstraction and concept.
Sources & how we know this
- AP Art History Course and Exam Description — College Board (2020)
- AP Art History Required Works: Global Contemporary — Smarthistory (2023)