Art and Technology
I apologize if this post doesn't get up for a while....stupid Blogger sent my blog back to July 7th, and isn't playing nice.
Wired has an article out this morning stating that new digital media isn't art. The author, one Tony Long, makes the point that his darkroom had more character and creativity involved than computers, and that today's world of graphic art lacks the artistic element "real" analog photography provided. To get specific, he says that people using digital cameras, storing tons of pictures on their ram sticks and editing these in photoshop to throw up on Flickr or Picassa, simply aren't artists the way he was in his darkroom.
Firstly, this is a bad argument - he'd been more justified to lament the casual photographer who shoots using a disposable camera and has the film developed by Wal-Mart. But regardless of his misleading circumstance, Long is attempting to make the case that Digital Art isn't art simply because it's digital - it requires analog tools and hours of frustration to make art, and the ease provided by today's technology destroys that process.
Secondly, this is absolute garbage. It mirrors a conversation J. Morgan and I have had a number of times, where he wonders whether crafts like art or medicine or war were more pure before technology made them so easy, and I feverntly disagree. Here's why:
Raphael, DaVinci, or any master of the pre-modern age might have said the same thing about the invention of photography - that real painting took more work, more struggle, had more personality, etc., than lugging around a bunch of metal and glass plates and trying to get people to stand perfectly still, not to mention the fact that painters had color. And don't forget how Socrates lamented the invention of books and accessibility of writing, feeling that reading was a useless advancement that would promote ignorance while old-fashioned memorization was clearly the superior route to knowledge.
New, mobile, efficient technology, be it books or photographs or wikipedia, always seems to have less personality than the old medium, especially to those intimately acquainted with it, precisely because "personality" is an experience created over long hours of struggle. What Long really misses isn't so much the process of developing a photo itself as the work and self-discovery that went along with perfecting his craft. This isn't contained or constrained by your medium.
Philosophers across the ages have tried diligently to define what art is. Princeton calls it " the creation of beautiful or significant things," and that's good enough for me. What analog artists miss in the digital era isn't art - it's validation for the effort and suffering that their art cost them. It's a feeling that your efforts were wasted, or made less significant by the advances of young cyber punks and their fancy computing machines. But that's not art - at best it's nostalgia; at worst it's pure jealousy.
I wonder if Tony Long has ever tried using Photoshop to paint a digital master piece.
I certainly have, and I'm here to tell you it's ridiculously hard. I've always had a small degree of artistic talent - on a scale of 1-10, I'm maybe a 6.5. I've sat in front of my computer for hours with photoshop or fireworks or illustrator open trying to design a great website, do a great flash mock up, and my results are decent but not great - the program simply won't create art for me. It still takes a great artistic mind and the innate creativity art has always required to produce really beautiful things. If anything, technology like this seems to make art MORE pure - the artist is free from the technical difficulties of finding and mixing paints or playing chemist in his darkroom, and the only struggle left to wrestle with is the most important one: that of translating vision or inspiration into a communicable form, be it physical, digital, auditory, etc.
Technology, be it digital or analog, does not have the innate ability to create or destroy anything - it's the way we use our tools that have always defined the value of our products. Stephen Wolfram is not any less of a mathematical genius than Sir Isaac Newton, nor is Stephen Hawking so different from Albert Einstein nor Stephen J. Gould much less than Darwin. There's nothing wrong with whimsically looking back to simpler times and reveling in the memories of your analog tools - just don't mistake your own experience for the truth about the digital age, and certainly don't assume every tourist with a digital camera thinks of themself as an artist any more than your Mom did with her $5 disposable.
posted by RJ @ 10:21 AM
10 comments
10 Comments:
Your mom has a five dollar disposable. Anyway, I totally agree, great post.
so...I guess this means my blog's back, eh? J. Morgan and I have been having a fairly awesome discussion in email about this. I emailed it to him because I couldn't wait until my blog possibly came back to hear his thoughts - I'll leave it to him to summarize them here if he likes, or if not, we'll see if anyone else has any opinions to voice. Anyone?
