Replies: 19 Comments
on Saturday, June 23rd, Ellen said
Bruce-
I really like your work: digital & pen. I think that Brad hit the proverbial nail on the head: art is created by the artist not the medium, although the medium can definitely set the tone of the work. A pastel appeals to some and a photograph to others. Throughout the history of art, artists have been fascinated by discovery. I think that new tools are exciting and fun. I love to create. My first love is the pencil, but I find digital great for all kinds of exploration and expression.
on Thursday, June 21st, Mark said
I too use the computer for the more mundane tasks such as the internet, email, writing and using it as a visual file for my paintings. To create art with it would leave me cold. Not because it is not a viable medium but because it just holds no interest for me. There is a reason why some of us work in paint, others in clay and others in metal or pencil or photograpy and so on and so on, and that is because we are all different and different media attrack us individually. Most vedio art and instalation art leaves me cold, I can apreciate the work that goes into it, and I might think "That's cool" but it doesn't have a lasting affect on me, and tho I have seen very good computer (digital) art it to often has no lasting affect on me, perhaps because I am viewing it on the computer. I do not think it a weakness of my character but just a preference of a kind of art. We all have that. Just because I am not drawn to a kind of art tho does not mean it is not viable and should not be produced, I am of the mind that one should create in whatever way is best for them. There is one aspect of the computer that I do question. I see many photographers taking their photos and with a program making them look like paintings. Why?
on Wednesday, June 20th, jose said
Yes, I agree with what you’ve just said there, Cecil, perhaps we should set aside this ancient notion we still have lodged in our minds [I know I sometimes find myself caught within it] that it must appear on paper or canvas and that a print is its definitive purpose. To what you wrote I would add that it has the potential of coming alive in video format, or even becoming interactive on a cd-rom, very much as in the project Peter Gabriel produced with artists in his EVE interactive environment where music and art come together in quite a spectacular way. I'm currently photographing every single stage of every painting I am doing and feeding it into the computer to create an environment of my own. It's a fascinating field, the potential is tremendous, and it is great fun.
on Wednesday, June 20th, Cecil Herring said
Making computer art is a whole different category that can not be compared with the other art making mediums. It is not an either or comparison issue. Since it is an art medium an artist would be better equipped if he or she takes traditional art training, drawing, composition, color, study of line and form, even figure drawing in addition to a complete schooling in hard drive knowledge, software knowledge. In short, it is a very difficult medium and time consuming and wears the arm out as our author blogger here Mr. Bruce Price can attest to. He has chosen to replace that sore arm with his other arm in his wonderful pen works show High Tech - Low Tech. I bet when his arm gets better he'll be back making art on his computer. He is very good at making computer art. There are some memorable pieces on his site.
I love making original digital art as some prefer to call it because it is made strictly in the computer by the artist and not a copy of anything else. Drawing straight lines, making or selecting has nothing to do with it and actually it has nothing to do with printing unless you want a final discrete product which is another art form - printing. There are computer art purists who show strictly on the internet. So it is really FREE ART! It is what it is - a 21st Century art making medium. Inherent is the ability to use ANYTHING from anything creating the image right on the computer screen, add images, pieces of images, scans of a rock, material, sheet metal, text, layer pieces of this melange into a whole new work of art, recoloring and redrawing as the artist sees fit.
Actually it can save a lot of money because the artist can just push delete or erase at any point. It does require thinking of a different nature, an abstract dimensional thinking or being able to think in this new medium. I am beginning to understand digital art as intellectual, cosmic in its dimensional qualities. But then you would have do it and be excited to do it, to understand it. There is a great future in this field particularly using the internet.
on Tuesday, June 19th, walt said
Cecil,
I understand both the production value as well as the aesthetic value of the computer. It is a very useful and interesting tool. But when was the last time you had all that much trouble with the cost of tradtional materials? You buy a tube of paint or a couple pounds of clay an it is what it is. The paint spreads on almost any surface and the clay cooks in any kiln. One brand of paint mixes with another as does one companies clay with another. No problem. The computer is designed purely to make money for its inventors and the industry. It is a couple steps beyond designed obsolesence. It should but doesn't make life easier but rather it makes life more complex-- contrary to all the sales pitches. remember how computer banking was gonna be cheaper and easier than going to a teller? Well its just as easy but certainly not cheaper any more. I'd love it if it were different. So my connection is very carefully measured. I use it for the internet. I use it for e-mail. I use it to buy my dad's father's day gift because I live 800 miles away. I don't use it for art because art is expensive enough as it is and I have a studio full of materials. Besides, I can make a straight line if I want to and know how to select a shape and move it around without a $300 program and $100 wakam tablet on top of a $2,0000 computer and $1500 printer. let's not talk about paper and inks.
