Heretics, doubts, innovativeness & controversies in Digital Art.

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What herARTics is...

Art has been following the rapid development and process of humanity at all times. During the 20th century, artists became more open minded and broke many rules in order to create. Most of the attempts were not approved in the beginning, and many questioned a lot of works that were supposed to be art, as for example the Dada art movement in 1920’s. This also happened with many digital art forms that emerged from the 70’s. Except from bending the “principals” and rules of art, they started to touch more sensitive matters with new forms of art.  With the power of the photography and the video, artists begun to express their feelings or thoughts for moral questions, about life, equality, communication, society  and many more. The way these were presented, were most of the time judged and rejected due to the similarity they had with real life. The way they were given to the audience was raw and shocking for most of them or the matters they poked were taboos for the world back then. As years went by, technology created new ways of making art (f.e. computers) that they were still questioned. The art forms that we have now and which are still constantly changing, have not been yet approved, even by art critics, as art.

In our blog, we tried to present some of these art projects that were not just an ordinary art, examples of artistic approaches that broke the rules, and even make our readers think and question themselves about it. In our journey, we also found ourselves questioning our beliefs about art, reconsidering many things that we had for granted. We tried to think out of the box and absorb every bit of knowledge in the process. Even though our subject was a little general and vast, we made our best in order to be apparent. Our blog posts were fully aimed at the digital forms of art and focused mostly in art forms that we encounter almost every day in our lives. And we do hope that all of you, our readers, got at least a little something to accompany you in your research and your life in general.

 -herARTics

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What makes a work of art Controversial?

A lot of work arts have been considered controversial from the public view. In this article we will review the main reasons why this happens.

Let us begin by just mentioning that every new form of art that changed the rules of previous art forms was considered controversial at the beginning. 

So the first factor that makes a piece of art controversial is if it breaks the established rules that exist at this moment of time. 

Another factor would be the means that are used to complete a piece of art. For example Marc Quiin created a self portrait from his own blood. 

Last but not least, art can be considered controversial because it touches a sensitive subject like sexuality, religion, politics and so on.

[vrartsinpainting]

360 VR - Behind the “Girl at a Window” Dali.

Το 1925, ο καλλιτέχνης Salvador Dali ζωγράφισε τον πίνακα “Girl at a Window”. Μετά από σχεδόν έναν αιώνα, έρχεται ο δημιουργός ψηφιακής τέχνης Jose Villalba και δίνει ζωντάνια στον πίνακα με την προσωπική του πινελιά. Πιο συγκεκριμένα, φαντάζεται την ιστορία πίσω από τον καμβά και μας ταξιδεύει μέσα από την ματιά της κοπέλας. 

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Isn’t it amazing how emerging media technologies can reproduce older art projects and give them a new perspective? This is a great example from J. Vilalba, where he took the original S.Dali’s painting “Girl at a Window” and brought it to life with the VR. He used the VR in order to give birth to his own idea and viewpoint of the painting, where people have the opportunity to experience an immersive virtual story, based on a successful painting. There will be many who will be cautious or will be opposed against this, as they will think “How’s even that possible/right that someone can take something that it’s already ‘predefined’ and manipulate it in their own way?”. On the other hand, there will be also people who will see this action, as an expansion of something that already existed, cherish the opportunity to discover something new, to come up against a new form of art and maybe get that little something that art has for many of us to offer!

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Are Video Games a form of Art?

“What is art? What isn't? It is a fool's errand, really, and when applied to video games, there can only be one true and valid response: does it really matter? The perfect arc of a Mario jump, the iridescent beauty of Rez, the pastoral longing of Flower, even the architectural brilliance of a Counter-Strike map; none of this is belittled if it fails to 'qualify' as art. "Jonathan's piece is the normal half-baked reactionary response that's been wheeled out several times over the last few years," says Dan Pinchbeck, a lecturer in computer games and creative technologies at Portsmouth University and designer of Dear Esther. "To be honest, I don't think its actually a very interesting question. I don't think games need to aspire to being art, like art is an inherently more worthwhile form of cultural expression - people were playing games long before they were making art, so it's certainly not an older one. A more interesting question is, why is it so important to some people that games are NOT art? Why do they feel so threatened by games being art?” [1]

As you can see or already know, video games managed to enter into the pantheon of Art in 2012 when MoMA acquired a selection of 14 games to add in their collection. In this selection, some games are “old but gold” as for example Pac-Man (1980) and Tetris (1984), while others are most recent ones that deliver a delicate approach towards art, as flOw (2006) and Katamari Damacy (2004). Still, video games tend to be a very controversial form of art, and that is because for some people video games can never be art. "No one in or out of the field has ever been able to cite a game worthy of comparison with the great poets, filmmakers, novelists and poets.[2]" is what Roger Ebert states. But what do you think? Do you accept video games as a form of art?

