It's possible to combine the two as well,I kind of live in both worlds right now,but painting already was VR.I think the direction will be works of art that are artificially intelligent.I am working on some algorithms that generate harmonic color combinations-I'm a big fan of a-life,but I also like deKooning,his work is just spectacular in person,reproductions of it don't capture it at all,mostly because of the chromatic vibrations-very intense.
I see people saying things like what Stimuli is, and I wonder how many times the same argument has been made. I am, primarily, a digital artist myself. Even though I'm much more adept as a designer than I am as a painter or a sculptor, I regard my work in those areas with at least as much regard as I do graphic design. There is a quality (if the art is any good) that you see in applied arts that's what makes it fine art. You can se not only the finished piece, but the artist's process - his brushstrokes, the nuances and small imperfections in their photography and printing, their fingerprints and cut lines in a sculpture. In a sense, digitally created art is "too perfect." It loses its personality in the sense that you could print 10,000 more exactly like it, and you wouldn't lose a single thing.
Actually digital art is amenable to the same physical sense,the imperfections,but not through brushstrokes but through phenomena such as pixelation and interference effects i.e. through digital artifacts etc.The matrix a digital artwork is presented on makes a large difference as well,there are some color field work I did that only work on a Macintosh CRT display,they look like crap on anything else.Electronic art has a timbre that other art doesn't have,it has a very beautiful glow,intense but different than an oil painting,it's unfortunate that there aren't any eight foot monitors.Information theory shows radically that thought is physical,that physics is thought;a distinction between virtual and physical is nonsensical.
[quote] I see people saying things like what Stimuli is, and I wonder how many times the same argument has been made. I am, primarily, a digital artist myself. Even though I'm much more adept as a designer than I am as a painter or a sculptor, I regard my work in those areas with at least as much regard as I do graphic design. There is a quality (if the art is any good) that you see in applied arts that's what makes it fine art. You can se not only the finished piece, but the artist's process - his brushstrokes, the nuances and small imperfections in their photography and printing, their fingerprints and cut lines in a sculpture. In a sense, digitally created art is "too perfect." It loses its personality in the sense that you could print 10,000 more exactly like it, and you wouldn't lose a single thing. <hr></blockquote>
This is not inherent to digital media.
Early (pre-1989) electronic music/art/whatever, for the most part, was a lot like early computer animation; flat, 2 dimensional, and to some extent, "unconvincing" to the human mind. EG: an early computer animation road would be a flat, shiny grey strip, more of a caricature of a road than a road.
There would be no tarmac-texture, no subtle arc so that rainwater flows to the curbside, no faded white splots of five year old chewing gum on it, no pebbles, potholes, new tarmac patches, no strips of soft tar from previous roadwork. No (what I call) sophistication.
Now while you don't notice those aforementioned things on roads when they are there, you do however notice them when they are not there. Their absence is felt.Your mind clicks somehow, and is aware that the road is not 'real'.
This was a huge hurdle for computer animation, which has only recently been overcome through advanced software and enormous processing power. Nowadays, like in Shrek, there is much more sophistication. You can see the weave of the fabric on the frayed cuff of a CGI character. You see the fuzz on the back of their necks, freckles on their faces. Those flaws, those nuances, that entropy is creeping into the 2nd generation computer art.
There's a sort of Moebius loop of complexity, almost fractal in nature, where if you go so extremely hi-tik (like Char Davies' piece) it becomes lo-tek. It's like it take incredible processing power, and insane amounts of work to get that sophistication of the 'real' (in the Artman sense) world into a digital medium. Look at Riven, the video game, and how long it took them to make that virtual environment such a 'convincing' space.
You have to be crazy hi-tek to even aspire to be lo-tek with digital creation.
If you want to hear sophisticated electronic music, check out plastikman's album Consumed. Again, not just cheesy single notes being hit on synthesizer, producing flat, unsophisticated shrill sounds, but entropic waves of out-of-phase analogue filters being hand-tweaked, and combined and morphed into complex sounds. Subtlety, in fact, on that album, shitloads of subtlety gently shifting in the 'background' blurring the line between what you hear, what you think, and what you think you hear.
Like when you are in a warehouse, and you hit the ground with a metal hammer, there is not once sound, but several. The sound of steel hitting concrete, the resonance of the concrete, combined with the echo of the space, against the acoustics of the warehouse.
