Essay / Intro new media / IMKE09

Marge Robam, Essay: Say it with art! / Introduction and theoretical foundations of new media, Prof. Mauri Kaipainen at Tallinn University, IMKE 2009, 30.11.2009

Hundred words are worse then one picture. Art has always been a good possibility express state of mind. To survive, to understand, to learn and to teach. To live a life with more pleasure, too. Since petroglyph period on ancient times there is huge steps was taken in earth.
Nowadays the equipments of new media is in the first place on art field, too. Video art, digital art, software art, generative art. The browser art, code art, artificial intelligence,
a live visualization of a running computer program etc. In New Media lots of art styles are represented.
If people can use many ways to discuss, then world can be a better place. Talking and listening, drawing and writing - there is a lots of different “languages” to learn and to use. About our ecological and economical, ethical and philosophical, scientific and prosaic topics, about everything we can talk almost in every minute. Actually, mainly we talk with or by using machine, virtually. By chat or by e-mail, by mobile phone etc. Computer with internet is like family member in our rooms and laptop is the nearest friend on our knees. As simple or complicated our lifestyles look, there is good and bad. Important is, that everyone can make own choice. Meet friends, look films or listen music, visit art exhibition virtually or physically. In many cases, virtually is not worse then in real! Searching art experiences in the web, one can find endless magic OZ land.

The art is fluid what humans needed since the ancient Rock Art period .
Art Rocks! According to Pekka Himanen: “Life must be lived as masterpiece of art. Everyone must have rights to dignified life. How can we use the open culture of creativity to create a more dignified world? That is, how can we answer to the challenges of the world with multiple simultaneous crises, from climate change to the welfare society version 2.0 to the challenge of rich multicultural life?” (Himanen, 2009).

Education, creativity, philosophy. These are big questions. Important thing is collaboration. Relationships between human and technology and to each other. Respect a collective thinking and human individuality.


Searching these tags in web I was found an artist named Jonathan Harris. He create projects of combining elements of computer science, anthropology, visual art and storytelling, online dating, modern mythology, anonymity, news, and language.
One his project is an in-depth exploration of human feelings (co-authored with Sep Kamvar) named We Feel Fine: An Almanac of Human Emotion.”Drawing from a database of more than 12 million individual sentences collected over 3 years from personal blogs on the Internet, We Feel Fine presents a comprehensive contemporary portrait of the world's emotional landscape, exploring the ups and downs of everyday life in all its color, chaos, and candor.” (Harris, 2009)

“Can Meaningful Art be Created through Mass Collaboration?” - asked in Wikinomics by Catherine Thorn: “… an example of art being created through mass collaboration. Aaron Koblin’s “Ten Thousand Cents” is a digital representation of the American $100 bill, created by assembling 10 000 pieces of the picture drawn by contributors in 51 different countries. /…/ Koblin’s site states that the artwork “explores the circumstances we live in, a new and unchartered combination of digital labour markets, ‘crowdsourcing,’ ‘virtual economies,’ and digital reproduction.” /…/ So, is it possible to create truly meaningful art through mass collaboration? My opinion is that, right now, it is not possible, given what is considered to be art. As mass collaboration continues to proliferate, however, it may change the face of art, giving way to a new possibility: the expression of hundreds of thoughts and feelings in a single piece of art.” (Thorn, 2009).
There is coming Maura ´s comment to Thorn: “If by “meaningful art”, you mean “high art” of the type that is bought and sold and hung in galleries, then perhaps that is another matter. Or if you mean “meaningful art produced via web 2.0 techno-cultural practice”, then maybe that is also another matter. /…/ What I’m attempting to highlight, I suppose, is that there is a whole history and ongoing practice that well predates web 2.0 that has proved beyond a doubt that “meaningful art” and true collaboration need not be mutually exclusive. For some of us, in fact, the best and most meaningful art to be made is that which emerges from true collaboration… that which is, in its medium and message, born of a multitude of minds and hands, working in concert, to bring something new to life together. Hell, if you attend a conceptual enough art school, culture itself is the pinnacle of meaningful art arrived at through mass collaboration…”

Good argumentation in this comment? Lots of art is made low budget and just for pleasure and also collaboratively. Beauty saves the world, was saying by someone. Philosophy is more interesting. There is rising structures and color influences which can make people feel different emotions and awake the thoughts. In generative art, in software art and in video art. New waves was emerge almost 50 years ago. Also in this time there was talking about authors death. Art must be an "informative instrument, whose message spread to all people".

