Techgnology and the Arts - The Current DA Poll

Contribution to the DA Poll Question Discussion and Debate currently raging underneath:  How has Technology affected the Arts?


The digital canvas phenomenon is a good example of how new digital tech possibilities can instantly excite the new school avant-gardists and simultaneously horrify the old school art world traditionalists, two tribes of peoples of different artistic temperaments.  To the traditionalists it’s just crass graffiti created by no-talent wannabes. To the more modernists it’s the revolutionary liberation of arts for the masses.  Why should not being able to draw keep one from being an artist?  The answer is that both views are correct.  I hold equally dear the first sketches of a future great artist here on DA as I would his or her current masterpieces.  Art is at once the moment but also the continuing narrative stretching from our ancient past into our (hopefully) endless future.  Is photography legit art? That’s a battle still being fought in some circles.  By extension, are movies really art?  Why is acting on stage legit, but not necessarily anything on film?  Silent movies were very basic, simply haikus, compared with “Avatar”.   Art is simply objects or colors or words or sounds moved around in combinations that communicate something between the creator of any particular scramble of stuff and someone observing and having a reaction to the stuff-scramble that’s been created.  So, no, I don’t foresee any immediate great works of art from Aunt Minnie moving graphics around to create a holiday flimp for her nieces and nephews.  New art forms just need time and the emergence of real artists.  More choice, not less, for the masses is a good thing.  But so is brutal but fair criticism all along the way.


As to the new digital identity:  Increasingly, for the last several decades, the quality of a writer’s prose, the worth of his insights, having become less important than the publisher’s ad campaign and the creation of a commercial public persona for the author. In the uber-commodified world, the artist has had to become as much a separate product as his or her art in order for the art to be read, heard, seen, experienced. Many great artists who insisted on anonymity to create their works would never get their work viewed or read today.  The new digital identity does not necessarily mean that artists can now once again hide to create “pure” undiluted art.  Far from it.  The digital revolution provides CHOICE.  Now, either self-promotion or anonymity can become tools for artists, according to their particular needs, not the demands of the public or the publishing/media sales machine.  So now the artist can be a Thomas Pynchon recluse or an Andy Warhol media “player” or anything in between. A digital identity can be created that rids all communication of the irrelevant static and distractions concerning an artist (What’s your favorite color?)(as with Pynchon) OR a digital identity can be created in which the artist’s persona becomes the actual art itself to be played with and manipulated (as with Warhol or Lady Gaga).  Or somewhere in the middle like Bansky.  I just hope not too many artists will go the route of the performance artist Tyler Durden.


As to the “marriage of artist & technology”: With every evolution of human technology there is once again the 0/1, yin/yang, either/or push and pull that is the essence of the human condition.  What is to be gained?  But what is then lost?  I would prefer that people not fight over what is inevitable anyway (the digitization of art and culture – and life itself hurtling wildly towards Ray Kurzweil’s version of a Singularity) but instead try to guide the inevitable process itself in an always positive direction.  So yes, while I do believe we will all be wearing one of Gary Shteyngart’s Apparats very shortly and that might not be such a good thing, it is also clear that technology is why humans are not animals, which is for sure a good thing.  It is why we are sentient and speak across continents on the Internet.  But it is only a tool, useful as a stone arrowhead in providing food, destructive as a stone arrowhead used in killing another human.  So I would steer both camps, the enthusiasts and the detractors, from either decrying the coming of a soulless machine age or rhapsodizing too much over the Internet being the portal to nirvana. Both destinations are as elusive and tangible as Shell Beach.  I would emphasize that the choices we are currently making can create either of those realities.  I believe art will lead the way no matter the course taken. I also believe that artists across many professions will be in the vanguard of those making the further great discoveries about human revelation.  The artistic heart will always be an essential guide as mortals voyage into the metaphysical realms that will open up as a result of further iterations of nanotechnology and quantum physics uncovering more and more the basic building blocks of material human life. The future will spread out before us as a myriad of possible dimensions and parallels, rather than become narrowed to the scenario of some long awaited mystical apocalyptic event.   Those who would journey into the digital tech future should be ready to re-discover and re-examine some old questions about the very nature of existence, just as the old-school anti-tech levelers need to stop perceiving all tech advances as distractions from the Big Questions.  We can have both Call Of Duty Black Ops and the search for the God Particle.  I have to believe that at least one of the scientists at Cern has Prestiged at least once.  Once again: more choices from new tools.  Humanity thrives on diversity and discovery.  Artists and the arts will always be the essential no matter the technology.


In front of commercial establishment near my safe haven there are four columns upon which digital installations provide for a constant artful falling of lovely digital leaves.  Eye-catching, but still, a bit mundane.  But something happened.  One of the columns is currently malfunctioning.  Instead of the falling leaves, the column is burning in a digital fire of random dots of mismatched but vibrant colors. It's a most beautiful mosaic of electronic chaos.  I can't walk by without stopping to enjoy the unintentional tonal collisions.  I think that's why I love deviantArt.  Because there's two kinds of people in the world,  Those who can appreciate the artistry of the phantom hand of chaos which authored the random madness (as a protest?) on the boringly commercial digital column ... and those who just see a broken object.  DeviantArt people understand that art is in the perceiving.  The other type person waits to be told by some authority whether something is art or not. If a person cannot recognize and appreciate the beauty in the brilliant collision of art, humanity and technology happening here everyday on deviantArt, then going through life "blind" is the least of their problems.