Such works cause extreme and powerful feelings within the viewer and are effected in a way by the artwork long since lost in age of the television and the generations of the cheap, fast, and violent. When was the last time a work of art caused its viewers to re-contemplate their perception of reality, their spirituality, or insight revolution? Of course not everyone wants art to cause the beginning of the revolution but the thought of art being so powerful could be more than possible through interactive works. The concept of interaction with the work of art is powerful because just by the nature of its existence we accept that it requires interaction to be at its grandest form. It is no longer art for arts sake nor something to make the wall more colorful; it requires contemplation and reflection just by the nature of existing. Viewing art is, without question, not a passive experience within this arena. It requires us to exist, rather than being misunderstood and forgotten.

Reiterating though, for the course, this essay again emphasizes to me the importance of the artist being knowledgeable to the limitations of software and the over utilization of certain aspects in the arts. Being obviously photoshopped pieces of work equal nothing more than ‘photoshopped,’ and nice animations made through Maya are just versions of ‘Pixar.’ Not to say that the expertise to use Maya is easily acquired but that largely its users that are not working for Pixar are largely lumped into a category referencing Pixar to the viewing public. Additionally, that is not to say that the people doing this kind of work are to be discredited, but that at least for myself I don’t want my artwork to be associated with some major ‘art’ programming company like Adobe or Autodesk. Yeah, they make nice pieces of software that we as artists are able to use to create our desired forms, but as I stated in earlier posts we as digital artists should be concerned with extending our medium to being something beyond general public grasp of knowledge to the creation. Its not like we are intricately hand carving a copper plate to make an image along the lines of Albrecht Durer… made, oh well, several centuries ago. Such work has timeless craftsmanship because few can create along those lines.

We stand upon an interesting line, which Manovich highlights, where software is constantly being updated and past abilities that were once required great expertise are made as easy as clicking a button. So what does that say for the shit that is produced through photoshop on a regular basis that in all honesty required photoshop and a large scale printer. Personally, I don’t think it says much at least other than the same temporary interest we have in advertisements. As artists of the digital world we must strive to create things that are original and questionable to their construction. To say that something is, well, just photoshopped is slightly disappointing in the long scheme of the artworks life. Obviously, the methods for construction may one day be understood, but to create something and call it digital or new media art, and have used simple software uses is disappointing. This is coming from someone who has long been against art emphasizing coding as medium, but honestly the creative act is constrained by the acts of the programmer. Of course we can hybridize our creation and use multiple programs, and embrace the knowledge that with ever expanding developments in software things will be left behind. To those who cut and paste though, what more is your work than an exploration of software? A sketch of something else’s capabilities than your own?

Yes, software and the GUI make up our new world of understanding. Outside of the populace what is our art though than something obviously dated by capability. The real digital or new media artist creates software to do their biding rather than rely on whatever they can afford.

Anyway, to relevance other than Alan Kay’s accomplishments, the GUI is of obvious importance to he who has technical need but not nearly the time to spend learning or dealing in code. That said, we interact with some form of GUI every time we interact with a computer – computer, cell phone, ipod, even calculator. Special. In relvance to art, the question was posed in our discussion “are you making the art or is photoshop (rather a byproduct of the GUI) making the art?” This is completely valid in response to the current situation of digital arts where far to many products of its creation look more like photoshop filters than they do original pieces of art. Yeah so a computer program can make a photo look like a watercolor. It begs the question of value, when all you did was click a button to apply a filter and then expect it to be compared to the work of a true blue watercolorist. Who really made it? Did you or did the person who programmed the filter?

For reasons standing behind photography, you did. You went out and took the picture. You brought it into photoshop. You decided upon the application of the filter. Photoshop being ultimately designed as an advertising tool since they’re the highest paying customer, maybe they didn’t realize the possibility of certain filters being used for such uses. That still doesn’t make you talented in the same sense as the talent used to create the filter though. Of course there is the concern that without artist desires the programmer/coder wouldn’t know what to do with there knowledge and couldn’t make truly applicable uses, but the fact is that big companies have utilized this concept and made applicable concepts. Again, special. I can pay $800 or however much money and purchase some program and they’ll make whatever it is I want into a certain form. Anyone beginning to think of big time/super star artists who start up factories to create certain pieces of art? Really though, no one knows if they actually know how to create what is being made but they’ve paid enough money to have someone make something, and because it has their name on it, it will sell. Sad state we’re living in when true art is made through production and the actual artist can’t actually make the product themselves (obviously that doesn’t apply to certain large scale sculptors, who without help couldn’t even fathom their constructions). So what does that say for photoshop? Especially when you go to a gallery opening and seeing ‘photographic’ images manipulated in photoshop that hark back to the days when photoshop first became available, and no matter how shitty the rendering was it was still impressive because they used photoshop…

