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= Share your thoughts and throw a discussion about your critical thought issues. =

What is digital arts?

For me digital arts is the language that connects us in all enviroments; from the known world to the screen. The medium we make use of in order to present and interact our artifacts. The collaboration between individuals from all backgrounds. The space where we get our ideas working.

Maria

MA FORUM 2005

= Product, process... =

Hi. I wanted to talk about the process and the product, because I think that this is probably the strongest connection between Digital Art and Drawing. Last year, when the Drawing MA students presented their work there was a strong feeling amongst most (if not all) of the students that Art is more than just a framed image that gets exhibited on a white wall somewhere. The process of making the image is far more significant than the the image itself. Picasso was asked on a TV programme, once, whether he thought that it was in fact a rip off that he could draw a few lines on a piece of paper in 30 seconds and yet it could sell for the tens of thousands of pounds. Picasso replied, //"But it took me 60 years to be able to produce those lines!"// He clearly was referring to the continual practice and discipline of drawing. The process was being referenced by the product. On the other hand, Garrison Frost writes on www.picklebird.com (Tue 18 October 2005) //'beware of any art exhibit presented under the banner of "Art and Healing."'// He goes on to to say that in Art & healing //"art is merely a by-product. The process of making the art is much more important to the narrative. What was the artist feeling when he or she made the art? How does the art reflect the struggle? That's very different from viewing the art on its own aesthetic terms. One could say that this is journalism, not art."// Marshall McLuhan said //"the Medium is the message"// and I see this as very much saying that the process can no longer be divorced from the product that comes out of it. It is particularly interesting to Digital Artists that although most artists use computers in some way to create their art products, that very few would actually call themselves Digital Artists. I think the reason for this, is to do with the mindset of the artist. There are significant issues that a Digital Artist is concerned about and these need to be reflected in the process of creating the art pieces. That is if indeed they create a 'piece' at all! - perhaps 'performance' is actually a better word for it? In Drawing, then, how much emphasis is placed on the 'performance' of the artists's hand would you say? --Jem (Please make comments and submit stuff either to me (email above) or to this wiki)

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I think an issue where art, and particularly digital art, is open to criticism is the language used by artists and critics to describe and define the work. Terms like natural, spatial, rhythm, narrative, conventional movement, etc that are borrowed from other disciplines have been used to back up political or subjective stances. These terms have sometimes confused a central theme of art expressing the human condition. Art has also been hijacked by the media and critiqued in much the same way as visual communications or graphic design.

Should art be mass-consumed; and does this lessen it's value? As you say above Jem the process of art is a journey, with some paths never been resolved and many dead ends been met. With a huge blurring between analogue and digital artists in mixed or hybrid works, art has out-grown the log-held traditional definitions.

The MA course has introduced me to practise based research. The journey and not the goal, or final work/artefact, is what is important. Having space to grow as an artist is vital, without the need to always produce something. It's difficult to define what are is but I know what it 'means' to me, and the feeling I get when I work on a new piece. Maybe it's the emotional or physical bond that is important.

The issue of how digital artist value their own work is interesting. Is low-res/low-tech art also seen as low value? I am looking at a similar theme in my research paper - Is digital art of value to society? The computer potentially makes everyone a digital artist, and maybe this devalues the work of artists when the consumer can also create what they see as digital art.

Colin

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This line of thought is quite interesting the process and the product. The word process is defined as a series of actions, changes, or functions bringing about a result, I liken this to my MA research, while product is defined as what I get at the end of the research. When I started off with this MA digital course it was more about the end product and not the process which to a large extent limited my movement in discovering anything new, my approach should have been more of an exploration than anything else (taking a step of faith into the unknown). As Colin mentioned more focus should be on the journey and not the goal, or final work/artefact which is why at the beginning I found myself going of the rail but thanks to Andy and Maria for putting me right.

Art is a part of our every day life and there are various ways of representing our experiences as we go.

