Damian Stewart on Sat, 13 Dec 2008 03:56:32 +0100 (CET) |
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Re: <nettime> [eu-gene] The first public presentationof DynamicPaintingtechnology |
alex wrote: > It seems you are encouraging a painter to do conceptual art because it's > in fashion, and that seems rather crass. If that's not what you mean > then I'm not sure what you do mean -- could paintings (generative or > otherwise) be formed by anything other than ideas? perhaps this is one of the broader issues that limits acceptance for generative art amongst the wider world? i mean - generative art really removes the idea of the 'concept' from the 'finished art product' - or at least, renders it trivial. whether or not the code that produced it can stand in for the conceptual side is another question. but then all that you're left with, 'really', is the look of the thing. when dealing with my own work, i often find the conceptual side of things getting in the way of what i want to express. i feel quite old-fashioned, and so in the course of describing my work i find myself jumping through hoops to express something simple like 'it feels trippy to watch' in artspeak. cf http://whitney.org/www/exhibition/hewitt.jsp , notice the language he's using, how he makes what he's doing seem totally impenetrable, when really the idea is very simple. he constructs replicas of things, using a bunch of unexpected/surprising elements and a whole lot of tongue-in-cheek; but listen to the _language_ he has to deploy in order to make it 'art'. at 1:17 in the video: 'a number of systems that i'm working with .. one of which is these worm bins' - really, what do we gain by talking about a worm-farm as a 'system'? generative art kind of brings this question right to a head, because 'everyone knows' (i'm being facetious) that computers cannot express creativity, _therefore_ they cannot be making art; but then you have the question of the artist, tinkering around in the engineering of the system, so they've perhaps had some input; and then you do have to admit that the images they produce are kind of appealing somehow, at least for a few minutes, which is as much as can be said about most of the content of any contemporary (establishment) art-gallery. -- damian stewart | skype: damiansnz | damian@frey.co.nz frey | live art with machines | http://www.frey.co.nz # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mail.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@kein.org