Don’t Discuss Technology
Posted on February 20, 2007
Filed Under For Argument's Sake |
Gearing up for another Convergence Culture column, this time for March and it is on how artists are responding to mixed realities, I got talking with Nathaniel Stern, a US artist now doing a PhD at Trinity.
Though the subject of our discussion was supposed to be art we got onto technology and I referenced my own technology blog. Technology blogs in general are very popular, among the most popular on the web. Irish technology blogs are also very popular, except this one. It tends to work inversely to the norm, being hardly at all popular.
Nathaniel combines performance art with among other things scanners. He performs with a scanner strapped to his chest and captures the images that pass by his torso. He does other things as well but my interest in his work lies precisely there. A few weeks earlier I’d been up in Dublin interviewing Sean Kissane who curates exhibitions for the Irish Museum of Modern Art. Sean points out that most artists see technology as part of, even a driver of, the globalisation movement, disrupting local cultures. They are against it.
I’ve noticed in contrast more and more artists adapting computing technology to good effect, creating new images that would previously have been beyond imagination and at the same time engaging in what is really an unreal world - the virtual - self conciously showing us that we are at a threshold in meaning. To my mind virtuality is a point in history where imagination becomes manifest yet remains intangible and that’s got to be a paradox that we can take some years and trees in trying to understand. What does it mean?
This is a moment when we need the collective brain of the web to enlighten us but by and large technology writing is concerned with the functionality and utility of software, products and gadgets. So there you have a moan of the day. How can we move beyond the surface and the pure digital into these areas of meaning?
My guess is I am not the one to trigger a change in the debate. Not enough people pass this way. It’s down to the popular tech bloggers to alter their perspective and do it for us. Who is going to be the tech blogger to reinterpret meaning in modern society? Michael, where were you when we called?
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8 Responses to “Don’t Discuss Technology”
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I discovered your blog very recently, through the Irish blog awards page, and have started going back through the entries. I later realized that I had read and appreciated some of your articles in the Irish Times.
I understand your concern on the technology vs art debate, although I am more used to the other side of it, arts vs technology. I did however attend a workshop in Sweden last summer, in the aptly named Humlab, or Digital Humanities center. THey have a
blog, and stream their seminars, some of which you might find interesting.
Thanks Cathy - will look them up after a mid-week break in Donegal coming up tomorrow. It’s going to take me roughly the same amount of time getting there and back as I’ll spend in Donegal. I hope I love it.
Haydn, I’m quite surprised at the sentiments you report Sean Kissane feels apply to artists regarding technology.
I’m an artist, and a conservative one in that I paint (and mostly keep my abstract paintings hidden), but I don’t understand the notion of technology being in any against the development of art.
In contrast, perhaps like yourself, I see art only being facilitated in where it might go. Even in the conservative world of two-dimensional visual art technology allows so much development in that space between art and reality. Things like mapping software being used in conjunction with deliberate movements and patterns to create images, cameras being attached to anything, animation being affordable to make by anybody, video art being made on computers rather than with video cameras, and that’s just in the very accessible art world. Are not installations being redefined by the breathtaking pace of the capabilities of technology?
I’m not a very good example myself, simply using technology crudely to create a world in which I can market my paintings - what Hugh MacLeod calls the Global Microbrand - but so far it’s working; using blogging to build a presence and become an authority in the opinion of the search engine algorithms, has me on the cusp of actually making a living from my art.
Prior to Irish KC I was simply an artist who blogged. But almost a year ago I reinvented myself online specifically to create a persona that would find it easier to sell my paintings, the same paintings I hadn’t been selling previously. Technology has made that possible.
Greeting Haydn. Just to let you know that following the discovery of your blog around The Irish Times article, I’ve started to read you here.
First impression: I wish I’d found you before.
Hello Liam, I agree with you wholeheartedly and was surprised too. Took a look at your work. I can see why you’re proud of it. You maybe missed an article I wrote on EBSQ.org. Great place to sell art.
Omaniblog - welcome. Hope you keep coming back. I may be taking the blog in a different direction more towards firing up debates.
Haydn, I’m too am quite surprised at the sentiments you report Sean Kissane feels apply to artists regarding technology. I imagine if you read your notes again, you might find that I suggested that ’some artists’ equate technology with globalisation - this is obviously connected to the individual’s interests. ‘Most artists’ is not a generalisation I would have made, and I would appreciate your removing this from your blog. Sean Kissane - Curator of Exhibitions IMMA
Hi Sean,
I wouldn’t have put it up there if I hadn’t felt you were expressing that view - in the course of the conversation I was trying to elicit precisely the point. In fact I tried eliciting your views on where artist were using technology in ways that create new imagery and we arrived at a few examples but in the context of artists seeing technology as a driver of globalisation and being a threat to local cultures. I’m not sure what the ethics of changing blogs are in response to what you see as a misunderstanding. You have the opportunity to comment on a blog directly and have done that so it seems to me that completes the circle. I think it would be wrong of me to change teh blog be deleting anything but I can put an update on it which records and points to your correction. Happy to do that.
hey haydn. thanks for the shout out and link - was great to chat to you, and am now looking forward to working with you on our new collaboration… for clarity, the work haydn mentioned on this post can be seen on the following two sites: http://compressionism.net and http://callandresponse.co.za