"Brave New Digital World" "As a Digital Artifact Artist (from the age of Convergent Art) - born just passing the golden age of photography, I will offer to you here, a intricate definition (part theory, some elements - tongue in cheek) of where I have arrived as an artist, and why I think I am here. Complexity is a quality we all share in common... Each of us is unique, and multifaceted, regardless of our aspirations. So allow me to explain what I offer as an artist of Digital Artifacts, or, Analogue Digital Deliveries, and the life-long process that brought me to here. "As an enduring photographer thru the majority of my days, my eyes and heart have long steeped in the roots of the natural landscape, its color, its environments, and all that entails. During my professional career, 38 years deep, and 56 years old in curiosity - the world of 'Photo-Capture and Presentation' has evolved, dramatically - and so have I. This has come about due to the turnover of, "Analog Methods," of film and, 'Wet Darkroom' printing processes - both becoming overrun, and replaced, by new Digital counterparts... "Manufactures were the first instigators to nudge a hesitant visual arts community and industry towards the digital experience - beginning seriously in the early to mid-1980's. How was this scheme accomplished? Corporate marketing executives convinced their boards into beginning to slowly close down their lines of the companies' offerings of long established analogue papers, films, cameras, printing and processing equipment. In this stead - they had R&D replacing Analography with Digital counterparts. No doubt, in these boardrooms across the business world, strategies were being plotted, based on the now established assumptions that; A digital world would provide greater revenues to manufacturers as prices of digital delivery systems struck down the more narrow, and elite markets, and replaced digital media into commercial and business levels of the private and public economy - something never before imagined... These days, families can print their home photographs on their kitchen counters by just sitting their digital cameras into a port of their countertop photo-printer (next to the iPod port receptacle). "In today's digital cameras - you have a rudimentary 'darkrooming' process capability that can be enacted within in your digital camera before, and after shooting. This allows you (if you choose) to totally bypass a computer, and its specialized programs, or commercial lab processing all together. Cameras now capture images with electronically recorded data. 'Wet Darkrooms' of old, have been replaced by, 'Daylight Print Rooms,' where 'digital capture electronic files' are transferred from your camera's, 'Flash Cards,' to larger data storage devices for computers - or other direct-printing devices. These digital 'electronic' files can be reprocessed, beyond their original state, prior to their data passing along to a digital printer - such as a Giclee Inkjet Device. Alternatively, digital files may also be uploaded onto any of the Internet Art Exposure Sites - such as AbsoluteArts, Saatchi-Gallery, #artmesh - or even FTP'ed (File Transfer protocol) to web-programming editors, or other professional, or commercial software and web designers, to integrate your image product into even more intricate presentation delivery systems, that can be used for business and government purposes... "Getting back from this world-wide discussion to the personal story; I have experienced this revolution first hand, and have rolled with the punches of this great transition from an analogue world to one of 'Digital Capture and Presentation.' The films, of my early works, are today, transformed by the new digital scanners developed for reflective and transparency materials. These scan devices create digital 'negatives,' or files, that are then printable digitally, and deliverable for other purposes. "I donated my entire, 'Wet Darkroom,' to a non-profit visual arts organization in 1994 (including 5 color enlargers, and all the peripheral equipment, odds and ends, to expose and print a finished product using a chemical process). I completely committed myself to this digital world I knew would come to overwhelm analog processes with equal, to superior product - given time. My frustration was - having to wait for digital printing processes to catch up to the professional level already reached in the mid-late 1990's for digital capture devices. So I went through a short period of years without the ability to do my own print work. I farmed out my film and digital files to professional labs - who themselves, would soon go out of business - or recast their mission statements to meet the changing market that was quickly going digital too. "I knew the high costs for digital equipment would only go down as the technology developed. It didn't take too long - not with all of the competition of recognized purveyors who serve the public, and private sectors, with their long established photo capture, print equipment, cameras, and paper materials. I believe there will be some holdbacks who will hoard old materials, and produce their work with these resources to appear different from the majority of others in their contemporary field who have moved on with the digital revolution... They may say that the first processes were the purest processes, - but I can't agree... The first 'wet' processes were filled with carcinogenetic elements ingrained into their chemical make-up - chemicals so often washed down the basin drain into the sewer systems to someday become our drinking water again... I firmly believe these lagers and misbelievers of the new technologies will only provide an asterisk to the real world of art today, and in the future. The elitism of the, "Artist Patronage System," will no longer be a barrier to upcoming visual digital (still and video) artists, trying to make their mark. It will likely continue to exist for painters and sculptors.
