How do line, shape, and color behave when the gates of Time are suddenly opened to them?

I suggest that even the most skilled artisans have only just begun to explore this question.  The prevalence of narrative in moving mediums has marginalized this question for many years.  Of course a great film does wonders with line, shape, and color over time, but ultimately, it’s a film, and we’re there to get to know the characters and discover their fates.  This question cannot be answered properly when narrative takes precedence.  This is not a new conflict.  We’ve seen it for centuries in the categorization of still images as paintings or illustrations.  Although there is still a small, debated overlap, by and large illustrations are defined by What they depict rather than How.  The power of paintings resides in How the depiction is made, through the heightened use of line, shape, and color(among other things).  I argue that a similar distinction can be made regarding film and moving painting.

True moving paintings will make expert use of the How.  Line, shape, and color as they proceed through time will form the basis for that.

The event was on Dec. 18th, 2011, by invitation only.

Live stream. Dan @ 30 min. http://ustream.tv/channel/softwareandart

What is it with the incessant lamentation that artists didn’t “get what they deserved while they were alive”?

It’s probably their own fault, so knock it off.

Take note of the artists who sought attention in their own time compared to those who did not.   What sense does it make to mourn those who didn’t bother asking for recognition?  Didn’t they get exactly what they asked for? Van Gogh detested marketing and business and was quite clear that he wished to “leave a memento before he died” as he did not “care much for his own life”. He got exactly what he wished for, did not ask for sympathy, and does not deserve any. If recognition was important to him, he could have gotten himself out of the boondocks and worked his substantial connections in Paris one or two months out of the year instead of pining and whining to his brother via mail.  He had years to do this before he became ill.  Van Gogh’s level of recognition in his lifetime was his own fault, and for people to continue to absolve him is ludicrous and doesn’t help living artists at all. It perpetuates the belief that promotional sloth for an artist is OK, even admirable!, even though Picasso, Dali, O’Keefe et. al. proved otherwise.  O’Keefe is a perfect example. She did good, hard work out in the boondocks, New Mexico, then married into the hub of contemporary oil painting in the United States, Alfred Stieglitz in New York City.  Say what you will about her motivations in that marriage but she got what she asked for: recognition of good work in her lifetime.

Artists choose their path.  They tend to be intelligent people.  They know that their life decisions have consequences.  If they want stability they can become lawyers and doctors.  Many forego respectable jobs, powerful family connections, and some are even trust fund babies!  Stop pretending they don’t know what they are doing when they choose not to bother with recognition.

I suppose that brilliant dead artists are our “mythos”.  They are “gods” that we characterize as underworshipped in their own day.  So we have sympathy for them.  Even if they never asked for it or if it’s too late to make a difference to them.  We do it for us, because it makes us feel valiant.  “If so-and-so were alive today I would appreciate her!”  No you wouldn’t.  You’d ignore her along with everyone else and pay attention to whomever is in the newspaper, magazine, blog, or whatever you deem a reliable source for who is “important”.  If you really want to break out of this.  If you really mean it.  Start ignoring the news and the “arbiters of taste” and start thinking for yourself.   If you’re already doing this, I am grateful to you.  If you’re an artist, the ball is in your court.

You can’t help Van Gogh, but you can help the bright, promising artist down the street who is alive to appreciate your support.

My ability to execute my creative ideas is far outstripped by my volume of thoughts of possible art to come. Therefore I present my first speculative essay.  The topic is the use of computers to advance the practice of music composition and performance:

Due to it’s mathematical roots, music lends itself well to use in computing. Western classical music notation is discrete in nature with pitch, duration, dynamics, and phrasing meticulously spelled out for the performer. The framework of music theory and counterpoint both can be reduced to more or less mathematical relationships. 20th century twelve tone and tone clusters are, of course, mostly completely mathematical in nature to the point of being arguably musical. Even instrumental idiosyncrasies and ensemble approaches and relationships used to balance music between individual instruments, octaves, and sections can be modeled and represented in numeric and abstract terms. The compositional rules which govern the writing for a single instrument or group of instruments closely resembles an “interface” in object-oriented programming. Notation could be said to trigger “methods” and set “properties” of the instrumental treatment.