The point being in all of this is that photoshop is no longer a good tool if whatever you are creating looks, well, obviously photoshopped. In relation to the GUI, it has obvious need for the consumer to be easy, accessible, and accomplish tasks that would otherwise be tedious and troublesome. In relevance to the art though, these terms do not apply, and little value should be placed on something poorly masked behind the tools… The artist should strive to create new forms and find alternative ways to create than what the populace finds immediately available for creation of now cliched (photoshopped) images. Power to the GUI for its ease of use, but less power to the artist to create new forms. It is the development of programs such as MIT’s Processing, Quartz, and programming in general, that will allow for the artist of the digital age to find new forms outside of what the public recognizes as possible. This should be strived for, but is far to often lost. People say digital art, and the first thought in most peoples minds are overly photoshopped images or maya animations. All those thoughts say is “well, I could create that too if I could afford those programs.” In contrast to similar thoughts regarding much contemporary art, in the digital arts that thought is true if all we produce are images cast through the various filters of photoshop and similar programs. Contemporary digital art may rely on the GUI but should not be limited to its programmers, and it should embrace the possibility behind creation of original program construction such as the capabilities reliant behind Processing, where the artist must actually create the environment rather than accept one programmed by someone else.

Bringing it back around to McKenzie Wark and the Hacker Manifesto, which is Oh so painful and incredibly entertaining to read over and over (love it, but it’s a lot to indulge in over and over with all the anti/pro marxist talk), the VJ brings something to the populace that the hacker is strives for. The intents of the hacker to be an individual and broadcast ideas breaking from the status quo set by the government and its educational services can easily be exhumed through the concept of the VJ. Debatable by the common viewing group being drunk party kids at bars/clubs, but the VJ is by trade very well educated in creating visually stimulating experiences, projecting to large audiences, and most importantly re-appropriating. Not to say that many VJs don’t create their own material but that they are in a unique position to create new meanings and broadcast new ideas to audiences through the incorporation of pop footage recontextualized. The VJ is by no means the ultimate hack, but is a more than able contributor to liberating thought from the mechanical teachings of the vectoral system. As it develops more commercial attention will be given and surely there will follow law suits seeking action against those who use re-appropriated footage but the nature of the creation is one which draws back on the Happenings in the 60′s and 70′s and are determined by experiences.

His characterizations of the art world and its history are incredible and accurate to us today, and his interest in gaming as a form of participative art. To me he may put the prospects of gaming art to high though as it is only a factor of the possibilities we possess today, although undeniably a strong force in the motivation behind participative art. The real characteristic behind gaming art is more so the altered environment presented to the viewer and their ability to change it. This is to say that what may be grander than people interacting within a work of art is peoples environment being changed by their interactions (ie. body temperature, movement, sound). This context may have more potential to the grandeur of participative art and include the behavioural prospects Ascott hopes for within the arts without constriction. It may be gaming, it may be installation, it may be hanging on a wall, or it may be web art. As he puts it:

The artist, the artifact and the spectator are all involved in a more behavioral context. We find an insistence on polemic, formal ambiguity and instability, uncertainty and room for change in the images and forms of Modern Art. And these factors predominate not for esoteric or obscurantist reasons, but to draw the spectator into active participation in the act of creation; to extend him, via the artifact, the opportunity to become involved in creative behaviour on all levels of experience – physical, emotional and conceptual. A feedback loop is established so that the evolution of the artwork/experience is governed by the intimate involvement of the spectator. As process is open-ended the spectator now engages in decision making play.

I don’t believe by the word ‘play,’ Ascott is referring to the idea of gaming but rather the larger context of interaction. From which, he is saying that computer aided works of art should strive to utilize such processor power and interact with their viewers. We are really only scratching on the surface though as programs such as Quartz or Processing become more widely known and possibilities via the internet increase exponentially. This is coupled by a fear in the public of art done with computers due to their lack of understanding, but as every generation becomes more cpu savvy we are sure to see a huge increase in acceptance on the levels of fine art.

What part of memory is fictionalized by the memory to replace details that were not remembered?