(*) Please note, I do not mean to discount past archival-processed Silver Gelatin, toned, and color counterpart processes exercised by the pioneers of the old days - who created great and historic works. Speaking of the legends of our Visual Arts History - successful artists who were born, and died, in the days of analogue...Their works, and those photographers - tagged with art historical connotations attached to their art, will live on in their own chapters of our Art History. "This record will also recognize those in the same boat as I - who have one foot born into both generations - Analogue and Digital... My analogue prints I have labored over - they may be more valuable than my Digital prints, today - simply for the fact there are only a finite number of them - never to be more. Only truer collectors, and investors, will be most interested in the oldest prints. What makes my new work collectible can be parsed this way. First, the digital processes, and printing materials, are as archival-healthy as any of the old analogue processes - provided the proper materials are chosen. I have grown into being a digital artist as the digital age has progressed. Now my work has evolved in ways I could once have never imagined - because of what the digital processes now offer me in the arena of creative tools to craft my art. Still, my, 'nature seeking past,' colors and spirits my digital deliveries of today... I am a Digital Artist - no longer a Photo Artist! I have been processing images digitally since 1996, and printing digitally going on five years. I offer both Analogue, and Digitally created, and processed art. My labor meets archival standards by the use of the papers and chromatic inks I choose - designed to produce Archival Digital Deliveries. I do not print editions. Each order I fill, I start with the original master file, and reprocess it to create a unique printed image - different, if compared, side-to-side, than other printings of the same image (even though it may take a good eye to note the difference, sometimes - other times, the beholder might see the difference too - especially when I use a different substrate!). "Just like the value of mutual funds on world exchanges, or a barrel of oil, or a gallon of milk, may change in price on a daily basis - so should the eye of a discerning artist change their view with a world in motion, I believe. I grew up in an art market where the artist goal was to make every image exact - so that you couldn't tell one from another - even if processed ten years apart. The biggest difference would not be the quality, but the date on which it was processed. As an artist of the digital age - dating images, and scribing artist notes on every print, still is the grandest exercise an artist can do for enhancing their work's future evaluations (especially usefully to the heirs of your estate)...
"A "Series," for an artist - at least for me, becomes a standard, or a storyline, through which I convey the concepts, and visual values, of my day and night dreams. Paradigms and archetypes, as language, in an artistic medium are never contrary, despite the randomness that may flower out of my efforts through the years. I have never wished to create the spelling of any condescending, or ill-bearing revelation philosophies. It is therefore, through much consideration, and patience, that my work evolves. In this world, and this age of complexities, I wade through a flux of extravagancy - a river of mirroring perceptions and real life truths. The latter is messy, filled with beauty, plights, haves and have-nots. Our Earth, waning in its natural wonders, is overwrought in human excessiveness. On this planet exists the majority of us – neither starving, nor welding the greatest wealth, or power – except though our common streams of consciousness, that can allow us to overcome, both, the ills of our most needy, and the corruption of our most powerful. We only need to exercise it - sometimes leaders are helpful. Aside from this, the middle of us is so wide – it is full enough of extremes beyond the expanding limits that outbound it. And, in the center of this entire universe – I take up my small space… I am but one human being wishing to express myself... It is a humbling experience, trying to put a dent into the veneer of these truths I am aiming through. During my career, I have cruised along, mostly of my own concurrence, within this life surrounding me (and often with less support from my community than I could have wished for - helping me relate to common man). But, I have followed through, upon my oceans of notions, and developed my visions - along with many recalibrations throughout the length of my chosen path. As a traditional folk song, in parts, goes, “The water is wide, I can not cross over, and neither have I - wings to fly… I know not how – to sink or swim… loaded deep as deep can be, on this ship I am in.” So, when the dust has settled by the midst – my art will represent my wonder of it all. If there is a defining nature to my work – it may be the quality, “Ever-changing.” I have grown to know myself as a, 'reflecting soul.' As far as I can see, the rest of my life must remain conjecture, and mystery... Such notions are always - ever changing. I am not as great a fence-mender, as much as I am a builder of walls to hold up my dreams. Some will fabricate a steady stream in their body of works. I have rather, 'meddled in the spices,' in mine. As such, my art has come to develop into an amalgamation of my experiences that have grown into what I call, Digital Artifacts... Be what they may, I shall never try to explain that my digital artifacts are the sum of a great plan – only the sum of what I beg to share from my own finite life - as I have studied and exercised to better define it."
