Lessons of Life.

Life is never easy, and the lessons that it needs to teach you isn’t necessarily what you want to hear let alone learn.  I am learning that.  Stubborn, German blood and put poet, artist, playwright and a Yankee on top of that, you get one hard headed fellow.

I am a talented fellow that just might be a little too smart for my own good, but I started school, and again my temper got the better of me and I let the frustration of life to get the better of me.

I am a traditional fellow, whose skills are traditional in practice and I struggle with this technological age where we are speeding into the future without any thought of where we are going, or where it is leading us to. It is something I struggle with because  I watch and see us becoming dependent upon the ‘convenience of it all’ where the ‘human skill and innovation’  is easily forgotten and taken for granted.

I know that I have to move with the times, and that these devil of things, computers and advancements are capable of doing spectacular effects, but if I am to succeed I will have to get to know the devil itself.

But everything takes time and patience. This is not something easy to learn, and it is really hard for me, I have little patience for it and I have a certain sense of reluctance and disdain for these technologies that often replace the ‘human aspect’ and makes us to be the onlookers rather than the creators.

But life is what it is… a lesson that is to be lived and learned. How I am to survive the story of society and those expectations that the common wealth comes to accept and expect and demand, without selling out and be who I am, this is the question that riddles me in every thought.

But this experience of going back to school, trying to get things straightened out with the Veteran Assistance and all the school loans, and processing, to finally get this certificate for Graphic Communications will allow me to obtain a better paying job; this whole struggle where life seems to be swallowing me like Joanna’s big fish, has taught me that there is light at the end of the tunnel somewhere. You just have to believe in yourself, and remember nothing is impossible.

Gavion E. Chandler~

‘Man is his own devil.’

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.’