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/gamesblog/2012/dec/06/video-games-as-art

[2] https://www.rogerebert.com/roger-ebert/video-games-can-never-be-art

[herartics-blog]

Is Digital Art “Real” Art?

When Digital Art made it’s first appearance a lot of artists rebeled on the idea of it being real art. Most of them believed that using traditional tools suggested that digital art was consider “cheating” since a computer could produce results way easier. For example, creating a gradient effects is considerable faster using a computer than acrylic paints. 

As years went by and the digital world became more dominant, this point view evaporated. A lot of digital artist created masterpiece that took a considerable amount of time.

Sources: http://www.muddycolors.com/2014/04/digital-art-is-not-real-art/

http://sharkscholar.com/2018/11/02/is-digital-art-real-art/

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Did you know that your glitches can be a form of art?

“The more pollution I get, the more beautiful the images are. It’s a little bit ironic.”

-Gustavo Fajardo

  Glitch art is a thing nowdays! And how could it be not? Everyone can encounter these glitches, and believe me, they are not so hard to happen. These lovely glitches that songs/images/games/videos make, can be transformed or manipulated into a very interesting and unique form of art. Isn’t that amazing? And why can we consider this type of art innovative/controversial? Well, except from the part that the main ingridient for it to happen is a mistake, “a glitch, even when it is intentionally provoked, always maintains a level of chance, at least from a human point of view, because of the computer’s seemingly random and chaotic way of breaking down”, as Nick Briz states. And keeping in mind the above, “we all are just masses colliding in space, but possessed of fluctuating thought. Or, if you prefer, we’re nothing but bits of streaming data—fragile and corruptible.”

Gustavo Fajardo’s approach on Andy Warhol’s Campbell’s Soup Cans.

Glitched Mona Lisa created in https://snorpey.github.io/jpg-glitch/

There are even glitched sculptures! Those glitches can be the unnatural poses and features/characteristics these sculptures have.

 Yoshitoshi Kanemaki: TAYUTA Capris, Paint on Hinoki wood, H71×W23×D17.5cm

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Uncorfotable Framing; Mr Robot

Mr Robot uses unique cinematography and framing to depict certain emotions. It’s shots are daring and experimental in a way most dramas have not yet explore. Mr Robot is about an idea, the future and the reality we live in. When is the end of the first season we discover that Rr Robot is fake, created from Elliot’s imagination; the main character it represents that for the show the idea is more important than a character. The show depicts  this fact by having the main and other characters in the frame, existing but not taking up the shot. This way we can focus on the situation and the surroundings of the frame rather than focusing only on the characters. The series has to do about society and we can see that in the frames where most of the times the characters are left of the frame, or right. It is a unsettling cinematography that challenges the viewer through filmaking, it uses and uncomfortable framing in a way to offer comfort to the viewer in the terrifying world the show lives in.

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The controversy of art in the political scene.

«Art is capable of representing political power. This is something it has been doing for centuries and for this purpose, it is undoubtedly still used. This, however, is just one side of the relationship between art and power. Art can sometimes refuse to perform this function. Then it represents opposition and evokes conflict. [1]»

               As noted above, art can support political power, but also oppose it.  There have been many occasions where art was against political interests and caused lots of discussion and debates, and sometimes even questioning the existence of the project. The reasons were the aesthetic appreciation of the project and some other times the legal legitimacy that a publication of a project has. For example, Hans Haacke’s installation “Der Bevölkerung”, that took place at the German Reichstag in Berlin in 2000 and the typical example of Robert Mapplethorpe’s exhibition “Perfect Moment” in Washington 1989. The first example came up against the questioning of “Is it worth supporting?”, while the second was canceled at the beginning, due to the content that it was going to display.

Νίκος Αυλωνίτης ΤΧ2012029

[1] Zembylas T. «Controversial Works of Art. Some Notes on Public Conflicts». Journal of Language and Politics, 3:3 (2004). John Benjamin’s Publishing Company. 385. https://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/jbp/jlp/2004/00000003/00000003;jsessionid=1t9j8cdo9btul.x-ic-live-01