At first blush, I'd say I have to agree with you. I think the way your articulated your opinion makes a lot of sense. I especially like this quote: "What Long really misses isn't so much the process of developing a photo itself as the work and self-discovery that went along with perfecting his craft. This isn't contained or constrained by your medium."
Of course, it might just be that I'm biased by my occupation and hobby. I do, after all, have a glaringly large flickr badge on my site and I do Photoshop my images. But it's no less important for me to understand proper composition, digital cameras notwithstanding, you still have to know a thing or two about aperatures and shutter speeds to really get good images because some things just can't be made right after the fact.
This is about the democratization of art. The camera was one step, the digital camera and development software are the next. And yes, random people will "mistakenly" take beautiful shots, but an artist who has honed his craft and perfected his style, who has a message to promote or an ideal to pursue? He's not going away. He may have to vie with more images, but there are also more eyes trained on images than ever before because of the democratization of delivery in the internet.
I went to a convention earlier this year about PhotoShop, and there were a lot of photographers there, so I sat through more than one session more geared toward them than toward my marketing angle. One presenter talked about painting/cloning/healing tools that make it easier to remove unwanted objects from your image. He pointed out that in one case, it made him able to put cows in a field in exactly the right configuration for his vision. Ansel Adams would have had an assistant out goading cattle into position, but all he had to click a few times to make his ideal composition. He had more time to spend with his kids that day, and no bovines were irritated in the making of that image. I'm not sure that's all bad.
Good one.
I enjoy painting because I'm no good with digital art....I'm quite impressed with people who are.
That painting you posted is amazing.
"What analog artists miss in the digital era isn't art - it's validation for the effort and suffering that their art cost them. It's a feeling that your efforts were wasted, or made less significant by the advances of young cyber punks and their fancy computing machines. But that's not art - at best it's nostalgia; at worst it's pure jealousy."
I have a couple points at which I disagree with you, but perhaps this is the most critical. It seems to me that you are viewing art as the product and not the process. I don't think those two things are separable. If art is about beauty, it is at least as much about meaning also. In my mind, the product reflects not just the result of a process (in the material sense), but the moral and personal commitments inherent in that process (I will try to explain that better later on). Art doesn't just happen; it is created with intentionality.
Correct me if you are wrong, but I think you would separate the process and the product. If Leonardo's Last Supper were created using PhotoShop, it wouldn't substantially alter the quality of the work for you. For me, on the other hand, it would qualitatively change the nature of the object. It isn't that digital art is less beautiful, it is just that, because the process by which the art was created is different, so is the nature of the work itself.
"It still takes a great artistic mind and the innate creativity art has always required to produce really beautiful things. If anything, technology like this seems to make art MORE pure - the artist is free from the technical difficulties of finding and mixing paints or playing chemist in his darkroom, and the only struggle left to wrestle with is the most important one: that of translating vision or inspiration into a communicable form, be it physical, digital, auditory, etc."
I actually think that at once it takes a greater artist to create important, meaningful art than it once did and a far lesser artist to create art in general. My sense is that technology has greatly democratized artistic creation. In so doing, more people than ever are creating products of art, but fewer people are being artists. (I will try to explain that better later.)
The idea of "pure art" is behind what I am saying. By eliminating the obstacles to creating pieces of art – thereby making the end more accessible – more people have access to that end. I think that cheapens the end – not just because there is now more of it, but also because it requires less sacrifice, work, and thought to achieve it. I think pure art is worthless art; art that is embedded in and reflective of the thoughts, morals, goals, ambitious, labors, training, and time of the artist is what I consider valuable. In painting, for instance, some of the most powerful, moving, and thoughtful art ever created is non-objective (i.e. the painting is not portraying any object or subject matter), thereby only reflect the artist and his/her labor. The beauty there is in the means, not the end exclusively.
"Technology, be it digital or analog, does not have the innate ability to create or destroy anything - it's the way we use our tools that have always defined the value of our products."
I disagree with that in the strongest terms. Technology, like art, doesn't just happen. It isn't inevitable. It isn't "natural." It isn't "the way things are." Somebody creates it with specific ends in mind, with goals, and purpose. Technological product is dilliberate and doesn't have to happen the way it did (if at all).
