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“Black pearl 01
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by Virginia Small
Here are 9 steps to brilliant artistic goals
1. Know What You Want
2. Know What You Need
3. Weigh Up the Costs and Benefits
4. Tangible, Time-Limited Goals Work Best
5. Break It Down
6. Monitor Progress
7. A Setback is Just a Setback
8. Enjoy the Journey
9. Visualize the Benefits of Your Artistic Achievement
10. Choose Who to Share Your Artistic Goals with.
Like most things in art and life, preparation is the key.
Source: The Creative Instinct.com
Why Mistakes Are Good!
Okay – so nobody wants to make mistakes and I will reluctantly concede that
not even the most well balanced creative person is going to rise each morning
joyfully anticipating all the mistakes they’re going to make. Having said that,
many resourceful and able people regularly choose to do things ‘wrong’. They
do so in the spirit of exploration, effectively saying: I know this is the ‘wrong’
way to do this – but let’s see what happens anyway.
It’s all about experimentation and discovery. It’s about discovering what works
and discovering what doesn’t. It’s about giving yourself an opportunity to learn
something new.
Source - excerpt from: “How to Stop Being Your Own Worst Critic” By Andrew Leigh
“
Leaving With Two-Minute Silence”
a still image by Anthony McCall
Read more about Anthony McCall below...
One Step Beyond -- What Are Some of Your Digital Contemporaries Up To???
"Unsolicited Fabrications"
"Action Painting (Masculine Expressionism)", by Jeremy Rotsztain, is a series of “action paintings” in the style of Jackson Pollock, composed using data from action movies as material. Thi work uses popular action sequences from cinema – when Jason Bourne drives backwards through the streets of Paris in a nail-biting police chase, when the underdog Rocky Balboa battles Apollo Creed, when a helicopter chases a high speed train through a tunnel in Mission Impossible. It takes these sequences from the adrenalin-filled culture of action cinema and playfully transplants them into the highbrow cannon of modernist painting. Action Painting runs with custom authored software (written in C++ with openFrameworks) that uses computer vision to analyze movies for motion.
"AFK Sculpture Park"was a Fall 2009 exhibition organized in Berlin by Daniel Keller and Nik Kosmas from art group “Aids-3D.”
"Latent Figure Protocol", by Paul Vanouse, is a media installation that uses DNA samples to create emergent representational images. The installation includes a live science experiment, the result of which is videotaped and repeated for the duration of the gallery exhibit. Employing a reactive gel and electrical current, Latent Figure Protocol produces images that relate directly to the DNA samples used. Each performance lasts approximately one hour, during which time audience members see the image slowly emerge.
"Public Avatar", by Martin Bricelj Baraga, is a project documenting the relationship between virtual reality and our perceptions of self and society. This installation will allow a global audience to explore real-world locations remotely, and to interact with objects and people in those locations through real-time control of a human test subject. As digital and physical worlds collide, the boundaries between self and other, reality and simulation are constantly challenged and redefined.
"Tweeting Colors", by Brian Piana, is webpage comprised of vertical color bars created by special tweets from Twitter users. Anyone can view the piece, but a Twitter user in the public timeline can add bars by following the simple directions linked to from the bottom of the page. The newest bars appear from the left. The page auto-refreshes a few times a minute, so sit back and enjoy the Color Feed.
"Panoramic Dioramas" are environments which do not strictly enforce orientation or perspective. Viewers can move within the space to see new things, or old things differently. This project was created by Mitch Trale — an artist living in Oakland, California. New work is currently being published twice weekly.
"I Got Your Internet Explorer Right Here" is a net art project by BJ Warshaw. “An immersive, randomly generated, psychedelic animation backed by a collage of audio loops designed to lovingly fry your eyes and ears.” (Firefox recommended!)
"Composition with Javascript" is an interactive work by Kostya Loginov and Vlad Yakovlev, made using HTML, CSS, Javascript and jQuery, based on Piet Mondrian’s “Composition with Yellow, Red, Black, Blue and Grey” (1920). It allows everybody deconstruct the original painting and form it again in whatever he or she wants. Lines are “shift able” (just drag it with your mouse) and colors changeable (click on it). Texture of the painting was preserved for authentic look. One can play with composition, forms and colors, alter the harmony of the piece or even destroy it and compose something pictorial.