All this to say that we can teach a computer a great deal about music without losing much in the translation. Design patterns for many aspects of music can be derived and boiled down to algorithms. If this were accomplished, the next step would be to impress upon the machine higher-level considerations of musical form and style, rhythmic and melodic fashions of different ages. Then provide a tremendous amount of raw material, musical data for the machine to digest and learn from, comparing it’s models to reality and allowing it to adjust the models to it’s own satisfaction.

The most challenging consideration would be the introduction of the idea of emotion in music. I wonder if this has been attempted with much seriousness or success. First we might codify the body of emotional attitudes expressed through music, most of which are defined by their Italian or German names. Then the delicate procedure of performance approaches would be needed and here the water becomes deep indeed. It is unclear what defines the human concept of musical shape in emotional terms. Perhaps we might start with patterns of phrase and multi-phrase shapes, cuing on dynamics in relation to contrapuntal and harmonic context. Here we move into intangibles which must be demystified. What, exactly, is a turn of phrase? How, in precise terms, is a single note held without becoming static? In a piece with thousands of notes, what holds it together from moment to moment and from beginning to end? At this point the many simplified models and algorithms regarding melody, harmony, dynamics, phrase, and all the other variables available in music begin to work together in enormously complex ways to result in effective musical phrases, movements, and pieces.  Most critical is the idea that emotion is a feedback of information.  A composer or musician responds emotionally to their own output, adjusting their output accordingly to moderate this response, this “feeling”.  It could be said that great compositions or great performances are not producing audio information as their end result, they are producing a response in the listener.  I contend that machines will only be able to stimulate us intellectually through music when they have learned to stimulate us emotionally.  In order to achieve this they must be taught to feel.  Additionally, they must be taught to learn from experience to develop their ability to differentiate feelings and place them at their disposal for their use in music.  I realize this is getting more than a bit sci-fi but this is precisely where this line of inquiry leads us and we have the means at our disposal to experiment with this.

So in order to build musically effective machines, we must first teach them the mechanics of music then give them a way to respond emotionally to their own sounds.

Image from Jaime E Oliver.

His work recently showed on the world’s largest LCD display, mounted on the Seoul Square Building in Korea. The screen stands at 78 meters (256 feet) high, stretching 99 meters wide and covering a total 7,722 square meters (83,118 square feet). The display is made up of 42,000 LEDs fixed into Spanish terracotta tiles which cover the entire 19 floors of the Seoul Square building.  The exhibit runs until Sept. 27th.

Vimeo  http://vimeo.com/robertseidel/scrape

Youtube http://youtube.com/watch?v=w53zXWcENYM

Information http://robertseidel.com/scrape.211.0.html

The Lytro camera employs a breakthrough technology called a microlens array to gather a significantly larger amount of data with each shot.  The photographer, or others, can later sift through this data using computer tools, adjusting the focus point of the picture in post-production.  The concept was first proposed by the founder of Lytro, Ren Ng, in his computer science dissertation in 2006 at Standford University.  The paper won the Association of Computing Machinery’s worldwide competition that year.  Now Mr. Ng is working to translate the idea into a saleable camera technology.  The possibilities for the digital camera market as well as the 3D market are promising.

For the world of art this could mean cameras, and later, video cameras, that capture an order of magnitude more visual information, allowing the artist to explore different focus points later in the studio, or allowing the viewer to do so interactively in an installation.

Read more in this New York times article by Steve Lohr about the Lytro camera.

Boston-based artist Mark Stock will be presenting in June, 2011.   details here

In order to understand our world of computer-aided visual art, it’s worthwhile to look up from the screen and and see others fighting the same battles in nearby mediums.   Computer music parallels computer visual arts in many ways. Here’s a splendid New York Times article about one of the original technical music crusaders, Max Mathews.