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27 July 2008
“Some other passing thoughts…” – Brad Michael Moore
(Based upon reader feedback - 2nd Edit)
“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 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...
"Music Machine" 2007 Brad Michael Moore
“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...
“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.
"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?...”
It is a shame, in some way, that digital art rendering got companioned with a seemingly less feral path to paper via the Giclee'. But facts are facts - this is the primary way of putting digital art into the hands of others. This partnership requires the conceptualization of Convergent Art. I still imagine Digital Rendering - what I call creating Digital Artifacts - still has yet to see its best canvas. What Gates brought to the table is a step forward. I am hard-headed enough to believe someday my artifacts will reproduced as 3-D Full Color projections upon a plane of air versus a 2-D surface. Military applications project images on glass, and a group, Dimensional Studios, is offering commercial stage productions using a Musion holographic projection. They say that, "Musion Eyeliner is a unique high-definition video holographic projection system allowing spectacular freeform 3D hologram effects to be projected within a live stage setting using Peppers Ghost technology." So I believe, soon enough, artists like me will also become sellers of holographic projectors that will allow our digital art to exist on no substrate at all - just environmental atmospherics. It will change the definitions of artistic expressions inside-out. After that phase - we will be carrying our art like a rolled up canvas - except this paper-thin canvas will be made up plasma filiments that can be charged with a small memory stamp to bring art to light to hang or place anywhere - perhaps even to be made into curtains, rugs, and bedspreads. Fancy way to impress a date! There is nothing I can imagine that isn't already seeded in someone else's applications, or, their project ideas who just haven't put the pieces all together - yet... I have said it before - Brave New World! Thanks for the blog, this piece, your article, Barney. It helps to continue to light the path of an artform that will blend with science and I can imagine will hang (in some version) in the Captain's Quarter's someday when we are going about space exploration - on the way to mine the mighty resources of Mars. Science and art and space - nothing can dither the imagination of Humankind...
BMM
"Going Digital - October 10, 2007 (C) BMM 2007" Date Published: 2007-10-10 - Time: 23:59:43 /Lightly edited 05/20/2008
This conversation came out of a blog - 10/08/2007: "Software, Hard Heads" by Bruce Price, and speaking of Timex stories...
As an artist, I was first "touched," by digital dabbling in the music business, while I also photographed, and wrote. My brother, Gary Moore, was beginning to keyboarding with high profile musicians, and, my best friend, Russell Berger, and I, built a 24 track analog recording studio, in Dallas, Texas, we named HighGrove House Inc. It was the 1970's. We cut demos for individuals, and groups, & songwriters who'd then go and eventually get their demos rerecorded in LA, or NYC, or Nashville (producer's egos...). There was a lot of talent in musical Texas - but you had to find your career elsewhere. I could tell you stories about Willis Alan Ramsey, Leon Russell, Duane Almond, the Vaughn Brothers (Stevie Ray and Jimmy), Steve Miller, and Ike & Tina Turner - those were colorful days - Ike bummed me my first smoke I burned at the top of a 12 foot ladder in a closet in front of a stage light control board I built and controlled - let the show roll on! Russell and I provided a service for up and coming talent, and people already playing backup to bigger acts. We enjoyed the hell out of keeping company with so many people of creativity - who could paint, or sing, play the piano, or wordsmith a great lyric. Artists are creative, and living around creativity is like polishing a bronze knob - the more you rub upon it - the shinier it becomes - and the residue is a part of that shining you carry off with you as your effort for being there – surrounded in the life.