Leaving With Two-Minute Silence
An exhibition of work by British-born artist Anthony McCall is currently being exhibited at both the Sean Kelly Gallery in New York through January 30th, 2010 and Gallery Thomas Zander in Koln, Germany through February 20th, 2010. Entitled ‘Leaving (with Two-minute Silence),’ McCall’s new work of ’solid light’ presentations are comprised of digital videos of carefully choreographed, intersecting lines and curves. The collections of intersecting shapes are projected in dark, haze-filled rooms and result in three-dimensional forms, constructed purely from light. The exhibition is interactive, and as the viewers move in and out of the projected light beams, they must reconcile their perceived sense of fixed, three dimensional objects with the actual mutable properties that light possesses.
Links and Winks:
MOCA: Museum of Computer Art Announces the MARCH 2010 CONTEST OF THE MONTH!!
This is an international competition and exhibit of fine digital art, open to all digital artists. Our ongoing series of Contests of the Month are among the most celebrated and successful digital art events on the Web. The contest is underway! Enter today!
The contest provides opportunity for artists worldwide to participate in a glamorous event, to advance their careers, and to expose their art to a sophisticated New York audience.
DEADLINE FOR ENTRIES
Karin Kuhlmann and MOCA are featured in online magazine...
Read about us on:
See more of Karin's work at: Kuhlmann
“"Dogs and Owl"
by Georgia Bassen
“Ask Yourself…”
I challenged you last week to ask yourselves what YOU are doing to further the digital arts movement? To follow are a selection of responses from fellow artists. Let's continue this conversation further - write me. Mary
IN-BOX
Submitted by:
Comment: “While I was writing the piece for your Editorial Section, entitled "But is it Art?," I felt a change in my understanding of what I and my art were about. Yes, it is new and different and yes, it pleases me just to be able to participate in its happening, and yes, if I sell the money is helpful, but there is more.
I realized that we are a part of a massive and (the first) global movement of any kind, that has sprung up from the grass roots of many cultures simultaneously. There are no leaders, no stratta, no manifestos, no rules, and nothing that binds us except an understanding and desire to practice what we know and feel using technology. It is cross-cultural, cross-national and cross-gender. It is not race, age, nor generation specific. And yet it has grown to astronomical proportions all by itself with no ad campaigns, no rallies, nor any crises.
So my plan of action is to SHOW UP! I enter shows that have traditionally not taken digital photography; I politely, but firmly, ask questions as to why rules have not changed, why exclusions still exist from memberships, and why prizes and purchases exclude new art. And I find, doors (and peoples minds) are beginning to open.
So basically I just assume there is no difference, except technique, between what we do and what ‘they’ do and go from there. It's great fun to be a part of something so positive and enriching.”
Dear H. Gay,
Well put! I agree whole-heartedly. As you say, just being present and involved progresses the movement subtly and effectively. Regular participation is key. I say, champion on!! and as you learn more on your journey please write! Mary
“Dear Mary,
There is so much to say and at the same time nothing to say. Indeed, we leave one period (I speak about the pioneers) where it was necessary for the length of time to prove that the result of our work was not a swindle and that in spite of the fact that one uses a computer and software to work remains the same as the traditional artist, even more difficult.
Today it is not similar any more. The public is informed. They use the computer like the artist and sometimes with greater power. The difficulty lies in the fact that creation by computer must gain its letters of nobility.
But how do we distinguish true artists [who use the computer to create art] from those individuals that use these machines to create randomly [without mastery] which sometimes produces rather incredible results. It is well known, that it isn‘t the length of time that matters in creating the work, but the end result that counts. For me it is interesting to specify what a percentage is necessary to allot to the machine!!! great question. Let us consider a piece that is 100% random, quite simply translated this puts the creativity of each one of these pieces in a wall cupboard!!! It is the great risk and one assists to with it already. It may be that we will go in this manner towards a uniformity of creation.
After 25 years of practice I always think that painting, creation in all its forms is a language. For me painting digitally (stylet+painter+wacom) remains more important and a venue for discovery, because it gives (finally) limitless possibility to the artist to express good (I speak about those which “comb”). For me “digital art”, as one perceives it, is by far not as developed as painting digitally, even if there is not a stock of new images which can be finished by individuals that become completely standardized, even banal.
The public is already blasé!! and more surprised by the whole by this creation. This art is present, either in the galleries, but certainly in all the stores of decoration, of furnishing, at ridiculous prices. But the multiplication (the volume of editions) is a good sales point and price. Behind all that, the artists are paid with the minimum wage. The public does not see any more the difference [between mass produced digital art and the digital fine art piece]!! This is damaging. It will again take time to identify the difference between true artists and the opportunistic ones.
New technologies should enable us to go further, to evolve/move and not to stagnate! I in general observe with a certain sadness the edition production [large volumes of each work]. I saw proof of it at the Biennial of Florence where I saw only photographic assemblies!! and not terrible made-over. One does ten thousand times better in all the studios than that and within Advertising agencies for years. The “Paintbox” exists since the Eighties and one produced already extraordinary images. Another proof at this Biennial was that one [exhibit] included “DIGITAL Art “quite simply in the photo category!!!! And there you have the result.