That entropy, that dirt, scratches, imperfections are not exclusive to the analogue world. In fact, many people bitch because low-bitrate mp3's sound so mushy. Jpegs start to look like shit after 60% compression.
Computers crash. I've got countless beautiful crash screens from when Mac OS or linux freak out.
Virtual reality, virtual space has NO characteristics. It is godlike total freedom. It is what ever you make it to be. Char Davies piece stands out in my mind precisely because it is so organic, so lo-tek.
I don't anyone should argue against the legitimacy of digital art. But that has nothing to do with the "death" of other mediums.
It's like the prediction made in the early 80's about the paperless office. Not only did we produce more paper in the last 20 years than any other time in recorded history (that's consumate use), but hard copies are more valuable than ever. Paperless office? Not gonna happen. Death of painting? Not gonna happen. And why should it? More tools at your disposal is just that -- more. Using digital media in lieu of traditional media is just limiting your means of expression.
Comments
This is not inherent to digital media.
Early (pre-1989) electronic music/art/whatever, for the most part, was a lot like early computer animation; flat, 2 dimensional, and to some extent, "unconvincing" to the human mind. EG: an early computer animation road would be a flat, shiny grey strip, more of a caricature of a road than a road.
There would be no tarmac-texture, no subtle arc so that rainwater flows to the curbside, no faded white splots of five year old chewing gum on it, no pebbles, potholes, new tarmac patches, no strips of soft tar from previous roadwork. No (what I call) sophistication.
Now while you don't notice those aforementioned things on roads when they are there, you do however notice them when they are not there. Their absence is felt.Your mind clicks somehow, and is aware that the road is not 'real'.
This was a huge hurdle for computer animation, which has only recently been overcome through advanced software and enormous processing power. Nowadays, like in Shrek, there is much more sophistication. You can see the weave of the fabric on the frayed cuff of a CGI character. You see the fuzz on the back of their necks, freckles on their faces. Those flaws, those nuances, that entropy is creeping into the 2nd generation computer art.
There's a sort of Moebius loop of complexity, almost fractal in nature, where if you go so extremely hi-tik (like Char Davies' piece) it becomes lo-tek. It's like it take incredible processing power, and insane amounts of work to get that sophistication of the 'real' (in the Artman sense) world into a digital medium. Look at Riven, the video game, and how long it took them to make that virtual environment such a 'convincing' space.
You have to be crazy hi-tek to even aspire to be lo-tek with digital creation.
If you want to hear sophisticated electronic music, check out plastikman's album Consumed. Again, not just cheesy single notes being hit on synthesizer, producing flat, unsophisticated shrill sounds, but entropic waves of out-of-phase analogue filters being hand-tweaked, and combined and morphed into complex sounds. Subtlety, in fact, on that album, shitloads of subtlety gently shifting in the 'background' blurring the line between what you hear, what you think, and what you think you hear.
Like when you are in a warehouse, and you hit the ground with a metal hammer, there is not once sound, but several. The sound of steel hitting concrete, the resonance of the concrete, combined with the echo of the space, against the acoustics of the warehouse.
That entropy, that dirt, scratches, imperfections are not exclusive to the analogue world. In fact, many people bitch because low-bitrate mp3's sound so mushy. Jpegs start to look like shit after 60% compression.
Computers crash. I've got countless beautiful crash screens from when Mac OS or linux freak out.
Virtual reality, virtual space has NO characteristics. It is godlike total freedom. It is what ever you make it to be. Char Davies piece stands out in my mind precisely because it is so organic, so lo-tek.
[ 08-09-2002: Message edited by: stimuli ]</p>
Jpegs start to look like shit after 60% compression
<hr></blockquote>
More like 90%,they get those wrinkles around any contrasting edges.
It's like the prediction made in the early 80's about the paperless office. Not only did we produce more paper in the last 20 years than any other time in recorded history (that's consumate use), but hard copies are more valuable than ever. Paperless office? Not gonna happen. Death of painting? Not gonna happen. And why should it? More tools at your disposal is just that -- more. Using digital media in lieu of traditional media is just limiting your means of expression.
[ 08-09-2002: Message edited by: BuonRotto ]</p>