“Some Other Passing Thoughts…”
“Some other passing thoughts…” – Brad Michael Moore
“I accept as true, that it is beyond conjecture – if today’s souls, trying to become computer (Digital) artists – make the effort without the foundation of Art History, Design and Drawing, and Color Theory, are missing the boat. One must learn the plain practice of seeing things as they are, and portraying them in their simplest forms using fundamental time-proven techniques… In not taking this road, chances are high that your artistic pursuits shall be shallow. Today, as much as ever, you cannot rely on luck, hit or miss, or gimmicks (tools not used properly – or used without a full understanding of their design and uses). Every painter, most every sculptor, has to learn to draw first. To draw – you must learn to see. So Education – either self-taught, through research, and study, or acquired, through an institution, must be a prerequisite of any aspiring artist.. You must become well practiced at your concentration – to have a mouse’s chance in hell of being any artist at all. Being a digital artist is no different that being an artist of any other cloth – you must first join the world, or forever, be lost in the woods…
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“While I believe you can match a photograph, to the inth, in the digital medium (this was the first marketing campaign to move us away from analogue materials and hardware to begin with) – I seldom feel the need to do so – unless it suits the subject.
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“I think, ”...that inside everybody sleeps an artist…” I can deduce that, in order to access my imagination, I must first perceive I stand before a door that opens before it. However, such a course, for me, is so well exercised, and instantly implemented without pre-thought – it is sometimes hard for me to consider that such an canon may not be as easy to access for everyone else… However, I recognize non-artists, everyday, use keen traits of creativity in achieving their goals in both living, and making a living. Finally, it still comes down to what you can accomplish with the internal, and external tools you have at hand – and what your training, and life experience, bring to the table.
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“Sometimes people try to compare digital art and painting. True, some digital art will immolate many visual, and non-verbal traits as it’s older brethren – the painting. However, I believe if you compare the two – you are always going to be disappointed – it is like trying to make a gradient drawing on canvas already wet with Gesso…
“Digital images are a new form – the papers are not light sensitive – they are a new (and always improving) and have their own characteristics. Many newest offering provide textures and luminance’s I have never seen before. Then there are the dye ink sets, and at least three Chromatic Ink Sets by Epson alone that add to the combination of materials – all designed with longevity in mind.
“Painting is a different genre – long proved for it’s uniqueness – for the challenges presented with choices of brushes, and color palettes – even their smells are a part of the process for some… I remember when acrylics first came on the scene – what an uproar they caused for the purest at first. Eventually, they integrated into the painting dialect, and many found they could express their art in new ways – once unavailable to them.
“Technology continues to assist the digital print artifact by the increasing speed of the operating systems coming into the marketplace that quicken mathematical computations needed to resolve increasingly complex digital renderings, or deliveries…
“I remember when the digital hand of technology first touched the consoles of sound recording studios, in the music business in the mid-nineteen seventies. A decade later, the digital wave began its conquering of the visual arts industry. Other industries followed until finally, in 2009 – all television sets in America must be operated from digital technology broadcasted from all licensed broadcasters of the public airways – including cable and satellite – and all telephones will be the same. Analogue will be relegated to the hobby store science box experiments sold for grade school science history projects… I just worry over the control, the total control the world-wide news, and those telecommunications conglomerates – with their censoring power, will filter the information passed along to the future masses – to us all… Then what… Pirate analogue radio broadcasting will likely then become the ‘underworld way’ to purvey the, ‘missing truths,’ special interests will try to hide from the future masses – the same as this recent American Executive Branch of U.S. Government tried to hide truths – not only from it’s constituents – the American Citizens, but to the other, ‘Co-Equal Branches’ of the American Government. The artist, like many with a rebel’s heart, will be responsible to see that truth always is the purest nature of the human spirit – and that it shall always overcome those dark souls who would blind others… It is artist that must stick to the truths they can discover, and share in every medium of communication past, present, and future.
