Art for the sake of exploring technology vs technology for the sake of exploring art

[obseq]

I am having a bit of a problem with this notion lately...

I have been reading a book called, Information Arts: Intersections of Art, Science, and Technology where countless examples of recent strides in technology have broadened sensory experience.

These instances all produce impressive results but seem to divorce themselves from the possibilty of a singular exploration in a piece. Nearly all advances in technology are stretched beyond the scope of discussing one piece alone onto the potential strides certain discoveries can provide in industry/society/commerce.

My concerns here with regard to the impact of technology on art also mirror my concerns with the impact technology on science, which is ultimately why I left modern science to pursue art. The single gesture of exploring
question(s) to discover any array of answer(s) is abandoned in favor of an 'advancement' of some sort. In my opinion, it is a common myth that both science and art need to propogate advancement to be "good" or "right"--A notion I vehemently disagree with.

[ironman]

I am having a bit of a problem with this notion lately...

I have been reading a book called, Information Arts: Intersections of Art, Science, and Technology where countless examples of recent strides in technology have broadened sensory experience.

These instances all produce impressive results but seem to divorce themselves from the possibilty of a singular exploration in a piece. Nearly all advances in technology are stretched beyond the scope of discussing one piece alone onto the potential strides certain discoveries can provide in industry/society/commerce.

My concerns here with regard to the impact of technology on art also mirror my concerns with the impact technology on science, which is ultimately why I left modern science to pursue art. The single gesture of exploring
question(s) to discover any array of answer(s) is abandoned in favor of an 'advancement' of some sort. In my opinion, it is a common myth that both science and art need to propogate advancement to be "good" or "right"--A notion I vehemently disagree with.

Hi Obseq, I'm not sure where to begin here but I think that artists as well as scientists go into the studio/lab to question and to discover answers of some sort. Is this not advancement? Whether or not I use a CAD program or that old fashioned pencil and paper, who cares! It's the final result that counts. As for your problem with the impact of technology on art, do you think that Michelangelo would have turned down a compressor and air powered chisels if he was offered them? By the way, we're using technology right now, hopefully in some sort of way to discover ideas about and to advance our understanding of sculpture.
Nothing stays the same, life is in a constant state of change and flux and if you feel that your version of it is off the beaten path, so be it!
"If man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer", Henry David Thoreau.
That poem, in its entirety, is the only thing that hangs on my studio walls.
I think, (and this will probably sound scary to most of you out there as it is to me) that the future of art will be technology driven. Just as the discovery of oil paints, changed painting, technology IS ALREADY and will continue to change art as we know it.
I think that in the future only the Sunday artists and dillettantes will paint on canvas, sculpt in stone/steel, etc. The really creative, dedicated and serious artists will be sitting in front of a screen like this doing things that we can't even dream about. The computer age is still in its infancy and will in the future save art as we know it from the redundancy that it faces every day.
The creativity that drives artists is the same creativity that drives the authors of computer viruses and hackers, just driven in a different direction.
The marriage of art and technology IS the future of art.
the next Picasso will be a computer geek/artist, and his/her work will be technology driven!
If I was younger, I'd abandon my mig welder and jump into the fray but at 57 and with no illusions of grandeur, I think I'll just muddle along as I am and let the younger generation have their fun. I just hope that I live long enough to see and experience some of their work.
Sincerely, Jeff

[fritchie]

Hi Obseq, I'm not sure where to begin here but ........
I think that in the future only the Sunday artists and dillettantes will paint on canvas, sculpt in stone/steel, etc. The really creative, dedicated and serious artists will be sitting in front of a screen like this doing things that we can't even dream about. The computer age is still in its infancy and will in the future save art as we know it from the redundancy that it faces every day.
The creativity that drives artists is the same creativity that drives the authors of computer viruses and hackers, just driven in a different direction. ..........

Jeff, Ironman - I agree with you in many ways, but I hope there always will be a place for physical art. One phase of computerization is computer-aided or -directed manufacture of physical objects much cheaper that they can be made by hand. I look forward to this aid in producing real, tangible sculptures.

I also think you are right that sculptures which exist purely in cyberspace will become common, and that these will be produced by Picasso’s or Michelangelo’s of the future. Computer screens should be able to offer specular or diffuse reflectance, color, texture, and so on as well as nearly infinite shape possibilities to sculptors, and gravity will be of as great or little effect as the sculptor chooses.

Some distinct advantages of cybersculpture include transportability (around the wold in microseconds at almost no cost), reproducibility (millions of copies at essentially no cost), and longevity (as long as the current computer model lasts - 3 years? - but with easy shift to newer computer models).

