ASSESMENT Digital Envionment

“The past is not dead, it is living in us and will be alive in the future which we are now helping to create.”

This quote by William Morris(1834-1896)  for me sums up perfectly all we have addressed within last term’s sessions. What this quote signifies is that progression does not mean we need just abandon our pasts. We mustn’t fear change but neither should we be at the mercy of it.

In contemporary society there has been a great deal of structural change when it comes to technological advances. One of which involves audiences migrating online away from print. In 2009 Rupert Murdoch expressed his intentions to charge for online news and prevent stories from being linked to by google.  Free access to news via the web has resulted in a decline in people buying news papers.

Co-founder of twitter Biz Stone warned that Murdoch “should be looking at it as an opportunity to do something radically different and find out how to make a ton of money out of being radically open rather than some money by being ridiculously closed”.

 Aside from loosing profit Murdoch’s argument is that quality journalism costs and when you read a newspaper, you expect the article you read to be reliable, thought-provoking or at least interesting. The quality of the writing is at a particular standard but it costs to have a professional team of reporters and journalists. If these articles are free via the web then how do we intend to pay for these standards? Which links us to another area of discussion. Is the internet killing the  expert/ professional as a result of mass amateurism?

For young professionals the web is a fantastic opportunity to test the waters and gather a non-biased response, bridging the gap between study and the outside world as it were, enabling ” presumers” to receive global acknowledgment at a far faster pace, creating art to accommodate all tastes or as Manovich puts it ‘ no special license on creativity and innovation.’ So essentially doesn’t this mean that anyone can become an artist, and anyone can become an art critic? Art is so vast and so personal, that although choice and variation is a good thing,   it becomes far more difficult to deduce who the true artist are.  Does the work of amateur artists threaten the work of professionals? Or  does the compotision up the standards and mean professionals just have to work harder?  

As well as expanding, the web will have an impact on the way we think about art. If we draw creative inspiration from what surrounds us what happens when are environment becomes digital?  The web lets us tap into a diverse array of cultures and  gather inspiration not only from our day-to-day lives, but this digital world we are becoming evermore involved in. In turn, the work created needs to communicate and relate to a broader audience. Unlike doing an exhibition in a local gallery, where you can make a general assumption on who will attend, in this scenario the audience is the world. The web is just an up-scaling of the social structures we already have in place. People feel a lost sense of community and we don’t have the same relationship with our neighbourhood as people did a generation or two ago which is why people feel this need to socialize and share through networking sites, with everything becoming more and more globalized perhaps our neighborhoods are not quite as relevent today. Then again is our loss of community a result of the web?

It is inevitable that with change comes fear, people hold many apprehensions about the internet,  dependency on web, eroding independent thought, dumbing down, loss of privacy as well as being fed false information. If every one has the freedom to contribute and share it is very confusing to establish what information is genuine. However with such a large number of people being able to access, dispute and critique for themselves, then in a way all the information is eventually funneled down until you are left with quality. Wikipedia is a good example of this,  although some of the content is incorrect the important thing is that with such a vast number of people being able to view the site any incorrect information will surely be recognised  and brought to public attention. Unlike a written encyclopedia which sits on your shelf  Wikipedia is constantly being edited and updated, like the web it is malleable, It is not written in stone.

Week 7 Murdoch and the internet.

Having the previous week been asked to research Murdoch and the internet. I googled Rupert Murdoch and coincidentally  the first thing that came up was a link to a  report on the Guardians web page.  The report was explaining Murdoch’s intention to charge for online news and prevent stories being linked to by sites such as Google news. Rupert Murdoch says he will remove stories from Google’s search index as a way to encourage people to pay for content online.

 Biz Stone warned that Murdoch “should be looking at it as an opportunity to do something radically different and find out how to make a ton of money out of being radically open rather than some money by being ridiculously closed”. He was joined in his attack by Reid Hoffman, co-founder of networking site LinkedIn, who added: “I am sure that during the transition from horses to automobiles there were some people bemoaning the loss of horse transport.”

This was a discussion which was addressed  during the lecture. We spoke about how although record companies have lost a great deal of money due to free downloads over the internet there has been an increase in the numbers of people going to see bands, musicians perform live. There has been a shift in trends and people have to re- think how they go about making their money, in this case the money comes from people attending live shows and buying merchandise. Though is it the same, when you buy a news paper such as the Times or the Guardian, what ever your preference you expect the article you read to be reliable, thought-provoking or at least interesting. The quality of the writing is a particular standard but it cost to have a professional team of reporters and journalists. If these articles are accessed free via the web rather than by people paying for news papers how do we pay for these standards? Which links us to another area of discussion is the internet killing the  expert/ professional as a result of mass amateurism. Which again relates back to my opinion on art and the internet. That with such a large number of people being able to accesses, dispute and critique for themselves, then in a way all the information is eventually funneled down until your left with quality. Wikipedia is a good example of this,   although some of the content has been found to be incorrect the important thing is that with such a vast number of people being able to view the site any incorrect information will surely be recognised  and brought to public attention. Unlike a written encyclopedia which sits on your self  Wikipedia is constantly being edited and updated. It is written in stone.

