THEVERYMANY

There was much of interest and much that rang true in the “Developing a Repertoire of Skills for Visual Perception and Artistic Response” chapter.  Many of the suggestions in the first three sections dovetailed nicely with the VTS work we’ve been doing with the Boy Writers over at Ridgeway.  Also, I’ve still not shaken the frustration I repeatedly experienced as I observed a field teacher (during an earlier placement) consistently send her students imaginatively cold into the work of art creation.  I particularly liked this statement from the ‘Practice’ section of the first section: “When a full and rich image has developed in the imagination, work can begin to bring the image into visual form.”  The distinction between active imagination and active creation is too often overlooked. 

However, my curiosity was most piqued by the mention of an article that challenged that challenged traditional design terminology as being insufficient or outmoded by the advent of computer graphic technologies.  And the article was written in 1996.  1996!  That was way before Photoshop became a verb (though still a whopping eight years after the development of Photoshop 1.0).  So, I looked it up…

And almost everything it had to say is still valid.  If anything, I had to stop and wonder whether we’ve already inadvertently bent some of the old terminology to cover our new understanding of pictorial space.  It may be that I can’t step far enough outside of my contemporary box to say which terms have already evolved and I kind of suspect that’s one factor that made this such a dense and difficult read.  I had to stop regularly and try to remember whether there was a slightly different nuance to words like space, shape, and texture before navigating digital displays became a daily occurrence.  But it’s also that the author is dealing with some pretty abstract concepts—things that either fly under the radar of our daily activities or that we’re still coming to terms with. 

Here, for example, is the first disparity identified (out of a total of 20):

“In the literature of art education, the traditional formal image was viewed as a whole, with stable, analog contents bound to the form.  Computer graphics were determined to be dynamic and digital, and procedures were determined to play an important part in expanding the idea of an abstract "language." Generative and interpolative procedures in computer graphics, as well as the replicability of the same image in different output modes, beg notions of what is original or unique in art. Signifiers that are appropriated (see Gombrich, 1961, for a discussion of codes and signifiers) also appear to be an important part of artistic language in both mediums. The implications are that, even in terms of its visual properties, the formal image can no longer be perceived as referring only to itself  with what has been described as  "permanent or residual aesthetic value" (Crozier & Greenhalgh, 1992, p. 83-4).”

Wooza, that’s a lot to digest.  On first read, I latched on to “replicability” begging “notions of what is original or unique in art” and it led me to think of Gude’s Postmodern Appropriation Principle. But after  a second (and third) read I think it may go deeper than that.  It may help to refer back to that magnificent distinction that I pointed out earlier, the one between active imagination and active creation.  Take, for example, Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d'Avignon.  We think of this painting as an object—a painting—because that is the corporeal form by which the image is conveyed.  Now, if Picasso had designed the image on a computer, then it would have no corporeal form—its dimensions would be relative, palette, saturation, brightness, etc would be variable.  The work of imagination that brought it into being would still belong firmly to Picasso, but the creative product is harder to pin down, involving an interaction between the creator, the end-user, and the technology in-between.   The reality is that this has been the case for a very long time.  I’ve never actually seen Les Demoiselles in person.  I’ve seen slides, posters, etc. recreating it, so I’m familiar with it—which means that I’m familiar with Picasso’s visual idea, but realistically, I’ve never actually seen the created product of that imagined idea.  As such, any evaluations I might make of it cannot be wholly considered valid until I’ve seen the real thing.  (And, of course, this is the reason that many people claim to hate various modern and contemporary works until they see them in person: I would never ever buy a book of reproductions of Rothko’s paintings, but I’d love to own one.  Same goes for Donald Judd and most Op Art.)  However, once I’ve seen the corporeal Les Demoiselles, I may finally rest my opinion or understanding of it amongst all those who have seen it since Picasso laid down the final brushstroke.  With digital artwork, there is no comparable end-point for knowing a work.  It may be that by the standards of traditional artwork, digital artwork is never actually complete.  It never reaches a definitive, perfected state.  That’s quite the change.

Another big change is the notion of three-dimensionality.  In computer design terms, the creation of three-dimensional shapes is both less of an illusion than in the traditional two-dimensional formats and the codification of an illusion.  Ironically, even though the illusion of three-dimensionality in computer graphics is created by a complete description of a three-dimensional object (along all three axis of dimension) as opposed to the selective recording and hiding of information (as happens in the rendering of three dimensional illusions on a traditional flat drawing surface, i.e. the illusion of foreshortened objects in drawings or paintings), rarely does that complete three-dimensional description achieve realization in the third dimension (you know, the palpable, real dimension that we go about our daily business in).

Here’s one of the exceptions.  This is THEVERYMANY by Marc Fornes from 2010.  I came across it on the contemporary floor of the Pompidou and aside from its obvious eye-catching qualities, something else about it that caught my attention: the museum label said that it was designed in Rhino 3D.  That brought back some memories.  Rhino 3D was the very first 3d design software that I ever used—and that was way back in 1996!  Ha!