Cite from Arja Elovirta´s article about happenings: “As an art form, the happenings of the 1960s sought to bring down the barrier between life and art. They challenged the audience to involve itself in the creation of the works of art./…/
The meaning of art was no longer sought solely in the works of art themselves. Artists were instead interested in movements that occurred inside the viewer — which, at best, meant seeing a certain situation, or even one's own life, in a new way. The durability or value of material was no longer essential; junk could move the viewer just as well as borrowings from the world of comics. The change was seen in all fields of art. ./…/
The contemporary art public considers itself free to interpret each and every work of art from its own premises. The work is like a surface, reflecting back the viewer's self, and on which they project their own values and attitudes. (Elovirta, 2003).

I was visit Pipilotti Rist ´s “ Elixir” named video art exhibition in Helsinki´s Kiasma museum two weeks ago. There is so many aesthetic potential in her snapshots – the nature and the woman - and huge cloud of philosophy also bubble up. Illusion and imagination rise us up and new ideas can sort out.
Cite from Minna Turtiainen´s article about Pipilotti Rist: “Although the media she uses are fairly new, her work betrays no idealisation of technology or tendency towards the global communication society. "In this era of information society artists deal with feelings and emotions, telling stories, and work with different levels of truth… all the contradictions of today. /…/ Popular culture played a formative role already in the childhood of this super star of video art. The decade of her birth is apparent in many ways in her art: television, Fluxus, Pop Art, the Beatles and Nam June Paik.“ (Turtiainen, 2003)

Nam June Paik was said that “he just goes where the road is empty yet.”
“For Paik and other early practitioners of video art, including Dan Graham, Bruce Nauman, Joan Jonas and John Baldessari, it as video´s capacity for instantaneous transmission of image that was most appealing, in addition to its relative affordability.
Paik had critical attitude toward television and that was dominant in video art from its inception and into the mid-1980s. (Rush, 2005).

Should we be more critical to machine art nowadays, made with computers also?
As claimed by Florence de Meredieu: “ Ordered, controlled, corseted – the digital image inherited all the properties of academicism long ago./…/ The development of interactive installations has also made a significant contribution to the revival of the visual arts. The participation of the viewer is increasingly called into play in works that simulate all the senses. Artworks now resemble constantly evolving collective rituals, and art is becoming more theatrical and media-oriented. (Meredieu, 2005, 228)

So, people always loved theatre and cinema, art on stage. Art on screen, programmed art is also stagy. Is there some project what is not programmed, mean if the idea comes first and then coming a construction. To express something, to be participant of visual language speakers community. Visuality is everywhere, everything is information and there is oceans of information. Danger to drown in. We need more and more bits of info. Art, what consists zeros and ones, is also multimedial info. We see, we hear, we feel, we learn something new. Same of course in other medias, in printmedia and in weblogs for one.
But lets take a look some examples of art again. Fast K.A.R.L (Kinetic.Artist.Robotic.Lifeform) Cite from website “The greatest artist of the 21st Century is here now and he is a robot! FAST KARL works on paper and canvas with acrylic paints and lots of energy. He is programmed to create strange abstract works and he functions independent of his programmer. At least until his batteries run down!
Fast Karl paints with his wheels spinning through the wet medium much like a human's finger paints pulling and streching the paint into the paper and printing with his tire tread. The intimacy of Fast Karl's robot creations speak to the kid inside everyone who ever longed to have their very own robot friend. Karl paints becuase he is an artist and collectors buy his paintings because they love Karl.”

Examples are good, interest to other peoples thaughts is the way we communicate. Maybe you don’t have an inspiration? Get some! There is a project in web, called: CAP - Computer Aided Poetry , A tool for blocked poets, by Eugenio Tisselli.
“¿No inspiration? Use the CAP system by following these simple steps, and you'll see the cybernetic muse appear at your (browser's) window.” (Tisselli)

And another one, an incubator as author, Mario Klingemann says. “Flickeur (pronounced like Voyeur) randomly retrieves images from Flickr.com and creates an infinite film with a style that can vary between stream-of-consciousness, documentary or video clip. All the blends, motions, zooms or timeleaps are completely random. Flickeur works like a
looped magnetic tape where incoming images will merge with older materials and be influenced by the older recordings' magnetic memory. The virtual tape will also play and record forward and backward to create another layer of randomness. This principle will create its own sometimes very suggestive or scary story.” (Klingemann)
That’s what people need, randomness? Perhaps. Who will love boring stuff. Tremors of excitement is something. A good art is working like wake up call.