[ironman]

Hi Fritchie, I too hope that there will always be a place for physical art and I think we feel this way because it's what we do and what we care so deeply about. When you've dedicated your whole life to art as we know it, I think it's very difficult to think about and accept some of these technological advances that we talked about. I do think there will be a place for physical art but it'll be computer driven, whatever that means.
You too can have a CAD/CAM program on your computer if you've got big bucks and are willing to suffer the torture of a very steep learning curve.
The things that you talked about that cyberspace brings to the table are for the most part available NOW! We can't even imagine what's in the future.
How about this: A see thru computer screen that sits on a table or pedestal and when you turn it on, thumbnail photos of cybersculptures appear. You pick one out, click on it and it fills the screen and continually rotates 360 degrees. You pay a rental fee of so much per day for the image. Lets just say it's one of my cyberimages and after a few days or weeks you tire of it and rent a different image, maybe one of yours! Aha, we both make money off of the rental contract! Does that sound good? If the client still wants a physical object, they just order one from the factory (foundry) and the CAD/CAM program starts up the machinery and just spits one out (limited editions of course and to the artists specifications). Sculpture will still be hard work but it wont be the physical (sweat & toil) kind that we're used to. Hmmm, that might be just the thing for us old geezers and if we still have the brain cells left to master a CAD program it might even prolong the creative part of our lives. The photos of the invalid Matisse, bedridden, with scissors and colored paper comes to mind and I imagine a future Matisse working on a laptop! It could be us! One never knows where the future lies so don't just dismiss this as the rantings of some lunatic because if it can be imagined it can be a reality!
I had an 87 year old friend, a photographer all his life who in his last years sat at the computer (he could no longer get around very well to take photos) and revisited his old photos, manipulating, playing with and adjusting them to great effect. It kept him vibrant and alive and when I'd visit, once a week or so, he'd always enthuiastically have something new to show me.
Sincerely, Jeff

[fritchie]

......
The things that you talked about that cyberspace brings to the table are for the most part available NOW! We can't even imagine what's in the future. ........

I’m aware of that, and in fact as soon as I logged off, I remembered that I hadn’t even mentioned motion, or change of any kind in the cybersculpture. What you and I both came up with first as illustrations were examples of what the most conservative sculptors do right now. Cybersculpture could generate installations, narrative and/or interactive situations, and probably things we REALLY can’t imagine.

On a side note, I remember reading about forty or fifty years ago, in a speculative type magazine, that TV sets one day could be hung on the wall and used in a way similar to your see-through computer screen. They could display pictures the viewer might want, and change them from time to time. Is that what we do with flat-screen TV’s today?

[jwebb]

"...The single gesture of exploring
question(s) to discover any array of answer(s) is abandoned in favor of an 'advancement' of some sort. In my opinion, it is a common myth that both science and art need to propogate advancement to be "good" or "right"--A notion I vehemently disagree with." -- Obseq


This question seems to me to be about the difference between a kind of "pure science" approach, where questions are pusued for the sole sake of their answers, and the kind of science that gets funded in this society. That's usually focused on what can be seen (and sold) as an "advancement". It's market driven. And so is a lot of Art. And yes, I agree that there tends to be less aesthetic value in Art that is driven that way than in Art which is concerned with exploring a particular question in a particular way, as a single work unique in the world. I hadn't thought of it that way, but that is one of the things about high tech art, in general, that I don't like: There is usually less going on in it than meets the eye. (Of course that's a generalization and only my opinion.)

[sculptor]

I see science and technology as dance partners.

Science involves testing and viewing and needs instruments(technology) for testing, and viewing---when science exhausts the utility of the current technology, then it's progressions lead to new technologies, which allow for ever more improvements in the technologies and the science, and open new means of testing which allow for expanded hypothesis which allow for the quantitative analysis of what was once seen as qualitative.

and so the dance goes-----e.g.---if you could only test for copper or zinc in a bronze, then the other elements would be of a qualitative nature, and you might prefer your zinc from Britain, and your copper from Cyprus, because the 'quality' of the material was better, not knowing that impurities such as Pb, As, Sn, were the cause of the difference in quality. then comes the means of testing, and------
Quality becomes a quantitative entity.
as/per fritchies posting of computer generated faces, they seem to be verging on evolving the qualitative into the quantitative.

As science allows technology to evolve and technology allows science to evolve, so too art.

For the sake of this thread, let us assume that ART is dependent on technology--from the ice-age carvings to the sphinx to casting in bronze to cad/cam creations, art is simply the utilization of technology for aesthetic goals. Conversely, many technology improvements were byproducts of artistic endeavors.

It seems that what concerned obseq was the dichotomy of basic research vs. applied science. What we call 'bean counters' seem to see little of value in basic research, and the $ flows to the applied sciences. I am equally certain that there are those who see nothing of value in art.

For me, sculpture is a tactile thing. I often say that sculptors 'see' with their fingertips. so.......cybersculpture .............naw

whither hence?

(It should be fun)

rod (http://sculpture.alturl.com)