[eu-gene] The first public presentationof DynamicPaintingtechnology

[Pall Thayer]

On 12.12.2008, at 14:32, Philip Galanter wrote:

> Alex,
>
> I'm not talking about fashion or short term art movements.  What I'm
> saying is that great art is almost always *about* something.

Yes, but it's not necessarily the artist that tells us what it's  
"about". We have people specialized in that field. To tell the truth,  
if I could get away with it, I would much rather leave it up to those  
people to say what my work is "about" rather than saying it myself  
because it's "about" something to me but might be "about" something  
entirely different to someone else and I wouldn't want to ruin that  
potentially personal experience.


> The art that some people would think is about nothing would be the
> totally nonrepresentational painting of the abstract expressionists.
> But that art was very much about something; the direct experience of
> the sublime or the exorcism of the inner psyche for example.
>
> At the time it seemed like a stake had been driven through the heart
> of representationalism.  But it came back because people found new
> ways to express meaning through representational work.  Tracy Emin's
> drawings certainly have meaning.
>
> What meaning does San's work have?  And to be fair, what meaning does
> most generative art have?
>
> Damian,
>
> first, computer art is only a subset of generative art.  That's an
> important thing to either keep in mind or actively dispute.  But
> equating the two terms cannot at all be taken for granted.
>
> And I couldn't disagree more about generative art being intrinsically
> conceptually vacuous.  Generative *fine* art can and should, but all
> too often doesn't, engage the conceptual realm.  I not talking here
> about the specific "conceptual art" movement.  I'm talking about the
> fact that virtually all fine art has "content."
>
> In particular I've been writing about how generative art can present a
> visceral experience of complexity in the scientific sense of the
> term.  In doing this generative art can reinvigorate and re-legitimize
> formalism, and reintroduce dynamism in art.  And, in fact, embedded in
> the artistic exploration of complexity is, IMHO, the answer to the
> cultural conflict between science and the humanities, i.e. the
> apparent conflict between modernism and postmodernism.
>
> The above doesn't come near to presenting the ideas in a convincing
> fashion, and even if it did that's not really my point here.  My point
> is that here is an example of how generative art can have massive
> conceptual content.
>
> I should note that not all art is fine art, and there's nothing wrong
> with art that is not.  There is a place for cultural celebration, for
> example, and if people want to create generative systems to use at
> raves for projected visuals, that's fantastic.  Others will want to
> use generative systems for pragmatic tasks.  For example, creating CGI
> imagery for film rather than having to model it all by hand.  That's
> great too.
>
> But in the fine art world meaningless art tends to have a short shelf
> life.  Like I said, in that realm pretty pictures just aren't enough.
>
>
> -- 
> '"generative" is where you lose control of a machine which does  
> exactly
> what you tell it.'
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--
Pall Thayer
palli at pallit.lhi.is
http://www.this.is/pallit