Digital Art and Philosophy #1

Digital Art and Philosophy #1Melanie Swan

University of the Commons and the Emerald Tablet GallerySyllabus: http://www.MelanieSwan.com/PCA

Slides: http://www.slideshare.net/lablogga

Image: Emese Szorenyi

What is Digital Art?

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Probably not what comes to mind!

What is Digital Art?

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What is Digital Art? ‘Official’ Definitions

• “Digital art is anything involving computers and art such as using a computer to create art or digitized art displays” – EB Boyd, Writer

• “Digital art is using new technologies for the digital, computer-based composition, display, and reproduction of images and sounds” – Katherine Thomson-Jones, Professor

• “Digital art is a general term for a range of artistic works and practices that use digital technology as an essential part of the creative and/or presentation process” – Christiane Paul, Curator

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Reading: What is New Media? by Lev Manovich (2001)

• New media: – Internet, websites, computer multimedia, computer games, CD-

ROMs & DVDs, virtual reality, and possibly many other areas• New media revolution:

– Shift of all of our culture to computer-mediated forms of production, distribution, and communication

• Simultaneous development of modern media and computers (1800s daguerreotype, punch card loom, Babbage analytical engine): – Media machines and computing machines are necessary for

modern mass societies to function• Situating digital art: Art eras: representational art (reality),

abstract art and photography, digital art 5

"Every culture will use the maximum level of technology available to it to make art" - Scott Draves, Generative Artist

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x0OK1GiI83s6

What is [regular] Art?

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Classic definitions of art

• “Art is the expression or application of human creative skill and imagination, typically in a visual form such as painting or sculpture” – Wikipedia

• Art “…is a means of union among men, joining them together in the same feelings … towards the well-being of individuals and of humanity.” – Leo Tolstoy

• “Art is a discovery and development of elementary principles of nature into beautiful forms suitable for human use.” – Frank Lloyd Wright

• “Art is not a thing — it is a way.” - Elbert Hubbard

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An Essay in Aesthetics by Roger Fry (1909)

“A certain painter, not without some reputation at the present day, once wrote a little book on the art he

practices, in which he gave a definition of that art so succinct that I take it as a point of departure for this

essay. 'The art of painting', says that eminent authority, 'is the art of imitating solid objects upon a flat surface

by means of pigments.' It is delightfully simple, but prompts the question - Is that all?”

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An Essay in Aesthetics by Roger Fry (1909)

“A great part of human life is made up of instinctive reactions to sensible objects, and their accompanying emotions. But man has the peculiar faculty of calling up again in his mind the echo of past experiences of this kind, of going over it again, 'in imagination' as we say. He has, therefore, the possibility of a double life; one the actual life, the other the imaginative life.” “Between these two lives there is this great distinction, that in the actual life the processes of natural selection have brought it about that the instinctive reaction, such, for instance, as flight from danger, shall be the important part of the whole process, and it is towards this that the man bends his whole conscious endeavour. But in the imaginative life no such action is necessary, and, therefore, the whole consciousness may be focused upon the perceptive and the emotional aspects of the experience. In this way we get, in the imaginative life, a different set of values, and a different kind of perception.”

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An Essay in Aesthetics by Roger Fry (1909)

“The graphic arts are the expression of the imaginative life. Art is an expression and a stimulus of this imaginative life, which is separated from actual life by the absence of responsive action. Now this responsive action implies in actual life moral responsibility.” “In art we have no such moral responsibility - it presents a life freed from the binding necessities of our actual existence. Art is the chief organ of the imaginative life; it is by art that it is stimulated and controlled within us, and, as we have seen, the imaginative life is distinguished by the greater clearness of its perception, and the greater purity and freedom of its emotion.”

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What is Digital Art?

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What is Digital Art?

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Democratized Creativity: Performance, Music, VR, Gaming.

What is Digital Art?

14http://www.plummerfernandez.com/Digital-Natives

What is Digital Art?

Social network visualization of voting patterns of U. S. Senators during 2007

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Design Aesthetics of Meaning-Making: Info Visualization.

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What is Digital Art?Design Aesthetics of Meaning-Making: Info Visualization.

What is Digital Art?

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Natural Aesthetics: BioArt, GenArt, SynBio, Biomimicry, CrowdArt.

What is Digital Art?

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Portable ArtTech: Identity, Wearable Electronics, the Future.

What is (early) Digital Art?

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Hypertext, hypermedia, net.art, web art.

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What is Digital Art?Tactical Media, Hactivism, Electronic Civil Disobedience.

Graffiti Research Lab and Stiktu augmented reality social graffiti app from Layar

Why Philosophy?

• Branches of philosophy– Metaphysics– Epistemology– Aesthetics

• Aesthetics deals with the nature and expression of art and beauty

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What Philosophical Issues arise with Digital Art?