In the Place Where We Live

Dan Hermes is exhibiting a series of portraits and landscapes featuring the New England area.

Sept. 24-25, 2011, 11am-6pm

Hope Church
85 Seaverns Avenue
Jamaica Plain, MA 02130
map

Downloadable map of the entire event with all artists.  We’re #14

18th Annual Jamaica Plain Open Studios

“Kitchen’s Door”, Erik Sanner

2011
Video projection onto oil painting on wood panel
23″ x 40″
used with permission

can be seen at

A TOOL IS A MIRROR
Boston Cyberarts 2011

@ Mobius
725 Harrison Avenue, Suite One
Boston MA 02118

Fri Apr 22, 2011 - Sun May 08, 2011

A Tool Is A Mirror

Every keyboard reflects a hand
and every screen an eye.

Aerostatic
Sheila Gallagher
Dennis Hlynsky
Brian Kane
Duncan Laurie
Rupert Nesbitt
Erik Sanner

Curated by Elizabeth Keithline

Gallery Hours:
Fri & Sat 11am – 4pm

still from Red Square #1, Dan Hermes

The dramatic glass-enclosed Waterfront Square Atrium at Atlantic Wharf in downtown Boston is the site of an exhibition of slow-moving dynamic digital painting, digital animation, and algorithmically generated software that explores fluid dynamics and digital and artificial life. Works included by Brian Knep, Andrew Neumann, Robert Arnold, Dennis Miller and Dan Hermes.   An unusual number of moving paintings are on display in this exhibition.  Eric Sanner, another moving painter is exhibiting at Mobius this month.

Fluid Perimeters is curated by George Fifield and Heidi Kayser.

Anne Spalter’s digital video drawing, “Fracture”, shown at Stephan Stoyanov’s gallery in NYC in Feb 2011, has been acquired by the Albright-Knox museum in Buffalo NY. ‘It’s permanent collection, which includes works by most of the great artists of the late 19th and the 20th centuries, as well as many emerging artists, has been cited as one of the world’s top international surveys of modern and contemporary painting and sculpture.’

http://www.annespalter.com/digitalvideodrawings.html

review by Dan Hermes –

Drawing with Code: Works from the Anne and Michael Spalter Collection is a computer-generated art exhibition at the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum in early 2011.  Pieces date from 1952 to 2007 and draw on twentieth century visual art inspiration, bold color juxtaposition, strong visual composition, and shapes speaking for themselves and largely devoid of cultural reference, social implication, or conceptual angle.    Many artists in the exhibit identify collectively as “Algorists”, artists whose work is based on mathematical algorithms.  All the works in this exhibit were produced using computer programs.

George Fifield, the curator of the exhibit, begins the journey with a counterpoint of curvaceous oscilloscope works by Ben F. Laposky against a plotted-line fugue of squares by Vera Molnar.  Laposky’s stills caught a dancer-like figure in mid-gesture with the markedly un-artistic device of the oscilloscope while Molnar’s orderly black squares devolved into a cacophony of orange polygons similar to an ancient Chinese horizontal scroll art technique to achieve a time-based, film-like effect.  Both achieved a strong sense of motion with a still image.

Ben F. Laposky, Electronic Abstraction 4, 1954-1956,
oscilliscope, high speed film, photo paper, 16.5 x 13 inches

*

Impossible to overlook in this exhibition is the missing “hand of the artist”.  Since this exhibit deliberately includes works that required actual programming of a computer to produce, the sense that a human being produced the marks on these pages is diminished if not absent.  Pre-Impressionist painting largely sought to avoid any obvious signs of the artist’s brushstrokes and the consistency of the image was paramount.  In the past one hundred years, however, visible evidence of the painter’s presence became desirable, oft described as “painterly”.   In spite of this former trend, a new trend is upon us: humans, machines, and our output are gradually becoming unified.  Successful content in any medium now depends entirely upon the blurring of flesh and metal, axioms firing in tandem with the CPU, our eyes enhanced by RGB monitors and our appendages mouse-extensible.  Many of the auto-generated works were subsequently silk-screened, perhaps to lend a “handmade” quality to the works?  If that was the intent, it worked at least as well than ever it did for Warhol, the “rehumanization” of factory-machined artwork.