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“I suppose that the process of creativity between generations never changes, but superficially – despite famous arguments at shows, and other venues of debate, or, finally, via a third party essay – written, spoken, or recorded; portraying an alternative, and personal viewpoint – that raises even another, or others perspectives… What has changed through time, are the substrates of creativity, and the processes that activate those substrates… Truly, they are what moves us forward – these mediums we use – these tools of our methods, both, tried and true, and cutting edge of the contemporary rip. Those ideas creating changes in our viewpoints – after all that arguing over the art of generations before – will eventually come to rest in their final tenor as well. There will be those, in the future, who will settle our differences with viewpoints of the past – but at a sober glance, such topics of our rants, which we deliberate among ourselves today – are made of that energy – the very same that feeds our present motivations, and directs us forward in the bearing we each head along…
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“My painter friend, José F. Cruz, from Portugal, recently wrote me over the focus of how video and digital photography is both, serving him in looking at new ways of approaching his own subject matter, and finding solutions for the labor at hand. I agreed and replied over how I had just been thinking, recently, about the digital Camcorder. It has helped many a sculptor since at least 1995. I discovered this when I participated in the 15th Annual International Sculptor’s Conference, in San Francisco. It was the rave, at the time, for logging new materials, studying ‘angles galore’ from finish, near-finished works – and models. Since that era, 13 plus years ago – so many have used these type devices, like Robert Genn, in his Painter’sKeys to illustrate his work process, from start to finish. Artist Gary Reef is doing this to show his process on YouTube. Artist, illustrator, book maker and teacher, Walter King, has used such video devices for showing us his art works in the pages of his hand-made books… So many examples… The Digital World has born YouTube, not long after the camera phone came into style. Art and facts have become entangled. It is getting saturated out here in the Information Age- yet we have only touched the surface as holograms, and their live and static digital representations, will become more advanced and accessible to us in the years to come… Lots to look forward too – lots to learn and little time to establish how to use such tools to widen the expanse of you own person art world before they change again… But, getting back to 1995, that was my first experience with camcorders and their artist possibilities with their backlit, and detachable (or hinged) LCD (Liquid Crystal Displays)... This allowed an image catcher to exercise new perspectives while making compositions – by being able to use both of their eyes, to see their subject live, and reproduced in live composition simultaneously – or still be able to view the subject through more traditionally through a SLR viewfinder (or rangefinder) – but why? This new, movable tool the LCD provides – allows you to preview your captures during your captures. Today – this is no longer novel – but accepted as the ‘normal’ approach to using capture devices – the only differences today are the improvements in these LCD displays, which now are brighter, better “non-glare” treated, and much larger – if you want to pay for it…
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“I don’t expect the painters to quit painting, or the sculptors to stop sculpting – or the weavers to cease from a’weaving – this is pointed mostly at the photo-based visual arts community who are most effected. Photo-capture has not only has turned over 180 degrees – but now up to 360 degrees, to where its has become a wild, and beautiful new medium – with new tools, and new and unexpected results. We are only beginning to see to real possibilities. There has been a lot of screaming out there – as some just push the limits they perceive – while missing the real morphing potential – that can be both striking and subtle. It will take a lot of work – introspection, imagination, and consideration over what representation really implicates in our future works. Art is not just about the limited knowledge we have – it is about frontiers before us left to discover. That is the journey we must seek. You know it when you find it – the right arrangement – or combination of actions… Best wishes to us all as we integrate, and with exercise, and some vision, and some tweaking – come to realize what was once unimaginable. Shanghai! Nirvana! Dreams that follow us all…
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“One personal issue over the new “dry” Light Rooms – and their printing workflows being used today is, well – I miss the ‘tactile feel,’ of the old, ‘Wet Darkroom,’ too… It was the crust of the medium I was raised upon. I do not miss the finger skin stains, or the occasional burning eyes, throat, and nasal passages. I do not miss the guilt of pouring used chemicals down the metropolitan drain… It always made me feel a false sense of relief when I washed my prints for 30 minutes – or an hour, to remove the fixation agents off the Silvered-Gelatin papers. All that water was diluting all those chemicals I earlier put into the sewer. It was a thinly veiled, bogus inkling of a “Feel Better Now.” Today, I think of all that water going down the drain… I think about how many times, over the years since, that same waste concoction has been reused as drinking water, water for agriculture, water used to bath our children, and our ‘selves’ in…
“There is no medium that can produce a greater element of scale and reflection than the human imagination. There is no medium (art form) that stands over any other in expressing the human perspective. While painting (drawing) may be the older preserved mediums, exhibiting the expression of the human artistic creation – how do you contrast its ability to incite human emotive expressions, as compared to watching a performance of Modern Dance, or Shakespearian Theater, or a Eric Satie Pentatonic Scale? They are all deliveries from the same creative core of humanity. A painter prefers painting because that is what they have chosen – through the rigors of their training, and artistic upbringing – the same as the sculptor, the writer, and the musician…
“What is the most accessible medium of possibilities, available to the greatest number of humans today – across the world? “Digital mediums…” Digital Soup (information) is the creative food of potential that our children are now most exposed to, and, we, are raising them on it. Digital Soup also offers anyone, poor or not, the ability to teach themselves, research the best minds on the topics of their interests, and see the best examples in the fields of their concentration to aspire towards. A digital Artifact will more easily transcend into new engaging textural provisions, and 3-D representations, through upcoming, constantly updating processes – both technically, and from human imagination, than photography (or any other medium in such a short time) was ever able to achieve. Truthfully, while a few of us piddled with ‘2-D to 3-D’ expressions, during the last hay days of the analogue photography medium’s history – I believe the new digital artists will be much less bashful, and much more vigorous in stretching their new digital potentials. Bottom line, still, creativity trumps all.
