Subject: Speaking in public
| Posted By: Nateman
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| Posted On: 10/19/1999 10:34 PM
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1 Reply
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Egad. Now I know why I sit inconspicuously behind the computer screen and the canvas. How did I become so nervous all of a sudden? I was fine up until the moment it was turned over to me. The last time I spoke at a seminar I was nervous for a week and then fine at the time of presentation.
In any case, it worked itself out as soon as I drifted into my own psychobabble that went up down left and right. Here is was meant to say:
Computers have been a part of my life since I was very young. My father taught Mechanical Engineering at U.T. and my brother was a computer genius and fixing computers professionally by the 8th grade.
Their dinner conversations blurred above my head. I played the games.
When preparing for this presentation, I recalled this article from the Stateman in 81. The focus was on computers in the home. One of the lines that struck me was this one:
The Jensens aren’t playing Jetsons - the cartoon outer-space family ofr tomorrow. Industry watchers say they think microcomputers will be in 90 out of 100 homes by the end of the decade, much the same as television sets moved in to stay during the 1950’s. That was 1981.
Now we’re headed into the “millenium”. Planning is being done to create an “Arts and Technology” District, Austin is heralded as the “Silicon Hills” and I find myself spending more than 50% of my week sitting in front of the computer.
Most of my illustration clients prefer digitally produced artwork over hand created. So, even if I do a piece by hand, I often scan it in and do coloring or color adjustments in the computer and then send it to them - often via the internet.
I haven’t produced a physical portfolio of my work in years as I’ve created an extensive website I can direct potential clients to view the style of work that I do.
And for the first time in 10 years, I have a steady income with the aide of the computer as I manage two websites: txarts.net and main.org. Txarts provides free hosting and assistance to arts organizations statewide and main.org does the same for Austin area non-profits and service organizations. Sort of like a Citysearch specifically for non-profits.
Now, I’m helping my father who’s computer speak once blurred over my head in creating a website and a cdrom for his new textbook on Engineering.
As I considered what to say tonight, I realized that I never set out to use the computer as a “Fine Art” tool. In fact, I’ve discounted pieces of computer art I’ve seen in artshows for the fact that they were computer generated. As one who appreciates viewing artwork, I felt the results lacked the passion, the dynamics, the tactile sense of a piece created by hand. A super slick output - even made onto canvas lacked the sense of the pounding of the brush against the drum of the canvas. Sort of like the difference in the poster or postcard of a painting and the sensation of seeing the actual piece. Having worked with Photoshop, as soon as I could recognize the filters used on an image, I lost viewing interest altogether.
So, I was beating my head trying to make a decision if I considered “Digital Art” - “Art”. I didn’t know if I just hadn’t seen the right digital art or if I was just being prejudiced. Maybe I had not stretched my own mind to the computer’s possibilities beyond a marketing tool and a source of alternate income. Then as I stretched, I kept running into articles and news coverage about exhibits that were raising the even larger question: What is art? No doubt you’ve heard of Damien Hursts’ mutilated cow parts in New York causing a stir or you’ve heard that Norman Rockwell’s paintings - long discarded from art history books as “illustrations” - not fine art - are featured in a major retrospective show at Atlanta’s High Museum of Art and featured on the cover of ArtNews.
For answers, I turned to Robert Henri - a teacher from the early 1900’s. He wrote:
I came to the conclusion that Computer generated art was in it’s infancy. It will take time and the creative strength of artists pushing the new tool to carve it’s niche in the world’s art history.
So, in a roundabout way I’ve come to our topic tonight. “Computers as a Tool in Fine Arts”.
What’s neat about today’s technology is that it offers the art experience to the average person. With the computer, someone who has never developed technical, traditional skills can work with imagery, color, movement and form and produce results that he or she can be proud of. Not every person with a grape Imac will end up with an exhibition of work hanging in a gallery, but many will be able to experience the process - participate in art - and come to understand art.
For most of those here who do have the technical skills and artist inclinations the technology offers exciting new possibilities. With a few clicks on a scanned image of your work, you can see what it would look like with a little more blue or if this part or that part weren’t in the composition at all or completely design the composition within the computer. You can call up reference material over the web, display your work 24 hours a day, 7 days a week over the web, communicate and share processes in your traditional medium with artists across the globe via the web. With programs like Painter, you can use simulations of traditional media like watercolor and oils and make use of any brush you might be able to dream up to create work. There are devices like this tablet that utilizes a pen instead of a mouse. I attended a conference called Siggraph year before last and saw incredible technology which is coming our way. They had a pen tool that actually offered resistance as you carved into a virtual clay mold which looked 3-d through special glasses you wore. In fact, at this conference a good portion of the showroom was dedicated to Computer Art.
What’s even better is that we’re in demand and being thought about and discussed. Web pages aren’t just text anymore. They each have an interface. Web designers are falling over themselves to create new and more exciting looks and feels to their pages. Computer programmers - the ones that design programs like photoshop, need our input on how to make their programs better. Our interaction with the software and our communication with the developers leads to new and better tools. So the walls come down. It’s not the techie art illiterate vs the arty tech illiterate. It’s the two working together to create new and exciting things to look at, new things and new ways to experience, new ways to make you see something and say “Wow.”
And if you think about all of the high salary computer related jobs moving to town and all the giant houses their building in the hill country for the people in those jobs, think about the blank wall spaces they will have for your traditional artwork. What we must do is step across the bridge and as they help us use and understand their world, we must educate them to the qualities to look for and the steps in buying original artwork.
Ah. That's better.
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