Second Class Reading

Bishop talks quite a bit about old media versus new media, stating that many still prefer to use "real analog equipment" (as in old media). Her reasons include the idea of old media being more rare and therefore being "precious," while new digital art is easy and cheap to recreate. Do you think this a valid point? What about those that create to be seen? Far more people will see art that is easily replicated. Yet there are also those that create art to make a living, and these are the ones that easily replicated art can hurt. What are other reasons that art is created and how might the old versus new battle factor in?

Bishop also "introduces" the idea of "ineligibility," which refers to the fact that humans skim as they take something in. While reading, we skim for main ideas; while watching a movie we see important things, but can miss small details; and with art, we look over the surface, often failing to dig deeper into the piece. Many artists have accommodated this and created art accordingly. For instance, artists making massive pieces that a single viewer will not completely comprehend, but is instead expected to skim over. Is this really a new idea though? One that has just appeared since digital art? Human beings have discovered new things and ways of doing things, but we have always been able to skim. With our first books I'm sure people did it because that is how our minds function. Other examples include the forefathers taking in a battlefield and figuring out what to do, they didn't have the time to examine every little thing on that field. The same goes for sailing on the ocean, which has been around long before digital art as well. Captains had to look and make a decision instantly because things change instantly, they had to be able to skim the scene and figure out what was important, so, is the idea of "filter and graze, skim and forward" really a new one that is unique to digital art?

Animation with sound

Diptych Animation

Showing the end of the world and the fall of mankind, I chose to show a very literal falling of the Eiffel Tower, along with other apocalyptic happenings in the back. Buildings and well-known landmarks that human beings have built and are proud of are being destroyed and carried away, showing the change that is occurring.

The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction Questions

Do you agree with how Walter Benjamin describes the feeling of actors before the camera, that they put their whole self into the film and therefore bear it all to the public? Is this a plausible or acceptable reason for many celebrities’ “interesting” behavior in public? What about celebrities who do not seem to have “false personalities” in public, do they not give their everything in front of the camera?

Do you believe that the surgeon and the magician (and therefore the painter and cameraman) are as opposite as the text makes them seem? The text says surgeons and magicians are “polar opposites” yet that depends on how you look at the situation, yes they do it in different ways, but they are both still trying to heal someone, each using the ways that they know best. Both have the chance of failure as well. If we look again at the example of the painter and the cameraman, we see that the painter is distanced from reality while the cameraman is right inside reality; the painter produces a total picture while the cameraman put fragments together in a new way. According to the text, these reasons point to a “representation of reality by the film” that is more real than that of the painter. Do you believe that painters and cameramen are polar opposites? Why or why not? Do your reasons support the idea that film is a better representation of reality?

Apocalypse Diptych

There are many different interpretations of the apocalypse and it means different things for different people. Some see it as pertaining to biblical or technological matters, while others are thinking more along the lines of a personal or zombie apocalypse. We decided to show a combination of these things as well as the portions that many different scenarios seem to agree about. We included the new and the old, the unknown and the predictable, and the chaos of it all.