A reflection of this more contemporary trend, the “hand of the artist” in this exhibition takes on a different form: the mark of the machine.  Distinctive oscilloscope tracks, inkjet characters, plotter vectors, and both Cartesian and Polar graph structures.  These are the marks of computers in the 70’s, 80’s, and decreasingly, the 90’s.  As pixel size decreases and pixel count increases, computer graphics technology gallops towards the ideal which will finally fool our retina’s rods and cones into perceiving computer-generated imagery as real.  By and large, this exhibit made clear that in this aesthetic reality, the computers unapologetically make the visual rules and our eyes are compelled to obey.

Manuel Barbadillo commits to the computer’s mark as a foundational particle in his Untitled, 1972, the entire work rendered from a single ASCII character, the asterisk: *.  A handful of these white characters on a brown background form the atomic motif of a curved leaf or wave.  This shape is repeated on the points of the compass and between to create a complex mandala reminiscent of an asterisk.  This is a stark example of a meme self-replicating naturally into more complex structures and grammars then bloom into elaborate concepts and vocabularies.   Marks mature into mediums.

[ ]

Vera Molnar plots squares and their polygonal kin in keeping with evolution and mutation.  Meticulous spacing and shading of square against square, square within square, and the gradual crookeding  of the square into asymmetry: almost-but-not-quite-square inside almost-but-not-quite-square.  Manfried Mohr examines this grammar, too, with fastidious devotion:  the deconstruction of the symmetric polygon into all of it’s asymmetric cousins, using the very tool of symmetric construction to demarcate and plot the demise of shapes: the x-y axis.  Mohr’s work springs forth from the xy axis as a fountainhead, an anchor, a home key from which to modulate.  While the asymmetry of individual shapes may diverge and compete with one another, their unified bifurcation along the horizontal, the vertical, or both, allows them to share the canvas in harmony.  As Darwin showed that life is infinite generative design, so does Mohr examines imaginary variations of life with his own flavor of generative mutation: flower petals as yet unbloomed, hard-edged leaves, branches, and trees in a curveless, Euclidean greenhouse.

Manfred Mohr, p-300b, 1980, plotter drawing, ink on paper, 27 ½ x 27 ½ inches

Frieder Nake, Untitled, 1972, serigraph
from the Art Ex Machina portfolio 197/200
silkscreen after plotter drawing, 21 x 15 inches

Hiroshi Kawano, Untitled, 1972, serigraph
from the Art Ex Machina portfolio 197/200
silkscreen after plotter drawing, 15 x 21 inches

From the black and white beginnings of Mohr, Desmond Paul Henry, and Edward Zajec, the colorists in this exhibition bloom with all the tenacity and unity of the Fauves.  Silkscreen technique affords the bold, low-resolution primaries of Hiroshi Kawano’s Untitled, 1972, the bright oranges and and reds of George Nees Untitled, 1972, and the layered primaries in Frieder Nake’s Untitled, 1972.  Increasingly  subtle and complex use of color unfolds throughout the exhibition.

§

Wireframes, the grid that graphical computers splay across every surface, enable a machine’s sense of form .  The addition of the Z axis brought computers into the human visual realm of three dimensions.  Evenly spaced contour lines are the elastic rulers of the digital age, measuring form and space with mathematical precision.  By removing the x-axis, Sture Johannessen, in Untitled, 1979, isolate the Y and Z axis, the entire work is rendered with a single, unbroken line, tracing the Braille-like surface of a single, rounded text character, the section symbol: §.