As Digital Artists we present our inner thoughts through the digital medium, as Antonio the Merchant of Venice in one of Shakespeare’s works will have us understand that ‘life is like a stage were we are given a part to play‘ and our part is the digital. Ever since man existed he has always been able to represent himself in one artistic form or the other right from the time of the Cave paintings (which composed of various minerals ground into powders and mixed with animal fat, egg whites, plant juices, fish glue, or even blood and applied with brushes made of twigs and reeds, or blown on) and since then man has discovered different ways of representing art and the door is still open.

Victor

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The exploration of research based practice is a main reason why I have come to do an MA. I’m sure that this is similar across all disciplines at Camberwell. I come from the world of music and sound art where there is a strong desire for the artifact, as the performance or experience of sound is temporal. This raises questions of what you can sell as an artist.

There is an exhibition of new video work by Isaac Julien at the Victoria Miro Gallery in London at the moment. Two separate 3 screen video works with very high production values, shot on film in extreme locations with a strong well designed soundtrack. The works are very much enhanced by the experience of the dark room, giant screens and spatial sounds. Downstairs in the gallery, large format prints of stills from the films are for sale, like souvenirs. They are disconnected from the film, yet have the feeling of the experience embedded within them.

I have a CD that I made (with Naoko Matsumoto) where the packaging was especially designed to work in both English and Japanese, like the music. We attempted to make the artifact represent the totality of our performances.



Phoebe

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How I suggested this morning i would like collaborate in this section too.My proposed will be show a piece I did that very relationated with this point. Basically I speak about a visibility function towards the audience on the subject of the domestic violence. For it the intervention of the user is necessary crossing the points as a game.I think it's a work very related to which we treated, therefore relevant.This is the url if u want check it http://2-red.net/nopasatiempo/

Cristina

= **Authorship, Collaboration and Licensing** =




 * Issues surrounding authorship and the Creative Commons**


 * No idea is origional. We have always and will always base all of our understandings of the world somewhat on the influences of others. Unless you believe that nature reigns supreme over nurture then you will probably agree. Collaboration will be inherant in all work we do no matter whether we choose to or not.**


 * But if we do share our ideas we facilitate a mutual growth. A division of labour that selects the greatest skills or ideas from each other. It is the basis for all relationships, a particular human touch. Two (or millions of) minds think better than one. And the results may be surprising. Like the variation that occurs during mieosis.**


 * Knowledge is, but should not be, a commodity. Medicine treatments are patented and then sold to countries that can't afford them. The question here is what is the necessity to solely own knowledge? Credit, revenue, individuality. In the art world if we share our work or collaborate then we will advance in the goals that we strive for. Uniqueness may be at stake but this is arguable. Ideas may be shared but the way inwhich each individual artist treats their subject is always unique.**


 * With the development of new media we can collaborate with people all over the world in real time. Strangers who share a similar interest or people you have worked with for years that live in another country. What a digital artist shares when they share their work is just a bunch of 1s and 0s. Solely information. No object.**


 * Society is becoming more polarised. There are those who are entertaining and those who are entertained. More people involve themselves as there is an equal inflation in observation.**


 * Collaborations have the potential to produce more revolutionary, more accessible and more robust ideas.**


 * And in no way do I take sole authorship for this piece.**


 * Peter Forde**


 * This is to be changed by anyone and the debate will be open to the floor as much as possable.**

= Creative Commons =

A new range of licenses are available to artists with which to share and protect work.

Original copyright law aimed at balance by rewarding and protecting innovation against exploitation. The world has changed a great deal since the early 18th century, and never has the need for a radical shake-up of those old laws been greater than in the era of the World Wide Web.

Creative commons licenses are a flexible range of free licenses that enable the creator of an original piece of work to share that work with others but maintain whichever rights they choose.

For example, if I were to take a photograph and publish it to the world wide web, using a Creative commons license I could allow other people to make copies of it, but not to profit from it as long as they attribute the work to me. Or I could allow other people to make derivative works from my original and profit from it.

