Digital Arts and Zombies

This week in Contemporary Art class we learned about the digital Arts today. In today’s world technology has become an important part of our lifestyles. A new world of art has been growing and art has been emerging from new technological places.  Our guest speaker, John Park gave a presentation to our class about the new world of digital arts. John went into great length of detail discussing how digital technology has come a long way. John told us about our technology and how advanced it has come since the first computer. Now all technology plays a major role in everyday life and artist have been able to take advantage of this technology and come up and experiment with thoughts and new ideas, and most importantly interact with the audience especially with the new tools that are available to an artist these days. John also went into detail about the problems there are with frequent use of technology, since the styles and trends of new software or upgrades are constantly changing and people get persuaded to always buy the newest and latest gadget out. John also explained how people are dependent with electronics therefore their desires become dependent as well for example such as craigslist.com and eharmony.com websites where you can shop and find love without leaving your seat. By relying on technology to do everything for us people are becoming dehumanized and basically turning into “mindless zombies”. John explained the importance and benefit of finding the art in technology. John showed us the problem with most people is that society compares the old technology with new, he really stressed the fact that digital effects are a tool and should be treated like any other paintbrush or pencil. John also went on to show us some digital media such as Chunky Move Dance Company a mix of interpretive dance with abstract animation. With providing and combining the two art forms to making something new is simply revolutionary. Visual allows the viewers in the audience to experience and visualize the art form in a specific way the way the artist intended it to be.

 But that doesn’t compare to my favorite video, the Graffiti Research lab. The video is a documentary about special technology in these glasses .It is a pair of glasses that allows you to draw with your eyes by shining a very small amount of infra red light into your eye. A man who was a street artist became diagnosed with Logarakis Disease and lost all movement in his body, but his brain is still active. So what the camera allows you to do is  to control all the drawing with your eye it is very neat and when John showed us I was simply amazed. It really is incredible that were in a age of technology were even a paralyzed artist can still fulfill there visions.

We also read about David Byrne and his work Playing the Building; First look at his work was a huge space with piano in the center and wires all going in many directions. When I first started reading about a guy actually playing the piano I was in awe, Hitting a key in the piano so a noise comes out in a part of the building if that’s not creative then I don’t know what is. I felt that David Byrne was a genius artist for creating the Piano-Building but when it all comes out to it the person playing the Piano-Building at the moment and creating synchronized sounds is the artist then.

This week was very insightful and I enjoyed our guest speaker John Park and the reading that we did with David Byrne hopefully next week we have a speaker just as if not better.