What is the most exciting, sunshine-happiness situation that technology creates for the artist and the arts?
(Sorry if things came off a little negative before.)
I’m going to say copy and paste. You use it so often that you don’t even realize you’re using it, but this simple operation also helps open up your thinking. Making interesting connections and strange associations is only a control-c/control-v away.
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Tags: technology
Call me a romantic, but I think the best, most sunshiny-happiness, babies-born-from-fireworks oceanic awesomest thing about technology FOR artists is, um, everything. Wait! Before you roll your eyes and accuse me of stealing from Margaret Atwood (“The proper study of Mankind is Everything”), consider what we know: an artist’s job, as we have discussed herein, is to represent (re-present) the world through a his/her own lens. Therefore, the area of our expertise should be “The World.” Technology – specifically the internet – allows the artists access to that much more of the world than we would have otherwise. No, not necessarily the world of “facts”, not necessarily “reliable” information, because that only matters to the artist part of the time. The internet is a technology comprised entirely of human beings, for better or worse, and we can log on at anytime, day or night, and learn about the human world around us. Sure, it makes it more difficult to get noticed as an artist, maybe, because anyone and everyone can put their thoughts online, and the world of “information” is no longer limited to those whose work has been edited and approved. But for the artist-as-researcher, shouldn’t that be the greatest gift of all?
I can’t help but think of the role of the artist to respond to one’s time and situation and yet to use vision, dreams and symbolism to evoke archetypes and deeper truths and understandings. The artist sometimes becomes a vehicle for the collective human voice to make a statement and to utter important truths. Sometimes the artist just amuses and entertains. Or seeks exploration, understanding, attention or self-pleasuring.
I guessm if anything, the new technologies open us up geographically and erase the borders and distances that keep us apart.
It seems to me as if our sensibilities are ever-evolving and that the new technologies can bring about new possibilities in terms of sensory experience, exploration and presentation. It also seems to me that the new technologies can bring us together in new ways. Yet, for me, the roles of the artist are still the same primeval, time-transcendent ones….