digital magic

In response to Greg + Peppa
I think it's mostly the demands of selling software that prompt people to make it feel like you just push a button, and stuff happens. It also has to do with the fact that code/algorithms can be abstracted (hidden, kind-of). You cant hide photo chemicals that way. Or can you? Maybe the drug store photo lab is to developing photos by hand as photoshop is to writing code.
I'm not sure I understand the incompleteness, or difficulty with narrative in this context. To some degree it feels like there are infinite possibilities - but we've all seen images where instantly say : 'oh I know exactly which photoshop filter made that' - software can be huge and complex but it's still finite.
To bring it back to Manovich a little - it's surprising how similar a digital image is to a spreadsheet. They are all databases. I think we always experience it as narrative though, despite the fact that we understand database structure. I think it's something about language and movement.
Also, peppa : "I feel we are therefore not producing art in its original form, but all we do is manipulating it..." You'll have to explain what "art in its original form" is ;) - as far as I know, we're all always just manipulating things that already exist...

Greg's article made me thinking about our definition of art and our art works, which no doubt has changed so much with the digital media area. In regards to digital media, we are working in a completely different way. We don't work the tools, we have them work for us. I feel we are therefore not producing art in its original form, but all we do is manipulating it, taking it to another step, having the knowledge to do so. We can change just about anything! So, where do we cross the line? Is there one?
This makes it so much harder to actually find a narrative while creating. In painting you got to have a narrative beforehand.
It is still all art and plus, all very subjective.

Manovich's article was interesting in regards to digital imaging and process. The tools available now create a situation where an image is never complete. Now, like in painting a digital photographer has to decide when to stop working on an image. Process in terms of infinite ways of working imagery is new to photo. but process in terms of understanding how your image actually came into existence is somewhat missing. You simply press a button, plug in your camera's USB cord and you have an image to play with in Photoshop. Traditional Black and White photographers are part artist part chemist. You had to understand the process from lens to negative to print. I wonder if something is lost by having infinity to work on making your image perfect instead of screwing up and having to start over. It really is two different but related art forms because they require two different but related ways of thinking and working.

Willie Cole

I've just returned from Dore & Sally's morning tour of Cole's work and am jealous that I will not have the input from 282A because I cannot make that tour. Besides being visually stimulating, profound in its' unique use of found objects, I was very interested in how artwork's meaning and understanding changes when we know something about the artist's ethnicity and gender. Cole is using feminist loaded objects; the domestic iron and women's high heels. I've always vaccilated between whether I want to know about an artist's history and intent or not. Just as titles alter an art pieces contextual meaning so does an artists' autobiographical information. Is it different when we know the artist is male? Do women "own" this imagery (high heels and iron)? Can we view an iron or high heels without this baggage? Both irons and high heels have enslaved women, so the fact that African Americans have been enslaved is relevant here. Because I perceive art as a dialog rather than a monlogue, I don't think the artist, object and viewer can be seperated. I'm interested in reading other people's blogs about this exhibit and I hope all of you were inspired by Cole's work at least as much as I was.

Kim

Here is an article in ArtNews about Willie Cole
http://www.artnet.com/magazine_pre2000/features/brody/brody97-2-14.asp


Jon Yao, also found the following:

http://www.alexanderandbonin.com/artists/cole/cole.html

http://www.worcesterart.org/Exhibitions/afterburn.html

http://www.uga.edu/columns/040927/news-cole.html

http://www.huliq.com/6196/memorial-art-gallery-features-willie-cole-s-iconic-works

http://www.fryeart.org/pages/williecole.htm

Another website found by Jon with tons of links to Willie Coles Work and Information about the artist:

http://webs.wichita.edu/?u=ulrich&p=/exhibitionfolder/williecole/

Surprisingly, I actually enjoyed Manovich. I hadn't really ever considered databases in the ways he wrote about them. Not to date myself, but I was "coming of age" during that transisiton when computers became more commonplace in the home (at least in Silicon Valley) and the encyclopedia salesman went the way of the Dodo.

The Gen-X Generation learned both the narrative and the database methodologies. Today's youth, however, accept the notion that the database and algorithm and their many benefits--on-demand TV, the Internet, Halo 3--have always been there and the data that come are able to be sorted in any manner. (Go ahead, ask a high school student what a card catalog is.) They are accustomed to this proliferation of borrowed and appropriated information that is availalable to them no waiting, 24/7, but without benefit of any narrative or trajectory.