Because humans are unavoidably moral (i.e. meaning-making) animals, their products are reflective of - and themselves further - moral commitments. In that way, objects or techniques themselves have a moral character. They are imbued with moral assumptions and are only adopted by others after the others are first convinced of the value of the moral assumptions inherent in the tool.
It isn't just how we use tools that matter; it is the character, function, and purpose of tools themselves that matter.
"Stephen Wolfram is not any less of a mathematical genius than Sir Isaac Newton, nor is Stephen Hawking so different from Albert Einstein nor Stephen J. Gould much less than Darwin."
It isn't that Wolfram is less of a genius than Newton, it is that Wolfram's work is less significant. By significant, I do not mean useful, important, or revealing, I simply mean significant. Because the process is reflected in and inextricably part of the product, how something came about matters a great deal. As it becomes simpler to do work by the aid of tools that externalize or formalize that work, something is lost. I agree that photography is a decline from painting and that reading is a decline from memorization. I want to be honest about that.
Photoshop isn't primarily geared towards creating art from scratch, but rather modify existing digital images in one or more ways. That can be really useful for functional applications (web design, family photos, Sorbofication, etc.), but not artistic in the meaning-filled, expressive sense of it all. The problem comes in when creators use the tools of Photoshop as shortcut to Ansel Adams.
Adams built his own cameras – at great personal expense - that he focused by millimeter with fine-thread screws. He would wait hours to take one shot until the lighting was exactly right. He took weeks to properly develop photos to get his blacks the precise shade he wanted. That process – the waiting, the fine-tuning, etc. – is as much a part of the aesthetic of the prints as the subject matter. Adjusting slider bars on B&W filters renders that whole artistic process non-artistic and purely functional; a step that should be avoided if at all possible for the sake of efficiently getting to the end, which is a nice-looking image. By formalizing, standardizing, and mechanizing processes, it reduces the arenas in which artistic vision and ability come into play. You still have to have a good eye, but you don't have to be able to develop negatives.
I guess I think that tools (and every product of human beings) have a moral character to them. Because those tools came about through intentional efforts, those tools themselves are reflective of certain moral commitments. In using one set of tools over another, you are implicitly or explicitly making a moral judgment.
For instances, typewriters replaced handwriting because a certain set of values held by a certain set of people compelled them to be dissatisfied with handwriting and to create of a new means of drafting letters. Those values include something like uniformity, legibility, efficiency, thrift, reproducibility, etc. They chose those values over the values inherent in handwriting (intimacy, aesthetics, expense, time commitment, uniqueness, etc.). The typewriter's invention and adoption weren't accidental or inevitable; they reflect a whole set of moral judgments about the right and true goal of written communication; the right priorities; the best way of accomplishing something; and what exactly it is that is to be accomplished. So now, any time I use a typewriter to draft a letter rather than handwriting it, I am implicitly or explicitly adopting and further those value judgments and the letter that is produced is the actualization of those principles. It literally is that set of values as much as it is a product of a human being.
In that way, the means of achieving some end is vitally important and determines the nature of the piece produced. Tools, in my mind, aren't just a way of achieving ends, but are ways of reflecting what is important to us as we go about achieving ends. I tie the values in pieces of art (the "thoughts, morals, goals, ambitious, labors, training, and time of the artist" business) to the methods and means used in producing it. By using oil on poplar as opposed to Photoshop, you are necessarily reflecting a different set of thoughts morals, etc. and the product contains those qualities.
Leonardo hand-ground colored glass and mixed it was paint to create "light" on the wood. This process ruined his lungs, cut his hands, and was extremely expensive and time-consuming. Paint was not readily available and was inestimably expensive. Something like Mona Lisa would have been a monumental undertaking. The means used to achieve that work of art are that work of art. Insofar as that art reflects the thoughts and morals of Leonardo, it does so by means of his methods and the meanings inherent in those methods.
Nice - you said "correct me if you are wrong" again. I love it.