This is the reason that many digital artists succumb to evil practices to sell their creations. Since the beginning I am obstinate to produce only one specimen of each one of my works [Edition size 1/1] , to certify each work, whereby I gained the confidence of a certain public which knows from now on my work and which follows me. I fixed the same price that a traditional art piece would command and that functions well! I have heard so many examples of artists who complain that they cannot sell their work. But it is necessary to respect the public and the person who buys your work from you. It is through only [fine] work and a quality policy, that one gains the confidence of people, the art lover, without which we would not exist. This is only my opinion and engages only me of course. This is truth. It is nevertheless the report that I have created after more than twenty years of practice on the ground. I hope that this small report will bring some interesting information to your vision of the situation.
Since 1994, I tried to create an event of digital painting by making demonstrations on computer vis-a-vis the public. I took my own gallery in Honfleur, cradle of Boudin and Monet, town of art, because nobody wanted to speak of art creation by computer, and I needed to prove it. The public liked my work and bought it at the price of traditional art. I made a demonstration of an entirely numerical table for the most known auctioneer in France in 1996 in order to validate this event [of computer art]. I created a work on-line on the Internet at the time of the first living room of multi-media in Paris in 1999 then exposed it on a plasma screen in HD. I also explored all the possible supports for a virtual work of glass and ceramics in Italy with a technology Dupont de Nemours. I continued to sell my works in my gallery of St Paul de Vence cradle of Chagall, then Vallauris, cradle of Picasso in the South of France and always all alone among all the traditional art galleries.
In all the cases I would like to thank you for your engagement in this marvelous adventure which is the digital creation and which gives us the possibility of speaking about it and to make known it in the whole world.
Thank you for your “Honorable “price and the creation of the thousand-year-old third lives. In all the cases it enables me best to live! In its essence there.”
Dear Peter,
The distinction between “random” and “mastered” digital fine art, in my opinion, has yet to be clearly defined. So I ask our readers, where do we draw the line? How much weight should be placed on the software and the process, how much on only the final outcome? I would further interject, how much emphasis should be placed on the “marketability” of the artwork -- do we make compromises to make sales? Tough questions -- if we are to be honest with ourselves -- with I would guess, even tougher answers.
You also bring up the issue of mass production and edition volumes. I, too, limit my edition sizes to very small volumes, but as you say, there is a sub-category (so to speak) of digital art sold in home furnishing stores in large quantities under less than pristine quality criteria. You’re right, artists need to eat and often fall prey to the evils of commerce! But I say, let us not place our art in the same category as the mass produced digital art. Originality, quality, and quantity are notable variables that distinguish “fine” digital work from the commercialized work. Digital fine artists need to hold themselves and their work accountable to higher quality standards all around.
You also raise a very valid concern that the curatorial tendency by exhibitors is to place digital art in with photography. Although there are some digital art pieces that may fall appropriately into the “photography exhibit” (most photographers these days use Photoshop/software to tweak their photographs) I would agree that there are many variations to digital fine art that would be incorrectly lumped into a photography category.
So, how do we address this? In the promotion of our work perhaps we need to share more than what a traditional artist would share about the process/method.
I commend you on all of the measures you have taken (and continue to take) to progress public perception and understanding of the digital fine arts. We need to “think-outside-of the-box” in order to promote our artwork. Creating fine digital art can be challenging. I have often found that it is much easier to take brush to canvas or pencil to paper to realize my vision than to create it digitally. I’m sure that we can all agree that it takes a unique mind-set and exemplary skill to do what we do and do it well.
Please continue to share your thoughts and wealth of knowledge. I will look forward to hearing more from you and others on these very insightful topics. Mary
Submitted by: Comment: “The very existence of digital art is in the virtual room within the computer interactive memories and in my opinion can only prosper within this virtual realm. In order to do that we must bring to an end comparing digital art with the tradition medium like paintings and prints. So far this is also due to still the ongoing disputes and dilemmas arising from the questions of durability and quality when digitally created art put out on standard substrates that have been regarded less valuable.
However my vision is that if digital art should survive in the physical space parallel to or above the traditional medium of art then its output needs the same lasting pigments like oil and acrylic that uniquely outputted by robotic equipment in coordination with the Artist hand and mind.”
Dear Mamta,
For new media artists that are creating interactive pieces in galleries and museums, the problem is extreme and still unresolved. Mary
This page posted 8 Feruary 2010
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