“…The concept of the “new” that most of us carry with us is one in which something that has existed (the old) is replaced with something that has come into existence only recently. It’s a sort of “either-or” model. Digital media, however, are about intermingling and fusion. They are about “both-and”. As a colleague recently remarked, the overlapping of differences [and similarities] that Digital Media allow [makes for] a staggering hybridity of not only art forms but of just about everything amenable to the digital. This activity, however, creates its own ruptures, its own “newness” and unrecognizables.

Is this new? Well yes and no. Anyone familiar with the work of Dick Higgens will remember that while he did not use the word “hybrid,” he did identify “fusion,” not only as a basic hunger in us all, but as a characteristic of the new arts of his time: He spoke of happenings, for instance, as a three-way fusion between theater, music and visual art. He suggested that “art performances, so prevalent just now,” might be a five way fusion, between theater, literature, music, visual art, and life?”" From Music, Sound and the Networked_Performance Blog [PDF] by Helen Thorington.