Digital (part 2)

The more immediate questions for the artist and printmaker are these:

• Why use digital tools?  What are the advantages of the digital medium?
• What qualities evidence its use?

Here are some advantages and counterpoints of the digital medium:

A work that is made visible mechanically according to digital commands, can be stored digitally (as numbers).  Unlike all other visual art, it need not be stored or transported as a visible object.

Theoretically, materials need not be wasted in digital execution.  Unfortunately, this ideal is actually wishful at best.  Materials are used to generate energy, equipment is made of materials, and (in practice) digital artists almost never produce final objects without having made many physical trial proofs.

The digital medium allows a preview on a screen with no requirement to print, unlike traditional print media.  This allows the printmaker to make virtual trial proofs and get a good sense of what may be accomplished in actuality without using ink and paper.  This virtual process may also save time; however, the change in medium will inevitably produce an alternative progression of thinking and doing.  These changes will result in different outcomes than would have been arrived at by other means.  This is an example of the principle that process and philosophy are mutually formative.

In many cases, the digital medium allows the artist to manipulate encrypted data more efficiently than if the same result were pursued manually (though an exact result from one medium cannot be achieved by other media).  This allows the printmaker to compose in new ways.

Digital encryption and manipulation, however, is inept to generate objects from many materials (such as relief ink) that must be manipulated manually. Digital encryption can be used to drive mechanical manipulation of many materials, but this will result in peculiarly digital qualities.

Collage (part 2)

…So why collage?

Just as a drawing looks drawn, so a collage looks collaged.  Collage has peculiar visual qualities that either accord or discord with an artist’s intent.  For instance, the artist who wishes to create a fractured or overtly aggregated appearance will find a natural means for accomplishing her goal in collage.  Collage can also be made to appear seamless (just as drawing can be made to appear photographic), but it is much more difficult and tedious to do so.  This difficulty can be mitigated by employing digital tools.

Unnaturalness is another visual quality common to most collaged works—even when the aggregate appears seamless in terms of the components’ bounding contours.  Jarring juxtapositions of content can produce this quality.  For instance, a collaged head of a chicken on the body of a kitten, no matter how visually seamless the amalgamation, will come off as unnatural.

Put aside your realistic sobriety for a moment and consider that an alien (we’ll call her Xeeb) might not perceive the chicken-headed kitten as unnatural, but merely exotic.  What might produce unnaturalness more universally?  By definition, unnaturalness is in relationship to what is regularly perceived in nature.  No matter what light illumines, it does so with predictable results.  So if you blend photographs that were taken with different lighting; the collage of those photographs will have an unnatural appearance. Whereas something completely foreign may appear natural (that is not collaged) on a purely visual basis.  Unnaturalness is not dependent on familiarity with objects, spaces, societal norms, etc. because what we are familiar with is sufficient to prepare us for encountering the exotic.

Because we see through a certain kind of eyes, the things we perceive are seen according to a certain optical logic.  When this logic is defied, as collage is prone to do, the result will be unnatural.  Deviations from what we would expect in any of the following (and more) will produce an unnatural result:

• perspectives
• scale
• color relationships
• material characteristics

Our neighbor Xeeb will recognize a problem immediately if the chicken head is bronze whereas the body of the kitten is embalmed; this is because the materials obviously lack congruity (one is a metal, the other organic).  Or, again, if the chicken head is far larger than the kitten body (improbable scale), Xeeb will likely wonder why the culture produced the object rather than wondering how such a creature behaves.

To be continued…

Intentions and Impetuses

An artist wants to make a work of art that memorializes the 9/11(2001) attacks on the World Trade Centers in New York City because her father died in the second collapse.  Her intention is to memorialize the 9/11 attacks.  Her impetus is that her father died that day.  The same intention could have many other impetuses, such as criticizing the Bush administration of that time, comparing that event to Luke 13:4, or producing a work for a thematic exhibition on that topic.  Similarly, the same impetus could lead to many other intentions.  For example, because the artist’s father died in the 9/11 attacks, she might decide to render objects that belonged to her father, or produce an abstract composition that affects its viewers with qualities like her father had or emotions she supposes he may have experienced that day, and so on.

In recent times, some people have attempted to produce unmotivated art—art that is not referential or purposeful but is devoid of intentions and / or impetuses.  To produce art without some goal is, by definition, impossible.  Perhaps you realize that having that goal sets up a paradox.