It's creating interesting issues within society and, or course, art. Just as we construct our own algorithms to respond to entertainment like Halo 3 (which accesses data, creates new algorithms and produces more data to respond to the players), we are all constantly constructing our own simple algorithms to create order from the massive amount of information available to us on a day to day basis. We store this informaiton in our own personal databases--the three pounds gem. The best part is when we spit this masticated data out, there's no more white out, misplaced eraser ribbon or scrounging for one more piece of pristine paper when we realize we need to type the damned stuff out again due to the dreaded type-o.

Dore said there is no class today. She's ill
Hope you all get this message

I am out of my league in reading Manovich’s article – because I haven’t seen much digital media art. Manovich makes a case that the database takes precedence over the narrative – but I wonder whether his article is just dated. With my extremely limited exposure to Second Life, it seems narrative is sublimated there too – sublimated to wandering around the database. But if an avatar is on some mission, then does the narrative take precedence? In this link to one artists he mentioned, George Legrady, database trumps narrative – although, could a narrative can form in the theater of one’s mind?

http://www.mat.ucsb.edu/~g.legrady/

The whole notion of writing an article as impetus for sparking some kind of art theory revolution is moot. Taking the post-modern mentality and thinking that “there would be no new theory, only recombinations of what had already been thought” is a dead end. Times change, as do tastes and experiences; the progression of time in itself should be enough to spark the change Rajchman hopes for. I find his description of what contemporary art has become under the stagnation of post-modern theory on p.390 very informative, “[Art] became instead a set of stock formulas to be thrown together in the computer at will without regard for origin or rigor in an ever more arbitrary and entangled quotational patchwork.” This references his claim that “multiculturalism” may become “as ubiquitous a term as ‘post-modernism’ once was” which I feel is the most striking point of the article. Perhaps post-colonial theory and globalism in the form of “multiculturalism” will be the most informative keys in divining the future of art theory….

aaaaaaaaaggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!

In regards to the Krauss article I am taking the side of it's all shit, shit, shit, detritus, excrement, shit.
these artists need to
1. read "Everybody Poops"
2. Wipe their asses and be done

After reading the article for the tird time I came to the conclusion that the only shit worth analysing is a turd in the bowl in the shape of the buddah.

pplluuuuptttt!

To me theory seems a way to understand the complex notion of art and artist. It is like the age old question, which came first the chicken or the egg??? Art seems always to be apart of the human psych and humasn expression. And so is rational and intellectual thought. I think these go hand in hand. It is very human to try to puut forth meaning or an intellectual interpretation for just about anything. In the Rajchman essay, he suggest in reinventing theory. That is like saying let's reinvent Freud's theory. We can argue, reinterpret, recontextualize, reintellectualize, but I do not think we can reinvent theory.
Perhaps some artist use theory, as Pantea states, and bring the ideas within specific thoery into the studio. And I think for all of us in this class, we cannot bring the ideas into our studio. Either consciously or subconsiously, it will be present in some form or another.
For me, I struggle with the ideas that are projected onto art works. Art is so open for interpretation, and sometimes an artist perhaps doesn't know what a certain piece may specifically be about. I guess, theory creates a dialogue and intrepretation. Theory is a reasoning and rationing of unrational thought and unreasoned process of thought; intending to illude to a distinct thought of approach or concept. For me my art is instictual, personal, and motivated my universal idealization. And if a theory fits my art, rather than my art fitting a theory, then so be it.

It seems John Rajchman suggests that theory has become some sort of reality. Is this the reason behind suggesting the “experiment!” then? But what he proposes is to get back to the first point by suggesting” Time has come to reinvent theory.” so that the question is: why not stay where we are and use what we have and move forward instead of spending time on reinventing. For me, reinvention and experimentation are two different things but seems as if Rjachman has used the terms interchangeably. I get help from theory to solve the uncertain and I have no idea what happens if I introduce the uncertainty as a mean to examine a new theory. Though I agree with the idea of lightness as a tool for a creative and open criticism.

Theory is an essential part of my studio work and helps me understand it better; therefore, I am trying to bring theory to my studio too.