雅思阅读精读 | When new grows old

When new grows old （1）

————————————

Artists working with technology struggle to stay current

In 1968 the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London held an exhibition called “Cybernetic Serendipity”， Britain’s first show exploring connections between art and new technology. 

It was hugely popular and in hindsight, well timed. 

It coincided with two crucial developments in the relationship between art and technology: the pop-art movement, which was demolishing boundaries between high art and everyday life，and ARPANET， the computer-to-computer network which would become the internet.

The internet has continued to erode established notions of what qualifies as art,and who can claim to be an artist. 

New categories flourish:  net.art，new media art， the New Aesthetic， internet art, post-internet art. 

Online-only sales and exhibitions are increasingly common, as is art existing solely in digital form，bought and sold through websites such as Electric Objects (on a mission “to put digital art on a wall in every home”).

Successful careers and expensive collections are built using social media, such as Instagram， the image- and video-sharing app that has users posting 80m photographs a day.

“Electronic Superhighway”, a new show at the White chapel Gallery in London, 

looks at how artist shave responded to technology and change.

The exhibition, which takes its name from a phrase coined in 1974 by Nam June Paik, a video artist，to describe the potential of telecommunication systems, is arranged in reverse chronological order. 

This calls particular attention to how quickly technologies become obsolete，and how art tied to those forms ages with it.

词汇与表达

hindsight  

understanding the nature of an event after it has happened 

n. 后见之明

coincide with 

meet with 

符合

demolish 

destroy completely 

vt. 破坏

erode 

become ground down or deteriorate 

vt. 腐蚀，侵蚀

qualify  

prove capable or fit; meet requirements 

vi. 取得资格，有资格

claim to be  

regard oneself as 

自称

phrase  

an expression consisting of one or more words forming a grammatical constituent of a sentence

 n. 短语

coin 

make up 

vt. 杜撰，创造

telecommunication system  

a communication system for communicating at a distance 

通信系统

chronological 

relating to or arranged according to temporal order 

adj. 按年代顺序排列的

obsolete 

old; no longer in use or valid or fashionable 

adj. 废弃的；老式的

长句翻译

Successful careers and expensive collections are built using social media，such as Instagram，the image- and video-sharing app that has users posting 80m photographs a day.

语法点：

定语从句

翻译：

通过社交媒体，比如Instagram，一种用户每天会上传8千万照片的图像和视频分享软件，许多成功的事业和高昂的展览都发展起来了。