They are applicable to material art works as well as digital art, and promote grass roots creativity where-ever they go! Paul

Authorship in online world

In a offline world, we think of an authored environment as fixed and not open to the variation. The online creation is an unathored world because you can not own something in the online world. The digital codes constructing the existence of a creation are so flu and easy to reconstruct and reconstruct. The problem is that that there are two worlds connecting as offline and online consequently you can make profit from online anarchic and communal production system for the offline world. You can change image size or minimaze the quality of your work for preventing this or for possessing the creation that you gave birth even if you know that there is not a work especially originated from only by ourselves because in every work there is the factor of inspiration. But basically, there is not clear security in online world for this however the offline world with its charnal codes allows possession system. If we make reference to T.S. Elliot in his essay of Tradition and the Individual Talent, we can say that the existing monuments, offline world, form an ideal order among themselves as the posssesion system and capitalist logic, which is modified by the introduction of the new work of art among them. The existing order is complete before the new work arrives, for order to persist after the supervention of novelty, the whoile existing order must be, if ever so slightly altered, and so the relations, proportions, values of each work of art toward the whole are readjusted and this is the conformity between the old and the new. So The medium is the Message.

Balca Arda

O

okay maybe this is not really something to do with subject 3 but i will chuck it in anyway.

here are some thoughts...

== //**Then entered the computers, webcams, digital cameras, mobile phones to our life; the intelligent gadgets has been invented, that transmitted the information accurately, efficiently comfortably, conveniently and faster than ever. Not even a century, in just few decades, it has been dramatically changed, upgraded, developed and supplied with various applications to make our life easier. Of course quickly it has been acknowledged and accepted in the world of art or so I hope, even though the potentials and limits that might exist are not yet fully discovered. Art in cyber space; an environment which is still blurry makes the whole process of producing a piece of art exciting. It is undeniable that digital environment gives the opportunity to create something that has not been done before, something completely original.**// ==

== //**The finished work is not the only fascinating part of the digital world. The process of learning and making is as magnificent. For an instance the documenting of the piece as we work on it now became much easier. We can multiply and manipulate our work; we can turn back to its beginning and give it an entire different direction. Of course last but not least we can “UNDO” it. The significance of being able to travel in time is only unique to the Digital World; I strongly believe that it has to be stressed in the presentation of our involvement in this subject. Not only it helps us to learn and re visit the history of our work but it expands the meaning of research and practice if not gives anew.**// ==

//**UNDO!!!!!!!!!!!!!! UNDO!!!!!**//
Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction:

After all, what is Digital art, but art that is made using a machine as a tool to construct the ‘work of art’

If we refer back to Plato’s tale of the cave, the object was an ideal which existed only in the ‘ether’ and any object that was created / made in the real world, was only a pale imitation of the ideal. Therefore the maker of the object e.g. the carpenter who made the table was held in higher esteem as an artist who painted a representation of the table was only copying a copy. Where is the authorship here if a work of art is a re-presentation of something else?

I am quite convinced by the argument that “there is no such thing as an unmediated representation of reality”.

But, perhaps not all ‘art’ is a re-presentation of objects in the real world?

Digital art is produced by manipulating a machine. The machine operates by means of a series of coded instructions. These instructions are based on binaries: zeros and ones. These instructions are based on mathematical information which remains constant, finite, immutable and ultimately terminally definable. They are also infinitely reproducible without the possibility of change or decay.

This does not detract from the contribution of the ‘author’ as the code must have some point of origin and causation.

In a sense there are several authors in this scenario.

There is the person who constructs the machine [hardware]

There is the person who composes the code or its variations [software]

There is the person who applies / exploits the code to achieve a ‘work of art’.

At what point can we assign ‘ownership’ ?

Where is the artist located in this series of creations? Or, in Walter Bejamin’s phrase, where is the ‘aura’ of the artist? Does it exist in the ‘eye of the beholder?’

Janet