This paper takes the exhibitions, creative practices, and critical texts of Chinese new media art in 2024 as its research focus, proposing to understand it as a form. of “institutional media” practice centered on mediating mechanisms, rather than a mere formal experiment driven by technological innovation. The study traces the conceptual evolution of new media art within media studies, arguing that when media no longer serve only as carriers of images and information but become social apparatuses that organize perception, distribute attention, and shape subjectivity, artistic reflection has shifted from “formal media” to “institutional media”. In the context of global technological acceleration, new media art has increasingly moved closer to mainstream art and commercial visual systems, undergoing legitimization and infrastructuralization at the institutional level. . This trend prompts artists and researchers to reconsider its goals and responsibilities. The paper identifies five major areas of practice in 2024: media archaeology and the re-contextualization of technological temporality; Posthuman collaboration and platformized labor driven by AI cocreation; ; immersive experience revealing affective governance and sensory politics; artistic engagement with urban and rural digital infrastructures; and virtual reality and digital identity as critiques of platform. governance and subject formation. By revealing the mechanisms of media, production, perception, space, and subjectivity, the paper argues that even as new media art becomes institutionalized, it maintains a critical awareness—participating in institutions while reflecting on them, using digital platforms while exposing the power structures behind algorithms. Consequently, new media art is gradually transcending formal and aesthetic exploration to become a critical artistic form. and mediating force with the significance of “new productive forces”, intervening deeply in social structures and perceptual mechanisms.