Jean-Pierre Hébert, Untitled, 2001
plotter drawing, ink on paper,  21 1/4 x 21 ½ inches

#

The wireframe appears at least once in all but one room of the show.  Sven Hoglund and Bror Wikstorm’s cube-like solid faces a broken, meandering strip a half-inch wide in the diptych Untitled, 1979.  Jean-Pierre Hebert soothes us with unmechanically delicate black, white, and sandy-hued spirals of shallow wireframe topography in a series of three untitled plotter works .(1995, 1997, 2001)  Desmond Paul Henry reveals the only “hand of the artist” in the entire exhibit, embellishing a collection of interlaid wireframes in Androbulus, 1962 with black and white ink hand-applied in long, painterly daubs.  This crude effect is nonetheless arresting and engaging against the wireframe foundation, as gauche can electrify charcoal, or a wash reinforces ink.  Again we experience the effects of the rehumanization of computer-generated material.  Rehumanization is a common technique across mediums and disciplines utilizing computer-generated content.  Composers for film and television know that the addition of a single natural instrument performed by a human being can enliven and transform an entire artificial orchestra.

Symmetry and parallel lines are distinctive marks of a machine.    Though plotter drawings can lend a sense of the human hand to a work, since a mechanical hand of sorts grips a real ink-bearing pen, and the vector lines are nuanced enough to generate smooth curves, plotter precision and tireless repetition evoke, too, the weaver’s mechanical loom.  Verostko’s  Untitled, 2006, depicts a pink draped woven cloth with prominent yellow fringe.  Close inspection belies that the folds are not random but the result of a single line motif repeated over and over with slight variations and sizes.  Every thread of the work bears some relationship to this single curvy-lined motif, a visual woven canon.  Using a similar motivic approach, the artist’s second work in the exhibit, Untitled, 1990, could also have been created with threads, not woven but bunched, crumpled, and splayed in heaps and gnarled lumps.  This is the only symmetrical work in the exhibit, but the predictability stops there.  This bright, furry, Rorschach vision propels this exhibit into the surreal.

Mark Wilson, SKEW FF10, 1984, Rives Offset rag paper
Tektronix 4663 plotter using pigmented inks and an IBM PC, 43.125 x 27 in.

Mark Wilson brings this exhibition into resounding final cadences with large, masterful tapestries of color, composition, and space.  Wilson steers us into the third dimension with a firm hand.  Though the elements in these works are still distinctly two dimensional, their angles and curvatures carve spaces deep into the canvas.  The atomic characters form molecules of geometric shapes, circles, polygons, and their subdivisions.  In SKEW FF10, 1984, physical references to compact discs could just as easily be stadium diagrams or hard drive partitions.  The general sense of smaller things filling larger things is undeniable.  Composed entirely of typeset font-based characters, the mark of the machine is nowhere more apparent than in Mark Wilson’s work.  A counterpoint to Molnar’s scroll-like study of squares in three colors, Structures de quadrilateres, 1986, Wilson’s study of circles, P9232, 2007, displays added layers of compositional consideration in a banquet of shapes and color.  Less measured in material, treatment, and negative space than classically-inspired artists such as Mohr or Nake, Wilson embodies the modern Baroque, spoiling us with candy-wrapper-colored sprays of cloisonné, mosaic, or stained glass.  Décor fit for a digital Duomo.

The evolution of the “hand of the artist” and the adoption and acceptance of the “mark of the machine” is an ancient theme.  Major technological advances cause the obsolescence of older technologies or manual techniques:  Hand-written books gave way to the printing press.  Hand-mixed oil paints vanished in lieu of factory-produced pigments sold in a tube.  Stage performances evolved into live television and radio, then into recordings.  The list is long.  Proponents and stakeholders of the old method naturally resist the change until resistance is futile or is quelled naturally by the passing on of vested parties.  Younger generations adopt new ideas and technologies more easily than the old guard, sometimes too easily, which is why the counterbalance of elder wisdom is important.  Flying machines are an excellent example of a technology that failed to deliver on it’s promise for a long, long time, sending many visionaries and their machines plummeting to their deaths.

Technology-inspired artists, curators, academics, teachers, and collectors also play this delicate game of trying to fly towards the sun without succumbing to aesthetic peril.   This exhibit of works from the Anne and Michael Spalter Collection documents a dizzying ascent.