When digital began to reach its fingers into the world of creatives at our level – the winds were sort of let out of the sails, and a rendering came to stand in their place. Digital hit the music biz about 10 years earlier than it did the world of photography. So in the later mid-1970's, Russell and I listened to a digital recording we made for the first time. We knew everything about the medium was going to change - not just from the hardware aspect - but also from this newest vision of resonance - that came from the comparing of digital and analog reproductions. At first, some people thought that even listening to a digital reproduction sound would somehow coil up your brain cells - much worse than acid... It was a hard sell early on - like anything new and improved that threatens to change the habits, irrevocably, of people hardened in old ways and learned habits of expression... Russell and I could see the writing on the walls. Eventually, I moved to LA - expecting to get closer to the music industry as a visual artist - instead, I got caught up in the beauty of the earth, and veered further into landscapes and wildlife – moving farther from images of humanity. Russell, decided to use his engineering talents, and the art of his ear, and imagination, and went on to become one of the world's most renowned acoustical engineers, creator of music recording studios, and designer of sound environments such as sound stages used in places as divergent as New York, and Shangri-La. Check Russell out: Russ Berger Design Group (RBDG)… Russ makes me a proud friend. Anyway, that's my Time-X story. It prepared me for ten years later, when digital began poking it'd nose into the realms of the visual arts. I knew it was an inevitable invasion - but the digital image capture aspect developed so much faster than its digital printing delivery counterpart. This time imbalance between the equalization of digital image capture and equal quality digital print delivery allowed me a 'time out,' in the early 1990's. I decided to work with my hands in sculpture, and 3-D projects that incorporated sound (analog), and kinetic qualities - whenever possible. Now, we are all soo digitalized – even when we try to avoid it – it imprints upon everything we must come into contact with - in this ever-growing age of digital information, stored and rendered. Still, there is no end in sight.
A politician, and his party, develop a “platform,” built somewhere between conservatism and liberal sway. It banners the truth on which they stand – this coat of arms represents their theoretically unbending philosophy over specific issues.
Artists themselves must make a stand over issues as well. Such as those that surround their own art - if they wish to be taken seriously. As with any profession, an artist’ work must, at some point, express the significance of it’s being. It must have some sort of meaning. Even if it’s meaning is meaningless, at least, that represents an idea that holds significance to the world in which it stands. Art should show why it’s subject and concentration has relevance to its era. Even if not designed to do so, art should stand beside the efforts of the best of the other artists who are in quest of their own way through our humanity – where their art is hopefully held as representative of their uncomplicated, enlightened, or crazed minds.
Poverty... Is it having no beans and bread, or lacking friends, loved ones? Maybe it’s also the absence of inspiration and ideas. Does a hungry child draw stick figures in the dirt? We don't know if we don’t see it first-hand, but we can imagine it might doubtless be true.
Artistic expression is so much a life force to our imagination, regardless of our circumstances. It won't feed the world of hunger directly, but it can show the way to where food should go. If we take heed of ourselves – seek the opportunity that continues the path of our art - it may lead to a recognition that helping the needy can be achieved. Art is not a shallow pursuit. It’s not a recreation driven only by our ego. From art can come the triumph of spreading an encouraging influence. Art reaches the senses of those shortcomings in society needing to be amended in affirmative, constructive ways.
It is important to distinguish the difference between who we are, and who we imagine we are. Who we are – the true fingerprint of our identity is wrapped up like so many of the memories we only share to ourselves. The more that time fills the space between etched moments in our thoughts and their reflections we cling to – the more we must close our eyes upon these dreamscapes to hold on to their true meanings.
Do our lucid memories help us blend into the fabric of the life that moves around us? Or, do our memories hold us against our will, keeping us from sharing those intimacies we may tell ourselves would make our lives fuller if we could only share them? Somewhere within even the most righteous among us is, at least, a small bit of vanity we are aware of and would rather not share. There are those who hide their secrets but stay aware of their presence to keep themselves a little more humble as human beings. There are those who hide their secret memories so deep that the images return to them as inescapable nightmares repeating themselves unmercifully. Finally there are the ones I’m talking about here, in the crust of this shared moment with you – my small but captive audience. Stay here, and open the door, and you will be rid of whatever obsession it is I may be tapping into, or leave and let you curiosity fly away.
It’s not ‘Free Will’ that keeps my heart beating… That’s a process defined within thy art of my physiological apparatus, and not the product of my conscience’s limited utility, or my own humble worldly position. My heartbeat is a mighty wind - the same as my free will. Allow me to recognize that either can paralyze me, or permit me to reach in my desires for artistic achievement. I realize my free will may allow me to burn at a stake set for my disobediences, while allowing me, within the flames themselves, to recognize I have been an instrument of good or not.
Allow me to understand that chaos is something akin to smog - it makes for a pretty sunset, but clutters my respiratory system. Are there really ever accidents?