• What is art? • Why does art matter? • How does art engage us? • How does digital art change

our notions of– Identity– Performance– Interactivity– Creativity

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A Sudden Gust of Wind (after Hokusai) by Jeff Wall (1993)

http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/wall-a-sudden-gust-of-wind-after-hokusai-t06951

Travellers Caught in a Sudden breeze at Ejiri by Katsushika Hokusai (1832) from The Thirty-six Views of Fuji 24

Philosopher: Mark HansenProduction of Images

“The disembodiment characteristic of the virtual image is synonymous with its dependence on the activity of the body-brain: lacking any material autonomy of its own, the image does not preexist its actualization and can be given body only through this activity.... here it is the very divide between the virtual and the physical that is most significant. The aesthetic experience solicited by these works juxtaposes a spectatorial synthesis that seamlessly fuses virtual and physical space with a background awareness, triggered by certain material elements, that the events thus fused belong to incompossible space-times. In this way, attention is drawn to the capacity of the spectator's body-brain activity effortlessly to produce a virtual image out of heterogeneous material.” - New Philosophy for New Media, 2006, p. 61

Summary: The virtual image lacks any material autonomy of its own and is produced by the viewer 25

Digital Artist: Jeffrey Shaw

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http://www.medienkunstnetz.de/works/the-legible-city/Video: http://www.medienkunstnetz.de/works/the-legible-city/video/1/

The Legible City by Jeffrey Shaw (1988-1991)

Digital Artist: Douglas Gordon

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Play Dead Real Time by Douglas Gordon (2003)http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q-XD6fuf0ho

Henry Rebel (2011)Video installation, two HD video projections, sound, 93 min, looped

Digital Artist: Bill Viola

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The Crossing by Bill Viola (2009)http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHqhaH6m9pY

Production of the Virtual Image• The image in digital art goes

beyond the merely visual• The digital image

encompasses the process by which information is made perceivable

• The virtual image lacks any material autonomy of its own and is produced by the viewer

• ‘Image’ or ‘image’ and story29

Philosopher: Dominic Lopes• Reading: “A Review of A Philosophy of Computer

Art by Dominic Lopes” by Timothy Binkley (2010)• Sudden ubiquity of computers and their ability

to turn abstractions into experiences• What features of computer-based works make

them works in the computer art form and set them apart from other kinds of art?– Digital art: it is art, made by computer or made for

display by a computer, in a common digital code– Computer art: it is art, run on a computer,

interactive, interactive because it is run on a computer

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Digital Artist: Jeffrey Shaw

Golden Calf by Jeffrey Shaw (1994)http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=paaacEIF6wUhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0yeIQB2o8xc

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Digital Artist: Ken Goldberg

Telegarden by Ken Goldberg (1995–2004)http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gbyy5vSg8w8

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Digital Artist: Scott Snibbe

Boundary Functions by Scott Snibbe (1998)http://www.snibbe.com/projects/interactive/boundaryfunctions/http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Ax4pgtHQDg

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Digital Artist: Hisako Yamakawa

Kodama—Mischievous Echoes by Hisako Yamakawa (2005)http://www.filefestival.org/site_2007/pop_trabalho.asp?id_trabalho=2293&cd_idioma=2&acao=visualizar&http://www.ntticc.or.jp/Archive/2006/Openspace/art_technology/emergencies.html#e001

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Audio example - EMI

REWORKInteractive Philip Glass remixes by Beck, Amon Tobin, and more

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http://www.snibbestudio.com/#/

Computer Art

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• It is art, run on a computer, interactive, interactive because it is run on a computer

Why is Interactivity so important?

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A-Volve by Christa Sommerer and Laurent Mignonneau (1994)

http://www.medienkunstnetz.de/works/a-volve/

Interactivity

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• Audience can be in conversation with the work

• Audience can create the work• Artist has more ways to

communicate with the audience

• Artist can be in conversation with his/her own process

• Interactivity is evocative

Text Rain by Camille Utterback (1999)

Interactivity: a complex cognitive behavior

Model of Interactivity Developed by Don Norman

Source: Understanding Interactivity, p. 34

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Merleau-Ponty

• The Phenomenology of Perception (1945)• Perception is not stimuli reception• Perception is a process of continuous interaction involving

the subject's intentions, expectations, and physical actions in "communion" with its surroundings– Perception is related to intentionality (goal-directedness)

• Two threads re: philosophy of digital art– Dominic Lopes: Interactivity is related to deeply evocative viewer

responses, complex cognitive behavior, and the process of perception

– Mark Hansen: Virtual image production is the process by which information is made perceivable

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Digital Art Critique

• Diversity• Dynamism, co-creation• Ephemerality, archivability• Role of critics• Standards• Valorization, value-determination• Collecting

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Philosophy of Art

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A Pair of Shoes by Vincent Van Gogh (1886)

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Cultural unification: art and technology

• “Two Cultures” lecture by CP Snow (1959) – lamenting the division between arts and science – At Cambridge a gap between the “science culture” and the

“arts” or “literary culture” where the "two groups had almost ceased to communicate at all"

– Nostalgia for earlier times when science and humanities were more closely aligned

• Digital Art crosses the rift– Art developed with computers and computing methods,

digitally displayed– Design, aesthetics, and elegance in technology (Apple)

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Agenda and Upcoming Sessions2/12 - Introduction "What is digital art?" and what philosophers are saying about it?2/19 - The Design Aesthetics of Meaning-Making: Information Visualization.

“Aesthetics of Information Visualization” (Warren Sack, 2013)“Authenticity and Computer Art” (Margaret A. Boden, 2006, pp 1-11)Processing.org tutorial or download/test TableauDigital art interpretation of Van Gogh’s ‘Pair of Shoes’

2/26 - Democratized Creativity: Performance, Music, Virtual Reality, Gaming.3/5 - Natural Aesthetics: Generative Art, SynBio, Biomimicry, CrowdArt.3/12 - Portable ArtTech: Identity, Fashion, Wearable Electronics, the Future.

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Comments and Feedback: m@MelanieSwan.com

Digital Art and Philosophy Melanie Swan

University of the Commons and the Emerald Tablet Galleryhttp://www.MelanieSwan.com/PCAhttp://www.slideshare.net/lablogga

Image: Emese Szorenyi

Thank you!