Where's the feeling? Memoir from back in the day:
a renaissance artist working on a mural (large scene) in a church was whistling a tune from a contemporary
classical composer. A clergyman approached and asked why he was so enraptured by the tune -- the painter
replied that he wanted his art to express the same spirit and style as the composer had in his music.
This kind of dependence can easily be seen as unsupported superstition - "Where is my lucky pencil?
How can I draw without my lucky pencil?" -- but, the Platonists and rational thinkers of the renaissance
thought this was true, and it is a belief which is not foreign to thinkers (and doers) of this age. In that age
they were drawn to these conclusions after examining the scientific principles of the day and philosophizing
about their application throughout every aspect of their lives. This is an age of immediacy and instant
technological gratification, and so as it relates to art, I have examined the question in reverse. Finding
those things in art that relate back to the senses and sensibility of the modern man.
( continued left column ) |
Of artists and creative
thinkers of my circle each has a proscribed way of doing things -- a method of approach to attain the closest possible
reality to the visions of their imagination, or monstrous ideas. In all of this (relating the idea or creative element
into the tangible, physical reality), the set-up and the environment are key. Secondary to that is perhaps the method
by which this art is portrayed -- is it pencil? Pen? Paint? Rock? But, what the primary and secondary physical realms
have in common is that they are both real and tangible things; sensory perception which is imagined to produce, or
does in fact produce, an impression upon the artist and in the artwork itself. The level of lighting, the texture
of the paper, the color of ink, the tactile feel of a wood pencil…the sound of rain falling behind a
windowpane, or Black Sabbath jamming on the stereo. ( continued right ) |
This physicality of
creating art relates to the pleasure of experience. The tactile feel of pencil lead delineating familiar forms creates
an emotional zone that draws the artist in. It creates pleasure in the making and a simple sense of awe at the
capabilities of pencil and paper to replicate and modify the imaginary or to create something pseudo-real.
Even in the most mundane and ordinary artistic creation, subtle variations in the nature of the form create
pleasing subtleties that add to the tactile experience of enjoying art. Such variations in artistic
form-making are a result of the imperfections of medium and the skill of the artist. It is proper
that these should be appealing, because these types of variation are found throughout the natural
world, from which our concepts of art are derived. ( continued below ) |
These artifacts vanish entirely with
computer-generated art. Slick. Polished. Smooth. These saccharin creations convey, only in the simplest terms,
the basis of an idea, yet fail to produce something of art. The artist is limited to adaptation and interpretation
of artificial controls created to mimic the effects of the tactile art form. Many options are available to apply
various algorithms and formulae that enhance the reality of an image -- but, as of yet, all computer-generated
attempts at art remain wholly artificial. The best uses of these technologies so far have been as tools for
reproducing that art which the hand of man has created. In the future, computers may be a viable tool of
creation equal to pencil and paper (with which there is a physical and real connection) -- until then I will
continue to draw and allow those binary digits to replicate me.
/return to *top |
| Illustration by ThaneC |
| Freakish Carnival Utopia / 'Endorphinz' |