(I imagine) - Paint flies from my brush in an unexpected way, in a moment of uncertainty, and changes all my life’s forward momentum. And so it is that such consequence redraws my art’s direction the remaining days of my life. I will still argue free will was its cause, or the brush would not have been in my hand in the first place…
A life of it’s own… Art, like any object created, has a life of its own and its creator becomes it’s ward. You can give it away, or store it for another day, or put it out into the world where’s it’s course is directed by the hands of other’s responsibility. When our children to go off to college or leave home (and we have a choice over in which direction they may go), it’s the same in so far as the fact we are giving up our strongest authority directly relating to their well being. We trust we have taught our children well enough to survive in the world. My best efforts at art are made to survive in the world as well, but either (my art or our children) come to face life’s uncertainly, and fate follows both. I’ve always found it more difficult to give up my sculpture than my photographs. The sculpture can never be replaced – neither can our children. Still, it is our nature to try and protect, as best we can, our creations. Whatever the outcome of letting go of either – releasing both are acts of faith. Our letting go of something so close to our heart allows us then go forward and create something new – let go of it, and create again. What happens to our creations (to our knowledge) will impact the results of whatever else we do that follows, and that is how our art (and ourselves) grow from one state of mind to another. Feed the mind, sacrifice, let go of (or sell) our illustrations of the past, and hope what goes around comes around… Bottom line, put what we love out into the world to manifest where it may find new meaning that can enhance the existence of others (and other things). If we keep our creations at home, we enhance our surroundings in which we live and our friends, and visitors, will find nourishment visiting us. Cindy Sherman said in a 1997 interview by Glen Helfand, "When I am making the work, I’m never thinking of any of the things people find in it. Sometimes I wonder if maybe its all a lot of crap. Maybe the work does not mean anything. When they are writing about it, they are just finding whatever to attach their theories to. I just happen to illustrate some theories.”
Great art lives by its own rules and timelines, which hardly ever favor the artist who creates it. There's an unspoken quality in great art that you can sense in both past grand masters and everyone leading up to today's most contemporary leaders in their mediums. If art speaks beyond the times of its creator - it may be great. I don't rely on some else's opinion, though, to tell me what art is superior or not. That's kind of like assuming your children's school can teach your kids about sex better than you can for they have the materials of so many studies. To me, anyone who can handle their own intellect alongside of their soul and express a balanced rendition of their uniqueness married between the two - I believe I can recognize that level of variable clarity. That's how I judge another's art to residing in the neighborhood of a higher level.
(Brad... Speaking a little more about the balance of intellect and soul -are we speaking of art, or just living? I think this is an important issue. - Walt)
Last Saturday evening, I had just put the finishing touches on an blog, nicely wrapped, over art and mythology. Then, by curiosity, I browsed through the AbsoluteArts Visual Arts Café discussion forum where the issues of identity have recently been debated. An old nerve was thumped… I am white, male, over 50, heterosexual, never married, no children (no grandchildren), American, professional, and living in near obscurity. I often ponder how my art reflects these aspects of my being - issues of my personal identity… Is my art more of a reflection of myself, or rather, the world I observe in my midst? Will people be able to relate to my art who are Slavic, Gay, African, Lesbian, Latino, homeless, hungry, wealthy, or repressed? Should the breadth of my uniqueness portray objectivity most specific to my peculiar layer of human integration? Must my heritage be the most important focus of my endeavors of artistic expression? I come from a partial Jewish parentage, but I was raised Protestant - are either aspects important enough to be reflected within my art - possibly, but not in my case. I do reflect on the world around me - the human condition, and our treatment of this planet holds a great concern to me. Will that concern be echoed in my art as a matter of course because the process provides no other choice? Or, is my identity a part of a greater essence of how we have reached to the record of our inventions?
A fellow blogger recently told us of a visit with his grandchildren in his essay. I would have never pondered the fact he was a grandfather by looking at his artwork. If I had children (and had ever been married, or had a life partner), would my art be different than it is today? Is art only a question of societal identity which should point out who 'we' are versus who 'I' am? If I was born any color, would trying to illustrate the ancestry of my color distract from the totality of my making art? Would my talent be considered the same if I was a folk artist without formal training or genealogical intent but with equal natural born skills of communication? Should art rise above who and what we are to others, or is art inherently the product of our upbringing - can it transcend this mortal coil of our individual existence?
