THOUGHTS 9/20/05

The question I am left with a the end of the digital art book reading and at the end of most everyday, really, is what will the next art movement be? It often feels like now that we have broken all these boundaries between art, design, science and technology (as was described in the text). Sometimes it seems as though there is little else we can accomplish or invent. What kinds of work will our generation create, I wonder? I am excited to participate and observe the changes and progress that is bound to occur, though I can't imagine what they will be like just yet.

I went to a conference on graphic design recently. A sound artist named DJ Spooky (AKA Paul D. Miller) was speaking and one thing he said was, "We are all children of Andy Warhol." I think what he meant by this was that what Warhol did by glorifying soup cans and other everyday objects has already been done. So what is next? He encouraged everyone to continue breaking ideas apart, playing with fragments of things, blending worlds together. He compared DJing with graphic design and digital arts in that it is all about remixing, colliding, rythym, and science. He also spoke about how imaging software has standardized imagination, in some ways. So another question I have, then, for the future of digital art, is how to counter this standardization.

I think working with new media is all about sharing ideas, turning things inside out, and being cooperative. Creativity comes in loops, not in a linear fashion. So in a way, the possibilities that lie in electronics and in the internet are more accomadating to the human brain than a standard book or text. You have choices, you can make choices, you can jump around.

notes.

• computer art vs multimedia art vs new media art vs digital art

• eniac = Electronic Numerical Intergrator and Computer, the first computer in 1946

• Macintosh, 1983 = "the computer for the rest of us"

• cybernectics, from the Greek kybernetes = governor or steersman

• from the book: "rather than being the sole 'creator of a work of art, the artist often plays the rold of a mediator or facilitator for audiences' interaction with and contribution to the artwork" (21-22)

• fun random fact: A guy named Joe Wecker wrote a folk song that's song lyrics were how to decode a DVD. He put it on the web as adownloadable MP3.