###

Exhibit:
Drawing with Code: Works from the Anne and Michael Spalter Collection
deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, Lincoln, MA, USA
1/29/2011-4/24/2011
Curated for deCordova by George Fifield, Director of Boston Cyberarts, Inc.

Reviewer:
Dan Hermes is an audiovisual artist, consultant, curator, and writer.  His art reviews are published in journals such as Media-N, the online journal of the New Media Caucus, and the Computer Music Journal, MIT Press.  More info at www.danhermesfineart.com.  In the spirit of full disclosure, Mr. Hermes’ work is included in the Anne and Michael Spalter Collection, though his work does not appear in this particular exhibition of the collection.

Images used with permission from the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum.

• Framed – one or more framed flat-screen televisions
• Projection – on walls, floors, or ceilings
• Licensed – paintings for pre-existing televisions, computers, or displays

FRAMED

Framed moving digital paintings range in size from six inches to sixty inches for single screen installations. Forty plus sized screens are arresting from a dozen feet awayand sixty inch screens can draw a viewer into a large room, such as a lobby or penthouse.Multiple screen installations can occupy an entire wall, or an entire hallway—bounded only by the designers imagination. Clients find that multiple screens can tie aspace together with an unforgettable room-sized multimedia experience with all the subtlety and grace of traditional canvassed art. Framed applications excel in high profile areas where first impressions matter.

PROJECTION

Projection works well in a space with exposed walls and low light. Careful integration with surrounding details transforms a space into a room-sized moving sculpture. Multiple projections can wrap an entire space in a constantly evolving environment of shapeand color.   Spa and club applications are particularly successful.

LICENSED

Licensed paintings are rendered on preexisting screens or video equipment such aspenthouse A/V theatres, bar televisions, guest room flat screens, fitness center displays,or lobby digital signage. We work with the building’s operations staff to determinethe most appropriate method of installation and integration to existing A/V systems.  Clients license the use of moving digital paintings for existing screens that cry out for fine art that fits with their project vision.

The new album is here.  Keys, composition, and recording by me, Dan Hermes.  Details here.

Moving painting, regardless of the techniques or terminology, is poised to redefine visual art.

How are moving paintings used?

The compositing, aspect, and speed juxtaposition considerations in this video are not insignificant.

2008 still from moving painting, Dan Hermes

2005 still from moving painting, Dan Hermes

From Soho to Chelsea, these walking tours give a firsthand experience of art in the big apple.  I hope to catch one soon.  http://www.nygallerytours.com/public.htm

Flash vs. Silverlight: a useful technical comparison here at Smashingmagazine.  And the winner by category:

Animation – Silverlight
File size – Flash
Scripting – Silverlight
Video/Audio – Silverlight
Sound processing – Flash
Accessibility – Flash
Platform compatibility – Flash
Text representation/SEO – Silverlight
Supported image formats – Flash
Socket programming – Flash
Webcam support – Flash
Deployment – Flash
Windows application – Flash
Media streaming – Silverlight

Other Adobe vs. Microsoft face-offs:

Illustrator vs. Expression Design – Summary:  Expression Design is not a head-to-head competitor to Illustrator as a standalone graphics editor, just a handy XAML-friendly tool to use with Expression Blend.

Coming Soon:
Dreamweaver vs. Expression Web
Bridge vs. Expression Media
Adobe Media Encoder vs. Expression Encoder

The Judi Rotenberg Gallery on Newbury Street will be closing it’s doors in June.

According to this Boston Globe article, Goodman’s reason for closing the gallery is unrelated to the economy and is entirely a personal decision. Goodman’s email can be found in the New England Journal of Aesthetic Research blog post.

Judi Rotenberg is one of two established commercial galleries in Boston that regularly exhibit audiovisual and new media artwork. This closing leaves only one, the Howard Yezerski Gallery. From the conversations I have had with the artists exhibiting at these galleries, actual sales of their new media works were not common.

