The Arts in the Age of Technology

 I do not wish to contest the application of technology, and how computers and the advancements allow us as artists to make it more practical, or even efficient in production of it. However I wish to ponder as the retribution of the ‘convenience’ and ‘practical’  practices of ‘Technological arts’.

    I am currently in intro to computer graphics where I am practicing creating ‘Conceptual art’  where the computer by my instructions and key punches and in the dynamics of it program where creative ideas come to be imposed these ideas come to shape and manifest in their own state of reality.

    I am an artist by tradition and I working to know the devil itself the computer, learning how to manipulate and instruct it to get it to do what I want it to do. That common Joe who can’t draw a lick, can use the computer and its program, rather he tells ‘inputs the information’ into the computer for what he hopes to create. Yes he is instructing the computer. He is putting in the information, but it is the computer that generates the idea within the parameters of its program. Even with the drawing pad, when the stiletto pen scores the tablet and the computer translates and converts the input to the desired shade, thickness, and with a touch of a button or two he can adjust thickness, shade and color; this is still generic processing.  No normal pencil or pen under command of the human hand can self adjust its artistic tempo. It takes practice, dedication and lots and lots of practice.

    I do not argue that it is does not take skill, and knowledge to create these wondrous pieces of ‘conceptual art’.  This I will not even tempt to debunk. I know. To get a computer to do what you want to do, is not an easy task. Sometimes it’s just easier to draw that curved line because my hand knows what my brain and eyes want to see, to create… because it is attached to me and instinctively apart of me. On the other hand the computer is not and in the end it is the conceptual ability of the computer and its program that allows me to create that ‘piece of conceptual art’.
   
    I can touch, physically touch the paint, the pencil and the ink that I lay to canvas. I physically manipulate it and with mortal touch I shade, shape and even screw up and then make it work. There is no ‘undo button’ or some ‘magic save button’  that lets me go back to some point of reference, just in case I happen to make a fatal mistake.

   You can on a computer and therein lays the difference. The act of commitment, and faith, knowing that’s there no going back. But the human ability, to create, each are equal in ‘Conceptual art’   and  ‘Natural Medium’  It is raw, fresh and inspired in a moment of knowing. ‘Conceptual art’ is well exactly that, ‘Conceptual art’ that is created within the realities and principles of programming, where an idea is punched and keyed in with no guts and no leap of faith. Because the magic undo button.



                                                               Gavion E. Chandler~

                                                              ‘Man is his own devil.’