Memory – perceiving the recollection of a perception – reperceiving – perceiving your perception

Oxford says:
memory |ˈmem(ə)rē|
1 a person’s power to remember things : I’ve a great memory for faces | my grandmother is losing her memory.
• the power of the mind to remember things : the brain regions responsible for memory.
• the mind regarded as a store of things remembered : he searched his memory frantically for an answer.
• the capacity of a substance to return to a previous state or condition after having been altered or deformed.

Current thoughts:
the surreal and the sublime
memories
what are memories in comparison to documentation?
what are memories in comparison to reality?
are memories documented or remembered?
when embodying a certain persona – are memories documented or remembered?
what is the difference between remembering and reviewing?
treachery of the memory? treacherous memories?
edited memories – what is the act of editing memories?
memories as reproduction? reproducible memory?
how do you replay, revisit, review your memories?
block out memories – delete unwanted memories
ambiguous memories
In what way do we perceive memories that differentiates the experience from that which is documented and/or maybe even shared??
how are we alert/awake to memories?

-

I really want to buy several dozen pairs of sunglasses, they’ll have to be cheap, remove the lens and print on them – then put them back in the frames and hang them – I working on figuring out the best way to print on the glasses now… I feel like this relates to my questions about the perception of memories to some degree as well.

These are the main trends of my thoughts at the moment, not mentioning the dozen that don’t relate or have to do with school, and I’m still working on organizing a printmaking show. The show will be on Friday, February 13th (I’m kind of excited about the date) but I imagine I’m only going to get more and more stressed as it gets closer. Right now I’m a little terrified about getting enough work to fill the space… Should be a fun semester.

Feeling,
morning resting,
mistaken in the recognition,
circling
standards of discrimination,
in feeling
entirely mistaken in the recurrance.

This makes meaning,
meaning what this makes.

Getting into the more political side of Benjamin’s essay was not my intention here, but more so to look how the idea of art is changing when the promise of money is not guaranteed as a result of reproduction. Benjamin seems to feel that although the aura of a piece may become diluted the ability to express is multiplied, speaking of a more digital world that is. Although now maybe an overused pop icon of the underground street art movements, it is interesting to consider the artist(s) Banksy, whose fame has exploded over the past 4 or 5 years. Many people are aware of a variety of his street pieces, large and daring, in your face, often critical of society, and all available over the internet for us to view. I personal know maybe 3 people who have seen his work, but everyone knows him and knows what he’s done because of the internet. Although his work exists in the real world somewhere, the true power of his work is that the same image may appear on ones computer screen across the world. He receives no money from us as we view them, but the value of his original work soars (what is more ironic of the banksy character is when he began he spoke against selling art, while now even celebrities clamor for his work to help their image). Either way, the act of reproducing his work has only helped increase his power. I cannot help but remember Dalí reproducing many of his pieces to increase his profits, and now many do not command nearly the value they had initially. It will be interesting to watch what happens in the digital age, does Banksy hold his value and make it into the realm of some sort of avant-garde or crash as the next trend of the internet generation casts him in the shadows.

The words of Marcel Duchamp are probably the most haunting for the brave new world art has begun traveling through. Having removed himself from the art world and taken a job in order to support his art and not have to depend on the sales of his work, he speaks of creating art in an effort that seems to attempt to remove all outside pressures. Art for arts sake maybe, but truly art for the people rather than the cult, he was not concerned of whether his wealthy patrons would purchase the bicycle wheel and more so of the perception and theory it presented. The art though is not art without the viewer, Duchamp was more than aware of this fact, and as Benjamin noted, he and the Dadaists wanted to outrage the public and make them question the entire notion of art – that was part of the art, the act brought forth from the viewer. Duchamp also had a curious interest and brilliance in the act of reproduction, this culminated in the Readymade works – mass produced objects elevated to the status of art – he even went so far and to create reproductions of the Readymade, essentially a reproduction of a reproduction. The brilliance in this was that the act of the reproduction was part of the art and was added on to the art of the viewers reaction.

Being in this new digital age, the capabilities of art have expanded exponentially and great controversy is still in our midst. The question of reproduction and the dilution of the aura of a work of art is only more relevant than ever before. As the act of re-appropriation and remix art becomes ever more prevalent, our understanding is only further thrown under the bus. It is without question though that reproduction, duplication, and the cut/copy method are very much a part of the artists tools; ethically though where is the line? That may already be know, for it was Marcel Duchamp who used a postcard of the Mona Lisa with added facial hair as a work of art.