I may be trying to spill a can of worms here, but I find it disturbing that over 11 million adolescents in America today are prescribed anti-depressants. Do American artists have a duty to reflect the implications of this phenomenon and the possible Corporate Pharmaceutical's strategy behind it? These medicated children are of every color and persuasion - shouldn't we consider this an issue of our collective identity and address it through our art, or, is this more a subject for political activism - that's a function of art too. Otherwise, we sit by and wait to learn the results of medicating our offspring until they can speak for themselves over the subject, and hope clarity will prevail in that analysis… I would prefer art therapy over drug therapy.
Art, at its very core, reveals a standard of physical, spiritual, and emotional parameters we all share in as part of the human experience. History plays out a cycle of trials and tribulations common to living today - many ways the same as 100, or 30,000 years ago. Our needs, dreams, and desires, repeat themselves wherever human life has, does, or shall exist. From the cave paintings of Chauvet-Pont-d'Arc to the 'more contemporary' chronicles of Homer, or from our present-day studies of different cultures and their myths and legends, or in modern creative expressions - the struggles we discover are comparable throughout all of humanity's recorded history. There are so many themes centered on survival, or the yearning for approval and acknowledgment from loved ones, peers, and eternal makers… There is the division of uncertainties over our impermanence, and a varied inquisitiveness over a 'hereafter concept' ranging into many assortments of manner. From crude beginnings, we have come to look towards the cosmos, where, there is an assurance that however minute we feel, balanced to the whole of our universe, we each are still a component to the puzzle of this grand existence.
For artists, we must labor earnestly in being responsive to the significance of what we have in common with this history of our species and earth. Our pose is to reinterpret, rephrase, and reinvent those common links, as well as portray any new possibility distinctive to our own time and environ. While we are each unique, in the sum of our individual heritage and experiences, it is the ordinary endeavors repeating themselves, constantly, and fluidly, that bring sincere meaning to our lives, and should be reflected in our art through the light of our individualities. Truisms, wise tales, equilibrium, karma, providence, devotion - art re-illustrates them all over and time again. Just as trees has been, for centuries, worshiped in Indian culture, or how ancient Polynesians believed 'Heaven Father and Earth Mother' were born out of a chaos they called Po, art springs from, and maintains, the heart of imagination and life itself. And so is born mythology - proportioned from diverse points of view to make more clear how we are what we have become. Myth is the coal pit worked by the artesian Greek God Hephaestus; Art is the lotus flower rooted in mud, growing through murky waters to bloom, finally, beneath the sun. Both give points of light echoing reverence to the foundations of humankind and its earth. Our art has consistently nourished the visions addressing our courage and strengths, our failures and character… If the heart of our creative expressions manifest to accurately mirror our own genuineness of soul, and imagination, our toils will convey these associations that bind us together. The symbols of our observations will be reflected by our art and mythos - labored over and destined towards future generations. So, I declare to us all - to imagine visibly, to dream sincerely, be forthright, and bare witness - let our inspired abilities reveal the existing essence of our present and past shared history as it blazes towards the upcoming ages…
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Artists are in the 'business' of expressing themselves... Those who isolate their concerns, who feel little need to articulate a viewpoint based upon their own belief systems, or their own geo-political surroundings, may have missed the boat. The landscape artist can't escape the obvious crush upon nature by the touch of human processes governed by politics and greed. Artists portraying American children must recognize the growing obesity issues of our newest generation. How many of us rendering cityscape skylines have had to consider how to express (or ignore) the smog that also infiltrates or obliterates the renderings being prepared? The means to express an artist's concerns, while still purveying their work into the homes of buyers, may not be as difficult as one could suppose. A series of works, with subtle thinking, can be taken together in understanding the core of one’s motivations. Meanwhile, the artwork noiselessly makes it to the 'Living Room Wall.' Cultivating the consumer to one’s own POV may require many small steps - 'tender notions,' which could grow change out better than blatant work screaming an over-the-top manifesto. Such is ‘food for thought’ when considering any artist’s overall body of effort. - 
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It’s not ‘Free Will’ that keeps my heart beating… That’s a process defined within thy art of my physiological apparatus, and not the product of my conscience’s limited utility, or my own humble worldly position. My heartbeat is a mighty wind - the same as my free will. Allow me to recognize that either can paralyze me, or permit me to reach in my desires for artistic achievement. I realize my free will may allow me to burn at a stake set for my disobediences, while allowing me, within the flames themselves, to recognize I have been an instrument of good or not.