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“Finally, I have, ‘Happy Accidents,’ all the time working in the digital medium – many more than I had in the analogue medium. In Analogue, most of my surprises came through my camera, my sense of composition, or my ability the quickly capture a moment that was fleeting. The main reason I used the 35mm format as my most ‘used’ camera is simple. I figured – if I have the time – I go to a larger format. But, if time were fleeting, I would rather compromise the format, and capture the image. In digital, not only can I cover for my source shortcomings, but also, I can add layers of creative efforts of my imagination, after-hand, over my source layer. The source layer becomes the ‘inspirational layer,’ and, as a digital artist, I can draw, paint, tint, texture, and photomerge new layers to stack over my first – to end up with the same as any artist has in any medium at the end of their work – a sum of their efforts – an ‘additive process’ reaching its conclusion. The result may not be what the artist was original expecting, or aiming for, seldom is art making that way. Still, maybe the final effort that stands beyond any achievement they have ever reached before in their efforts. The change is – Large Formant is becoming a dinosaur – technology shall shrink in someday into a structure we can carry on our fingers…
“Going back to the original question of paint versus digital art… Art, in general, is about possibilities that spring form our imagination. It makes no difference if you use grass, or granite – if you achieve the result of your imagination. It will become recognized. More importantly, you will enjoy the self-satisfaction of ‘knowing,’ you gave it your all… You can’t compare the two (comparing painting to digital art) – or you always are disappointed, like trying to make a gradient drawing on canvas – wet with Gesso…
“Digital images are a new form – the papers are not light sensitive – they are a new (and always improving) and have their own characteristics. Many new ones provide textures and luminance’s I have never seen before. Then there are the dye ink sets, and at least three Chromatic Ink Sets by Epson alone. Painting is a different genre – long proved for it’s uniqueness – for the challenges presented with choices of brushes, and color palettes – even their smells are a part of the process for some… I remember when acrylics first came on the scene – what an uproar they caused for the purest at first. Eventually, they integrated into the painting lingua franca, and many found they could express their art in new ways – once unavailable to them.
“Digital Art is not really photography, and likely should not be judge as such – except, if exercised in the most stringent ways – the same as photography processes have dictated. But, why is this? Digital artifacts (deliveries) free an artist to express themselves very unreservedly, and as intrinsically as they can achieve – through training, and exercising their medium (like one seeking to grasp any artform in a meaningful way). A digital print is it’s own kind of art form that will come to have it’s own field of Coppolas, Fords, Kubricks, – it’s own Botticelli’s, Dalis, Durer’s and Renior’s. It will find it’s standards, given time, as all art mediums will that come to pass the tests of time… I feel certain such will become the fate of the Digital Print. Illustrative, and unique, Digital Artifacts give us a set of avenues for imagination filling with all these new and wondrous flexibilities that are being created, everyday – like plug-ins added to the ever-increasing array of tools available to the Digital Artist creating Digital Artifacts. Artifacts can truly reflect the deepest, and most illustrious perceptions, we can create – that may be gleaned from the artist mind.
“Like any means of expression – the cream of the crop dose not come overnight! Keep an open heart, and mind – and watch for the new works coming forward all the time! You will come to find there is a unique quality here, different from paintings, drawings, wood block printings, and so on – a new addition, a new chapter. Great art all the same – capable of inspiration, dream-building, and enormous emotional markings upon other human souls. You just got to get over the word ‘digital,’ and exchange it for, ‘New Artform,’ and everything else will take care of itself… It will become another part of our fabric, nature, and curiosity. Looks who’s running for President, in 2008, as a Democrat… We couldn’t have imaged it 45 years ago – but we fought for the rights that are being expressed and exercised today. It surely has made us a better, wiser, more insightful society. No one wanted the music industry to go digital – but look at how much that ‘move’ has added to the sounds of everything we listen to today. Doesn’t mean we can’t get out the old Jazz LP’s to listen to on the weekend. It just is another choice… And so, Digital Renderings, Artifacts, or Deliveries will just become a different way to be creative, and achieve personal expression one might could not pick on a piano, or guitar, or vocally, or with pencil and paper, or paint and canvas… But if you can express yourself proficiently, profoundly, and prolifically – in this new art form – then, there has just become another way for a start create a new way to move on and become a constructive being – maybe, someday, a great artist and human… Isn’t that what makes it worth considering – does not that make it worthy?...” – Brad Michael Moore http://www.alphasight.com/index.html
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