I try to stay as far away from corporate hooks as possible unless they are paying me for something.
on Tuesday, June 19th, Brad said
I'm always consumed by art that speaks beyond it's own material. An artistic mind may express itself with tools, words, instruments, expressive movement. Medium does not make the artist - the artist does...
on Tuesday, June 19th, Mark said
I do not think mentioning that one is a teacher props up their statement any more then one saying they are an abstract artists helps to prop up their point on abstraction. The subject here though is not about teachers but about new technologies and its use. If C and W want to argue (I don't think W does) then do it at the local coffee shop or bar.
on Tuesday, June 19th, c said
Just getting really tired of people trying to prop up their opinions and discussion by constantly mentioning they are teachers. Nothing personal at all.
on Tuesday, June 19th, Markus Kruse said
Chris, Can you please be a little more cordial? That would really be appreciated. If you have a personal beef with someone else, this is NOT the forum to voice it. Thanks in advance...
on Tuesday, June 19th, walt said
Chris, I really get on your nerves. Too bad. I'm just bringing my reality to the discourse. You can bring yours as well. It's called a discussion. It doesn't always have to be an argument.
on Monday, June 18th, Cecil Herring said
I love creating digital art. Some people don't seem to understand it is most assuredly a bonafide art medium. It works on many levels like no other medium - compositing images to create a new reality, strange other worldly concepts.
As a sculptor, I always sought a way to layer images so things could be seen through things - into a divine spiritual dimension which has no number (or maybe it does). I think digital art gives this 3D capability. I started making digital art in 1988, went to digital school, helped set up a digital school at Stetson University and taught there. I was heavily into the digital medium for about 12 years but got tired out. As you say, I wanted some real strokes, messiness and even the smell, and to get my hands dirty! No medium affords the artist the total best of everything. There are negatives in them all.
I also hated the huge expense and how the printing industry turned big archival printers into cash cows with their exclusive requirements as to media used (their own or else!). The inks and papers are horribly expensive and to sell the prints was something else to try to explain why the prints cost so much and would they stand up to the Wilhelm light test meaning would they last a 100 years! I had my own 36" plotter and created some neat big works and had some awards. It was early in the digital age so I had trouble getting support with archival inks and media.
Print companies said unless I had a particular printer and used a particular ink the ink would not work and furthermore would destroy the printer. I never liked service bureaus preferring to playing around with the various prints, repainting them sometimes after washing off the inks, combining media. Also I got tired of the attitudes of the public who thought digital art is some kind of cheap trick and all that is required is to push PRINT! And the giclee thing. Don't get me started on that. Very few people understand the difference between an original digital art work and a giclee. Finally my big printer got struck by a lightning storm and a huge power surge and lost its program. By then the British company I had bought the RIP from was long gone and the newer operating system on the computer was not compatible. Noone could fix it. I took that wonderful big printer that would print on anything out to the street for the garbage pickup. I went back to painting because I also love painting. There are printers now that will print big prints using paints. I may go back to digital. I might check those out. I never considered pencil but you were smart and analytical to assess your situation and realize mouse strokes are the same as pencil strokes. That's wonderful. Thanks for writing about the digital art medium. Congratulations on your show!
on Monday, June 18th, Mark said
Chris, I can not speake for Walt, but perhaps he does so only to put into context his point. I too am a teacher, as well as a practicing artists, and when speaking with others I will at times bring this up, not to say I know more but only to give direction to what I may be saying, it is no different then if some one mentions they are an artist, or a doctor or plumber. Plus this blog has nothing to do with Walt, or his teaching but the use of the old and new technologies of the day.