Well, what about this? I, as the photoshop user and programmer, took this ansel adams photograph, or a photograph of my family, or whatever, and I painstakingly spent hours writing my own filter algorithms to warp, distort, change in the image in exactly the way I wanted so that it reflects my artistic idea. I get into the hexcode of the colors and tweak them one byte at a time, fine tuning the perfect colors far beyond the level of granularity offerred by the color pallette or sliders. I then publish my picture on a virtual gallery, and spend a week viewing it in every available browser on every available system to and then write even more time consuming, possibly months or years, algorithms in javascript to properly tweak my colors and contrasts depending on your system so that you the viewer see the picture exactly the way I produced it. Now is my digital art more artistic?
"I like your definition of pure art, but I think I tie the values in pieces of art (the "thoughts, morals, goals, ambitious, labors, training, and time of the artist" business) to the methods and means used in producing it. By using oil on poplar as opposed to Photoshop, you are necessarily reflecting a different set of thoughts morals, etc. and the product contains those qualities. So, I think that is where I disagree with you."
I'm going to bring the postmodern razor to your statement now, and let's see what we're left with. Who defines the values in my art? Who defines the morality inherent in my medium? Maybe I carve woodcarvings on Brazilian redwood not because it's harder or rarer but because it's more expensive and I want to flaunt my affluence. Does that make my art less artistic? Whose morals define good and bad art? Why are you the viewer given the right to place your moral value judgements on my art? Let's take the bottle cap thing for example: in the circumstance you described, the bottle cap is used to show that common refuse, things normally considered garbage, can be made artistic when properly combined with artistic vision and molded into form. This is a denegration of art, in your opinion, since it uses trash rather than something more valuable. Now let's change the situation in which the piece was produced: let's say it comes from tiajuana mexico, and that the artist has painstakingly spent 15 years of his life collecting bottle caps of the perfect size, shape, color and metal for his sculpture. Let's say he's cut his hands modling them, wasted countless hours digging through trash for them, hurt his eyes working in the terrible lighting conditions, and that he was using bottle caps because it's the only beautiful thing he's ever seen living in his trash dump of an environment. Now does the art become more artistic?
If so, do we need to start issuing small books and stories documenting the creative process behind our art in order to justify them as art? This seems to say that all pieces are not inherently art or not-art to the perceiver until given a context that's meaningful to the observer - that art is in the eye of the beholder, as the process and medium and form speaks to the beholder.
I guess what I'm trying to highlight through all of this is that this "creative process" is hard to be objectively or absolutely part of the art for anyone other than the artist himself. For Leonardo, I can understand that it would have been immensly fulfilling to see his final creation after all of the striving, and while it definitely enhances the art for me to understand that, I don't think Leonardo himself would be justified in saying that this makes his medium superior to mine, or that this makes the mona lisa better as a production than the art I create in photoshop - and that's what I think Tony Long was saying. If the article said, "artists today are selling themselves short on artistic experience and the process of art by using methods with no character", I might agree with him, but instead he said "the medium of photography is better since it takes more work than digital art."
Art, as viewed by the outsider, the observer, is completely devoid of the experience unless the artist takes extra pains to somehow convey it, and none often do. By that, I think it's fair to say that to some extent, making a work of art is about artistic vision and the way it's conveyed, and that is a thing completely separate from how it's produced. So I think we have to admit that art is only art to some people, that art is subjectively restricted to those who understand the process, that art isn't art unless the right person is looking at it, or that art and the process involved in making art are two different things. Thoughts?
"Well, what about this? I, as the photoshop user and programmer, took this ansel adams photograph, or a photograph of my family, or whatever, and I painstakingly spent hours writing my own filter algorithms to warp, distort, change in the image in exactly the way I wanted so that it reflects my artistic idea. I get into the hexcode of the colors and tweak them one byte at a time, fine tuning the perfect colors far beyond the level of granularity offerred by the color pallette or sliders. I then publish my picture on a virtual gallery, and spend a week viewing it in every available browser on every available system to and then write even more time consuming, possibly months or years, algorithms in javascript to properly tweak my colors and contrasts depending on your system so that you the viewer see the picture exactly the way I produced it. Now is my digital art more artistic?"
