Take an old iPhone, a fifties era American car hood ornament, still attached to said car, apply a little AI app magic and what do you get? Regardless of what you get most agree that It's fun to play around with the possibilities using the current techniques and technology that are available to creatives these days. I know that purists in the arts often scoff at the use of such tools and processes as nothing more than cheating instead of learning how to create in a traditional sense, but what traditional sense are they referring to?
Art and the tools to create it with have been changing ever since some dude accidentally brushed up against a rock outcropping with the burnt end of a stick and noticed that it made a dark mark on the lighter toned rock around it. Soon a whole cave culture arose as humans sat around telling stories and scratching out crude drawings depicting their prowess at everything from finding dinner to finding a mate. I'm sure at some point somebody who felt they knew art better than most decided the whole visual story telling was over when some wiseguy started adding crushed up berries and different shades of dirt to the mix and began applying color with a chewed up end of a stick to an otherwise nearly sacred monochrome craft. Cave walls and tombs would never be the same again
The truth is artistic creativity has been evolving since the very beginning of art as a thing and it wont stop at the point we've currently reached. Humans are meant to create, not just art, but the tools which help others try their hands, and heart, at creativity too. Cameras weren't always cameras as we know them. Our modern camera came about when some guy on a bender in the desert woke up one afternoon to a vision of the world dancing across the light colored fabric covering the wall of his darkened tent. Then someone blew his epiphany by noticing a tiny hole directly opposite the vision and the crude but effective camera obscura was inadvertently invented.
Soon, in the timeline of human existence anyway, The Camera Obscura was all the rage. There were portable models invented which well heeled Europeans would haul out to scenic spots, climb in or strap on and while away the hours tracing the upside down world in. It was a shortcut to learning to draw from life. Is there any wonder the very first book of photography in 1844 by the English Scientist William Henry Fox Talbot was titled The Pencil of Nature? Michelangelo must have turned over in his grave.
My point is this; regardless of the tools used or the techniques applied, creativity that is allowed to flourish along side advances in science and technology, will make the world a more colorful, and hopefully, a better place with people exercising their ability to make stuff in order to inform, understand or simply to happily share with others. So, how's that working out? So far so good.
If you appreciate this image, along with the thoughts that accompany it, and wish to discover how to create thought provoking images to share with others, I can help. I teach and mentor, individuals, teams, and groups on the subject of photography and creative seeing beyond seeing. Whether you live locally or out of the area please feel free to connect to find out more. I offer instruction in person or remotely via email, phone and Skype. Isn't it time you took your passion for the art of living to a higher level?
© 2019 Michael D. Davis - Visual Artist . Writer . Teacher