I wonder how much will the computer art affect the art made by true touch, as much as photography did?
on Monday, June 18th, C said
Mark, I just wish Walt could comment and blog without all the time telling everyone he is a teacher. Does his being a teacher mean he knows more and is better than everyone else? Talk to us Walt! Don't try to teach us!
on Monday, June 18th, Mark said
C, give it a rest will you!
on Monday, June 18th, C said
Thanks for telling us you are a teacher again Walt. How could we ever forget?
on Monday, June 18th, Mark said
When working with ink it gets on the fingers, oil smears on hands and cloths, watercolor splatters as does acrylics, and on and on. There is a definite feel when working with a medium that you can feel, smell and curse if it gets your good cloths dirty( So don't wear good cloths when working). Jose's thought of the the nib scratching and gluiding along the surface is a case in point. I would not condem computer art, would not say it is not art because it was made on a computer (there are many reasons to say something isn't art that have nothing to do with the medium), but sitting in front of a screen, pushing keys or a mouse around does not appeal to me. I hope in time as society gets less conected to the real things in life that maybe the plastic arts will come again into thier own, and people will apreciate and want what was made by hand, with the hand.
on Monday, June 18th, jose said
I like the pen works very much Bruce. I am of course imagining the nib of the pen scratching and gliding along a surface and leaving its 'weight' and that maybe contributes to why I like them. Experimentation worked well! Mind you, the computer images I checked out are well structured also, the colours and the light work well, there is artistry at work in their coming into being (they are definitely not in the computer), but having said that I have to add what a shame not to move one step further and give them substance - traces of how the brush carries the paint, texture, matter, smell, signs of a mistake worked over. Didn't those pen drawings 'feel' different to you, beyond how you say you found similarity in bringing the image about? I have some artworks by bruneian artists who were experimenting with digital at the time I was there, I love the imagery but I miss the matter - somehow I still find it hard to overcome the feeling that something is lacking despite their beauty. My shortcoming I guess.
on Monday, June 18th, Mark said
Interesting work Bruce. Though I am not very computer literate and the smell of my warm hard drive does nothing for me in the way that my oil paints do, I do feel that any medium is a good medium whether it be "Low Tech" or "High Tech". Good art comes from the artist, not the medium. I do find though that the title to your blog may be misleading. The computer is a new tool, there is no doubt, and computer art is also new and growing, but is the science of ink, paint and other materials realy low tech? I guess in todays world it would be thought as so. I do not mean to split hairs, but isn't it realy a question of "New Tech meets Old Tech"?
on Monday, June 18th, walt said
Bruce, in the early days of my teaching I often gave an assignment to drawing students who got too caught up too early on in tight detail and rendering to the exclusion of form and composition..."draw with your opposite hand!" I would say to frightened and dour looks. The results are quite extroardinary.
Nowadays I"ve had to rethink the old project. If you work with a stylus try the mouse. If you draw with a mouse try using a pen or better yet a burnt two by four.
I imagine sometime in the distant future a generation who will, like the artists of the early Renaissance upon discovering the sculpture of the ancient Greeks, one day discover the ancient work of artists who did it all by hand. They will marvel at how they could possibly have done those things without the help of a computer to straighten their lines, mix their colors and resize their shapes.
I'm not knocking the computer. Notice I've given it a long future. But it is sort of similar to a student of mine who once visited Italy. I asked him "isn't the art of Florence amazing?" to which he replied "awful stuff. Contemporary artists are so much better. We are better realists than those duffers were because we can copy photographs."
Of course my friend missed the more important aspect of his own response. That they didn't have cameras, weren't photographically trained to see reality and so they didn't have to copy photographs or compare their work to photographs.
As a teacher I think I failed to help him realize the difference between seeing and copying. While the computer doesn't do everything for us it does begin to blur the difference between "making" and "selecting".
However I do like your experimental approach and willingness to remain flexible which is not meant to be a left handed pun.
An unexpected thing happened on the way to 8,000 hours of making digital art. My left hand demanded to be placed on the disabled list.
Now I'm becoming right-handed. If your own mouse hand is starting to go, here's a happy thought: you've got back-up. A whole new hand. (I'd recommend to the digital world, start becoming ambidextrous now.)