I think so. More dimensions of what is being represented are variables that depend on your vision, labor, and ability. I think that a work is more revealing about the artist when he/she removes "controls" and allows the outcome to rely on himself/herself.
Now, I don't think that everyone who wants to use Photoshop to be expressive or to make something beautiful has to go to such great lengths to do so; I just think that the ease – and I say that with full awareness that this stuff isn't easy at all – of Photoshop makes space for imposter art. It allows more people access to creation. It tears down structural impediments. [I generally think that democratization is a bad thing (not to be confused with democracy, a type of government, which I think is great) and I feel I should be honest about that.]
Mom with a $5 disposable is being a purely functional documenter, not an artist. Johnny with a PowerMac and Photoshop often thinks of himself as an artist and thinks that what he does is equitable with what others have done. It is possible that Johnny's work is equitable, my sense is that it usually isn't because it relies so heavily externalized mechanisms.
Running from Marathon to Athens is more human and more revealing of the qualities we admire about humans than driving the same distance. If we are just looking at the ends (traveling 26 miles efficiently), then it makes no difference how we got there. If, on the other hand, the accomplishment and the value of it is wrapped up in the means of achieving it, then we can admire the runner much more.
"Who defines the values in my art? Who defines the morality inherent in my medium? Maybe I carve woodcarvings on Brazilian redwood not because it's harder or rarer but because it's more expensive and I want to flaunt my affluence. Does that make my art less artistic? Whose morals define good and bad art? Why are you the viewer given the right to place your moral value judgements on my art?"
This is a really tough question for me to know how to answer. As for the first two parts, I think this is why we need to go top-down when considering these things. How I – the end-user – understands or uses a tool is fairly irrelevant; how the producer came about creating it and what the motivation was for that production, etc. becomes much more important (I think I made the same argument about iPods a few weeks ago). I just don't think that you and I set the rules, so what we think about what we are doing is somewhat irrelevant.
As for the second part of the question, I think that simply because no two people can agree on artistic quality doesn't mean that everyone doesn't use a roughly equivalent metric for judging art. I think that metric is moral (i.e. art that reflects the most important qualities tends to be valued the highest), even though the content can vary greatly. So, I think that valuing and creating art is inextricably moral. That is why people get so upset about "Piss Christ" or pay $100 million for a Klimt.
"If so, do we need to start issuing small books and stories documenting the creative process behind our art in order to justify them as art? This seems to say that all pieces are not inherently art or not-art to the perceiver until given a context that's meaningful to the observer - that art is in the eye of the beholder, as the process and medium and form speaks to the beholder."
Well, I think that, often, the piece of art itself is that story. I mean, getting up very close to a Van Gogh, for instance, allows you to see each brush stroke, the depth of paint, the number of layers, the relative force of each stroke, the variety of colors, etc. With a somewhat basic knowledge of Van Gogh's life and a basic knowledge about France at the end of the 19th century, I think most observers could tell that story from the painting. A painting is incredibly revealing information about a painter. Your incredibly complex Photoshop creation is less revealing about you as an artist (except to the very well trained). I think that, in that sense, the medium of painting is far more intimate (and perhaps artistic) than the medium of Photoshop, but I could be wrong.
I think we're really making some progress here. I completely agree that painting, as a medium, is more intimate, and that the way we do things changes their valuation and the amount of admiration we have for the person doing the work. The point I wanted to make in this post is that digital art can still be art, and can be as good as standard media, and I think we've agreed on that.
But to continue with your thoughts: Photoshop artists perhaps do have to work a little harder to convey meaning to artists used to looking at brush strokes, but how many people really are? Doesn't photography suffer from those same restrictions? A really good photography is now indistinguishable from a good photoshop image. I'll admit that photoshopping might be easier, and thus provide for less fulfillment and meaning in the process, but how does this in any way degrade from the experience of the observer who can't tell the difference?
I contend that it doesn't. Photography is certainly important, and there's an art behind the art that's created that isn't the same as sitting down and working at a computer. But this doesn't make the art digital artist create any less interesting, meaningful and relevant to we-the-outsiders.
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