Someway the new and the old is always together. Thinking about new art, the old ones come in mind, too. New and interesting possibilities using technology was started at the begin of 90s. Then I first time met and started to use computer for work. Also for that time I see the first time examples of generative art in Pärnu. Artists Vello Tamm and Jüri Tenson was created exhibition of artworks, which was made by plotter. That was innovative! The computer-art was not a usual yet, hard to believe now.

In the web we find similar experiment, project named: Drawing Machine 3.1415926 v. 2, 2001. “The notion of generative art or art that makes art on its own. The piece consists of a three tiered mobile sculpture that is driven by the vibration of a motor. This vibration is controlled in two ways. First by the machines programming, essentially a set of instructions on how to draw. Secondly by monitoring one or two microphones, giving it the ability to "listen" to its environment. When it hears something loud enough it uses that information directly to create marks. In this way the machine collaborates with its environment; sometimes using its program and sometimes using what it hears to make drawings.“ (Orellana, 2001)

In internet the art is coming to be a generative. “Art has been generated, composed, or constructed in an algorithmic manner through the use of systems defined by computer software algorithms. Then artwork is self-contained and autonomous.
Also the workings of might resemble, or rely on, various scientific theories such as Complexity science and Information theory. The systems of generative artworks have many similarities with systems found in various areas of science. Such systems may exhibit order and/or disorder, as well as a varying degree of complexity, making behavioral prediction difficult. However, such systems still contain a defined relationship between cause and effect.
When order is left side and disorder sites right, then in the middle can arise something interesting. An example of this we can find also in music. When production method is system what creates some piece of music or art piece with using machine.
If there is choose set of elements and they are randomly used in process.” (Wikipedia)

Art speaks in many reasons - for creativity, for playfulness and for clarity of information. Using colors and marks, lines, shapes, typography for one. It is interesting to search tags about influences and expressions of art in world wide web. Illusions and reality goes hand in hand. Forever.
The art in web and made by software can be a joyful discovering. Find some inspiring pictures and courage to make own art. For a change to using only words express yourself.
List of References:
Paul, Christiane (2003). Digital Art. London: Thames & Hudson Ltd.

Goriunova, Olga and Shulgin, Alexei (2003). Read_Me 2.3 Reader.
Helsinki, NIFCA publications 25. http://www.runme.org

Meredieu, Florence (2005). Digital and Video Art.
Edinburgh: Chambers Harrap Publishers Ltd.

Rush, Michael (2005). New Media in Art.
London: Thames & Hudson Ltd.

Gillmor, Dan (2006). We the Media.
USA: O´Reilly Media.

Thorn, Catherine (2009). Wikinomics by Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams. http://www.wikinomics.com/blog/index.php/2009/05/25/can-meaningful-art-be-created-through-mass-collaboration accessed 2009/11/9

Harris, Jonathan (2009): http://www.number27.org/wffbook.html
accessed 2009/11/9

Himanen, Pekka (2009) http://www.pekkahimanen.org accessed 2009/11/9
Interwieu in “City” newspaper nr 21/2009, Helsinki, page 16 -17.

Turtiainen, Minna; Elovirta, Arja. (2003). http://www.kiasma.fi/site/pop accessed 2009/11/12

Fast Karl project, http://www.stcroixstudios.com/wilder/fastkarl/index.html

Eugenio Tisselli, CAP - Computer Aided Poetry, A tool for blocked poets.
http://motorhueso.net/cap/ accessed 2009/11/12

Mario Klingemann, Flickeur project: http://incubator.quasimondo.com/flash/flickeur.php, accessed 2009/11/12

Fernando Orellana, 2001, Drawing Machine 3.1415926 v. 2, http://www.fernandoorellana.com/DM_V2.htm#
accessed 2009/11/29