In the context of the considerable number of Boston area galleries having closed their doors in the past few years, all this is further validation that artists in the Boston area must keep their sights on national and international opportunities. The art market in this city is fragile and inconsistent, even for an art market. If there were two or three more galleries springing up to take the Rotenberg’s place, I wouldn’t have to say this, but here’s the reality: We live in a town that would rather watch a baseball game than go to an art exhibit.

But don’t hate the Sox. David Ortiz didn’t shut down the Rotenberg.

He just plays a more popular game.

Hospitality Style magazine, print and online, recently showcased my moving digital paintings. A tiny write-up, but I’m grateful for it. I’ve gotten calls on it from around the country.

Thank you New Media Artist Albrecht Dürer.

Here in the United States there’s Art Basel in Miami and Armory Arts Week in New York City. In the gallery art market, these are the big two. Come drink from the firehose this weekend. I’ll be there wearing a white carnation. Don’t miss the concurrent fairs. (Scope NY, Verge, Pulse, etc,)

So, I’m looking for a high-speed digital video camera like 100+ fps and a friend sent me a suggestion and here are some dogs someone shot with it on YouTube. You got to check out these freakin’ dogs, man:

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

Seriously. The camera rents for like $2500/day in L.A. and retails for $117,500.

I don’t know how much the dogs set them back. But it’s L.A., man. The dogs prob’ly got agents. Dogs with doggie headshot resumes that say “experience with laser light shows”. Agent name-dropping, “Roofie was a Pink Floyd stage dog for their reunion show in 2005. Tight with Dave and Nick. They love animals.” Dogs prob’ly cost more per hour than the camera. ‘Specially slow motion freakin’ laser stunt dogs like these are.

Seriously.

Axiom Gallery and ATNE sponsored a virtual reality event around the same time: New Media Curious Event with Jeffrey Jacobson – Virtual Reality Technology and The Virtual Egyptian Temple. I encourage you to check out their upcoming events: http://atne.org/events/new-media-curious-event/ and to see Mr. Jacobson’s work at http://www.publicvr.org/ .

Boston’s ever-changing landscape spawned a new organization this year, Art Technology New England or ATNE. Providing a forum for communication between multimedia artists, academic departments, non-profits, and businesses, ATNE aspires to unify these sometimes disparate parties and brighten the future of the arts, technology and business in New England. A private function was held at the house of George Fifield in November 2009 to kick off the endeavor, then a public bash in December called the Spark Gala. Literature has been distributed to potential members in these four categories: Artist, Business, Non-Profit, and Schools and events are listed here.

This type of institution is much needed here in New England.

still from Introspection by Dennis Miller

I’m not sure where to put these links and if you’re reading this, perhaps you’re interested in in-depth art commentary. So here are some art reviews I’ve written in the past:

Visual Music Marathon for Computer Music Journal. MIT Press
CyberArts Festival 2007 for Media-N
SIGGRAPH 2006 Boston for Media-N

What intoxicated yarn will you pass on?

Principles guide us through the centuries. Through the dark ages when events would have us forget our homelands. Fashion distracts and entertains, but principles steady the tiller.

What are the Principles of Art?

Hints:

They are not render times, nor intersecting planes. Nor fire effects – as real as these look they provide no warmth to the spirit. These principles cannot be found in particle motion. Joints do just that, they join things together, nothing more. These are techniques, tools, the phonetics of our visual language. What are the unifying themes? What can we TALK about with these crude utterances? Principles come from our forefathers – the conversations of duelling sable from centuries past, marble tamed by calloused, Greek hands, gold-gilt montages on chapel ceilings, starry-eyed colorists gave birth to imaginary skies, crosshatched shading voiced biblical stories, Southwestern shapes delight and embarrass, bold, clear lines and diaphanous inference attach themselves to our many layers of perception, history, and human experience. Principles are derived, extacted, boiled down from a pot full of vegetables like broth. The Greeks brought the first stone to this soup. What came next? What are you bringing?

