The sleek and speedy machine
of "Fine Arts" was demolished during a head-on collision with the insurmountably
jaded wall of "Post-Modernism". No one, it seems, has much interest in
even hauling off the wreckage. "Good enough", I say; "let sleeping dogs
lie".
It is time for a new order.
Not one of those lame "rising-out-of-the-ashes" things; because it is time
to turn our backs on what was. Let the art schools, fashionable galleries
and the whole money grubbing industry of Fine Arts rot and rust and fall
in from the weight of its own exclusivity. It is time for a revolution.
It is time for a "Digital Manifesto".
Why a manifesto? Simply because
no one does manifestos anymore. Therefore, what better way to connect the
passion of the old with the promise of the new. If there is to be a Manifesto
of the Digital Arts here are some of the things it should include.
I. Death to the ...
Like all good manifestos
our's must call for the death of something or other. Usually, this death
is wished upon an oppressor or an oppressive idea. I can think of no greater
oppression than the concept of "limited editions". One of the things nailed
into your head while attending the finer art schools is that the artist
owes it to buyers, agents and your future estate to limit your output of
a certain image. The argument usually is that too many copies drives down
the prices and scares off your "investors". But, who really profits from
this? Not the artist. This is the art agents' way of guaranteeing that
after you die everyone else will profit.
Limited editions may have
made sense in the past. Litho stones and silk screens wear out. An engraving
plate can print the image upon it at only one size. But with today's digital
printing, ten copies now are the same color and quality as ten more copies
later. An image can be printed at one size on coated paper, and another
size on back-lit film, and another size on canvas. Is each one of these
a separate edition? Wherein lies the edition...with the image or with the
materials and size? If this is a convention that can so easily be usurped,
then why bother? Is it better to sell one print for a thousand dollars
or a thousand prints for one dollar? "Digital" allows and should encourage
the artist to limit their output based only on the demand for a particular
work or image over the course of their whole lifetime. "Make hay while
the sun shines"...(then bury your files with you).
II. We hold these things
to be "contra-digital"...
As the story goes, Picasso
refused to enter Braque's studio until he received Braque's agreement to
his warning; "all artists are thieves!" Picasso absorbed Braque's conceptualization
of "Cubism" and the rest is art history. And, why not? No one complains
when an artist includes a tree they have seen in their neighbor's yard
in some art they are working on, because that tree is a natural part of
the environment. "Environment", however now includes the world wide web,
music on CD, high quality photographs published in magazines, etc. Copyright
laws are going to have to change to include the ability to sample these
parts of the natural environment for inclusion in other artist's works.
Don't get me wrong, here,
any person that copies or otherwise re-issues someone else's work in whole
or part and sells that work as their own or without permission of the original
artist should be a candidate for public flogging. With the original artist
receiving the syndication and re-broadcast rights for the video taped flogging
footage. It's only fair. Either that or convince all mankind to quit inventing
and using machines that make perfect copies and provide instantaneous distribution
of aural and visual materials. OOPS, too late.
III. Expand the creative
bandwidth!
In the January/February
issue of Communication Arts magazine (page 52), Paul Matthaeus wrote an
interesting article about the transition in commercial TV away from the
expensive proprietary special effects houses toward desktop multi-media
platforms. The following paragraph makes a good argument for where Digital
Art is also heading. Under the risk of public flogging, here is the paragraph:
"In the mid-"80s, print
was revolutionized by an innocent little box called the Macintosh, and
programs like Pagemaker and Illustrator. Suddenly the ability to manipulate
text, design, texture and color was in the hands of the proletariat. Typesetters
decried the technical deficiencies. "The Macintosh will never have the
kerning pairs of a Mergenthaler!" And over a decade later, it still doesn't.
But it enabled millions the opportunity to manipulate the media. Iteration
after iteration, layer upon layer, the breadth and depth of design exploded,
producing some wildly interesting work from the uninitiated and design
illiterate.
People who had no idea what
the "rules" were, and felt no loss when they were broken"...had no business
doing what they did, but thank God they did. Mr. Matthaeus went on to add,
"desktop video may never reach the highly controlled and calibrated quality
of conventionally-produced high-end Video...but like in Print, it just
won't matter." Expanding the creative bandwidth is more important and will
win out over preserving worn out standards and ways of doing business that
are designed mainly to exclude and discourage the millions who now have
digital control over the "visual" part of the Visual Arts.
While the integrity of an
Artist's work must always be the major concern, Digital Arts must currently
avoid being suckered into corporate maneuvering that limits creativity
and access based on old standards, materials and money. For example, watercolor
paper may not be the best substrate to reproduce an image. And, just because
art salesmen are stuck in a place where what the image is printed on is
more important than the image itself...where the frame costs more than
they will pay the artist for the piece...where brand names mean more than
innovation, we must not give in. We must continue to work and publish,
show and share and market what we have made.
It is regrettable that some
manufacturers in their zeal to sell over priced and maintenance intensive
printing systems made claims as to ink longevity without bothering to learn
the facts of their product. The Digital Artist will have to work for many
years, now, to counter the already faint-hearted gallery owners who use
ink longevity and desperate clinging to old materials as an excuse to ignore
THE WORK that digital artists create. In the new world we are currently
creating, high cost will no longer signify superior work. Galleries and
critics alike will soon have to realize that creativity, vision, diversity
and craftsmanship have returned as the benchmarks of "value".
IV. Toward a living Art...
Digital tools can make Art
that is accessible; Art that everyday people can afford to take home and
live with, and discard when they want to move on to something new. "Archivability"
is a scam...a way to exclude...a lame excuse to charge more money. We can't
possibly know that any one of us is making artwork that someone will want
to pull out of an hermetically sealed drawer in five hundred years. Digital
artwork is much more akin to the Japanese print makers of the 1700 and
1800s. No one questioned if those prints were going to last three hundred
years. Those colorful, masterful, fast moving commodities served a different
purpose all together...a living purpose. A purpose that was inextricably
bound to expanded creative and commercial bandwidth brought about by new
tools and techniques. The market for those prints roared with the life
of mass approval not exclusion based on price or snobbish philosophy. This
is where a Manifesto of Digital Art should carry us.
V. There is no conclusion...
Manifesto or not. Archival
inks and papers or not. Limited editions or not. Regardless of the stalling
tactics of galleries, critics and the art industrial complex, the genie
is
out of the bottle. Nothing will stop this innovation. All the excuses that
plague the digital artist today will be swept away as this wave hits the
beach. My advice is to grab your motherboard. Paddle out as far as you
can. Catch the wave and enjoy the ride. Live long and prosper.
This article was first published
by
EFX, Art and Design
magazine.
Please visit
www.dunkingbirdproductions.com
for more articles and essays by
JD Jarvis. |