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A
'Genetic' Code and the Significance of Digital Art
After watching Orson Welles’
unconventional and rambling film F for Fake (1976) I
began to think about my own art in a new way. The first
thing to consider is the very noticeable and profound
divide between classic artwork and digital art. A
classic painting or sculpture, for instance, is
completely unique in the sense that an original created
by the artists exists and no matter how the artist, a
forger, or anyone else tries to copy that piece of art
they can never make another exactly like it. This
uniqueness is what drives the art market. An original
masterpiece by a famous artists such as, Picasso or Van
Gogh, will likely collect many millions of dollars for
the seller in an auction because of that very assumption
that no other piece of art just like it exists anywhere
in time or space. If an art forger enters the picture
and can convincingly create either copies of famous
pieces, or new art with the same characteristic of a
famous artist, then they can both get rich and at the
same time completely undermine the economic viability of
the art market, which is what the surprisingly
productive and skilled art forger Elmyr de Hory
attempted to do, as featured in the previously mentioned
movie.
Digital art is radically
different than classic art because, by its very nature,
it’s meant to be copied, copied perfectly in fact. The
ability to perfectly copy something is a new
development, and a marvelous one at that, but we tend to
take if for granted because computers make the process
of electronic reproduction so effortless. An artist
working in the medium of digital art will create an
original masterpiece but because of the qualities of the
medium they use, every other digital copy of that art,
no matter where it is in time or space, is just as much
a masterpiece because every copy is exactly the same as
every other one! So, the digital artist holds no
monopoly on their art in the sense of quantity. A
digital image can reside on one hard drive or millions,
and with a perfect copying process each image is exactly
like every other one.
With the advent of digital
art and the artists creating it, both the medium and the
means of communicating the art has totally changed. The
art market with its million dollar auctions and
stereotypical snobs, aristocrats and sycophants, no
longer has a monopoly on transferring art from seller to
buyer. Indeed the whole concept of art as a commercial
endeavor has been overturned with digital art for
ownership has little meaning without restrictions on
copying. So, just as both the mechanism of dissemination
for art has changed so has the fundamental sense of what
is unique about art. The unique quality of digital art
resides not in the physical or virtual copy of the work,
because everyone can possess the original, but rather
the uniqueness resides in the style, the
composition and the concepts that the art
conveys and contains. The artist is what's
original because only they can create artwork truly
characteristic of their own style.
This is the idea behind the
code, the unique serial number that I have created for
each of my signed pieces of digital art. I have embraced
the concept of high-fidelity digital reproduction while
adding in a 'genetic' marker that allows for the
measuring of mutation if it should occur in the future.
This marker, in conjunction with the visual record of
each piece of art here, signifies the image source and
original appearance, regardless of the number of copies
created afterwards. 30.07.05
Operierende
Künstler (Activist
Artist)
Art has multiple definitions but the primary concept is
conveying a message or idea on
 an
emotional or intellectual level. Art is a message within
an aesthetic context. If nothing else, on the most
rudimentary level the artistic message is merely the
aesthetic qualities of the artwork. But in order for art to be
effective in its implied purpose it must convey a
message automatically on one of those levels be it
emotional, intellectual or aesthetic; superior art
utilizes all three. If artwork has to be
explained to the audience in order for it to have an
impact than it's not effective art, as it indicates a
communications failure.
So generally when I craft
my art and thus my message I want it big, I want it bold
and I want it simple. I want my message to be as refined
and unambiguous as possible and I’m not afraid to
bludgeon the audience if necessary. I have no finesse
only emphasis because my worldview holds that existence
means competition; life is conflict.
Some
visual artists I admire include
Robin Banks
AKA Banksy, Paul Delvaux, Otto Dix,
John Heartfield,
Henrik Plenge Jakobsen,
Edward
Kienholz, Barbara Kruger, Roy Lichtenstein, René
Magritte, Bridget Riley, and
Andy Warhol. 13.04.04 & 06.08.05
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