Here is a stab at artistic principles for Animation:

Attributes:
1) motion
2) shape
3) line
4) color
5) spatial depth
6) form
7) light
speed

The challenge with animation and art is that most animation is taught from the standpoint of cartoon animation, which stems from the practices developed at Warners Brothers and Disney and now perpetuated at Pixar and Dreamworks.  Although these techniques are effective in cartoon animation and translate well into the world of gaming and now animated movies, they don’t help much with art. The language of western art differs considerably in it’s aims and vocabulary from the world of cartoons.

So where to start with “artistic motion”? We have a vast catalog and history of western dance and modern dance tradition which stems directly from art music. I suggest the live performances of troops such as Alvin Ailey, Paul Taylor, and any descendents of the Martha Graham School. There are a number of good books on choreography as well. Movement in Western Art has been well established through dance, music, gesture in painting, as well as a by a few great directors in film. Simply translating these concepts into animation will allow animated art to “stand on the shoulders of giants”. Animators will never become serious artists until they can unlearn their cartoonish tendancies acquired in the initial mastery of their technical craft and reinvent their approach in a subtle, meaningful manner.

Entities
1) objects
2) textures
3) groups of entities
4) Shapes and forms created by entities and groups of entities <- IMPORTANT!

Relationships – How do entities and attributes relate to one another?

1) Range – what are the ranges in the medium? ranges of motion, color, depth
2) Contrast – dark/light, fast/slow, smooth/rough
3) Unity – similar attributes or entities which create semblance and order
4) Juxtaposition – relationships created by degrees of placement and differences in attributes

I believe these principles are fundamentally similar in the related disciplines of music, dance, painting, and multimedia art. Other factors come into play in literature, poetry, certain paintings, and film – namely human narrative drama. Let’s leave that distinction to Stravinski’s comments on Representational vs. Abstract art. Excluding narrative, these abstract elements produce emotional and intellectual effects in the audience. The understanding of the relationships between these elements and our human response is a golden key to the gates of Art.

Cezanne and splines?

Voillard and the Clone Tool?

None of it matters. Why?

They are gone. And we are here.

They have left us their world, to make it ours.

Are we graphic designers or artists? What is the difference?

What does our hand know of an optical mouse, or a digital pen? What do our eyes know of backlit cells? Will our heart beat in time with the CPU?

How do we integrate with these machines in a directed way?

Will this bring us closer to Art or farther away?

A computer is a wondrous tool, but playing with a wondrous tool is not the same as using it to build visual art. The eyes can see the difference.

Timeless visual art can be seen with the eyes of the face, the eyes of the mind, and the eyes of the heart.

The eyes of the face understand only the language of light, shape, composition, direction, depth, and form. These eyes cannot see intention. These eyes do not know process, the steps of construction. Nor do they resolve the methodology, the affiliation, the reference, the ism, the hat-tip, the political angle, or sincerity or artifice. Eyes do not flinch at flashes of genius – for the flash occurred during the creation and is now gone forever. Eyes can see only a residual scorch upon the canvas, if it exists. Eyes can see this poetry. Blind are these eyes to gender roles, to multiculturalism, to world hunger, to plague and scourge, to estrus, feces or whatever else may have been gratuitously offered up to appeal to the taste of the curator or critic. Taste cannot be seen by these eyes.  Such vision requires the eyes of the heart to feel the outline, to understand the image as human experience.  Or the eyes of the mind to deconstruct the shades of light and dark into the foreign grammar and semantics of the intellect, to translate roughly into ideas, into trends and topics; a psychic reading a stranger’s palm.

Art in the late 20th century and now the 21st has spurned the eyes of the face and appeals instead to the eyes of the mind and heart. And so we stand and look and look and squint and strain – and see nothing with the eyes of our face.  Some walk away disillusioned.  Some think that they must not be looking properly - that their eyes are flawed or unworthy and they demand:  “Tell us what to see! Tell us what to think and feel about what we see!”

Is the Mass of art spoken in Latin?