Within the lecture  a question emerged wether Murdoch was over-playing how an open system leads to pollution, viruses, tracking, un- reliable information. playing on peoples fears of the internet that its ‘Big but bad’. Fear is a tool, just the other day i watched dispatches it was about the pro-Israel lobby and the speculation over their donations to the CFI  (conservative friend of Israel) and  the influence the israeli lobby has over Britain.  Dispatches spoke about how when the guardian didnt coincide with the other newspapers including,  (News of the world, the Mirror) in sympathising with Israel it was deemed anti semitic. Free speak constrained by a fear of offending.

In recent months, Murdoch his lieutenants have stepped up their war of words with Google, accusing it of “kleptomania” and acting as a “parasite” for including News Corp content in its Google News pages. But asked why News Corp executives had not chosen to simply remove their websites entirely from Google’s search indexes – a simple technical operation – Murdoch said just such a move was on the cards.

Week Three. The Practice of Everyday (media) Life – by Lev Manovich

What do you make of Manovich’s statement, ‘ it is only a matter of time before constant broadcasting of one’s live becomes as common as email’?

People feel a lost sence of community, we dont have the same relationship with our neighbourhood as people did a generation or two ago which is why people feel this need to socialize through networking sites, with everything becoming more and more globalized perhaps our neighborhoods are not quite as relevent today. Then again is our loss of community a result of the web?

It is likely to become more common place. Though i think the content of what people are willing to broadcast via facebook, twitter e.t.c is sufficiently different to the information they are likely to submit via email. I wonder how many people have the same number of friends on their facebook as they do in their contact list on their hotmail account. Facebook may be a brilliant way to share coming events, videos and photos, but when it comes to more intimate discussion i think people would generally opt for sending an email or communicating verbally by phone. I know i personally find it difficult to register emotion when communicating through text or chat rooms it’s as though i become autistic through my use of technology, i find i often take offence far more easily as i am unable to detect if someone is joking with out the aid of a smiley face. I dont belive you  can relate to someone on the same level as you can in the flesh, as it were and i think it relates back to humans being analog and the medium they are communicating through being digital.

I often get embarrassed when reading the personal statements that people broadcast about themselves on their profile page on facebook. when they talk about their interests and about themselves especially when it doesnt match up with my perceptions of the individual. It’s almost like reading someones CV. Which links with De Certeau’s categories of ‘strategy’ and ‘tactics’ you update supposable unique information about yourself and format it in exactly the same way as every one else, my names bla bla and i like bird watching and collecting random objects cause im so wacky, and that supposable sums up you. Conscious of how many people so-called friends (but how many of them do you actually talk to?) read the information means that people generally tend to be quite selective about the information they broadcast to a mass audience, as opposed to a select few.  When i say audience i literally mean audience people consider their day-to-day occurences valuable to share. it seems hard to comprehend why people would find someone else picking their nose or ‘ about to make spaghetti Bolognese valuable. However there is an undeniable fascination with the day-to-day habits of insignificant individually. Otherwise Big Brother wouldnt have been the success it was and we wouldn’t have celebrities like Peaces Geldof.

So is art still possible through web 2.0? Manovich’s belief is that that most content is being produced by ‘prosumers’, young professionals or professionals in training. Do you think this will expand?

Something i have come to realize through out my 3d design course is that the concepts and theories which are so vital to my projects are not  essentially a selling point with the general public. You can hit all the criteria but this doesn’t reassure success. For young professionals the web is a fantastic opportunity to test the waters and gather a non bias response. Bridging the gap between study and the outside world as it were. It enabling presumers to receive global recognition at a far faster pace, creating art to accomodate all tastes or as Manovich puts it ‘ no special license on creativity and innovation.’ So essentially doesn’t this mean that anyone can become an artist, and anyone can become an art critic? Art is so vast and so personal to each individual, that although chose and variation is good thing,  i think it becomes far more difficult to deduce who the true artist are. With so much work available out there and so many differences of opinion how can we establish where real talent lies.  Does the work of amateur artists threaten the work of professionals? Duchamp’s urinal comes to mind, if everything around us is art, then doesn’t that suggest that nothing is art? However having artist work exposed to such a diverse expanse of individuals there is no pressure for people to give good or bad reviews. The people are not contacts so your not googling to receive a bias response. It’s a reliable way to sift through all the rubbish and discover the real gems. You could compare it to a person googling health advise on the web rather than seeking anointed experts. Your GP is just one individual the more people you have tending to the information being shared, the more likely you are to ensures quality? The same applies to art the good will always rise to the top, just perhaps not so clearly from an academic perspective.

As well as expanding I think the web will have an impact on the way we think about art and the art that is created. We spoke a couple of weeks ago about how what we create is and implication of how our environment has sculpted us and what we believe in. We draw inspiration from what surrounds us. The web means that we have access to the work of individuals from vast array of backgrounds and cultures. We can collect inspiration not only from our day-to-day lives, but this digital world which is the web. In turn the work created needs to be able to communicate and relate to a broader audience. It’s not like doing an exhibition in a local gallery where you can make a general assumption on the type of people who attend such events, again linking back to aesthetics and being aware of how to relate to our audience. What happens when your audience is the world?

week two, digital is …..

Week Two, What the hell is Digital…?

After the first session we were set the task of preparing a presentation which answered the question digital is …? I had a very limited understanding of what the word digital ment i could list electronic devises, though couldnt actually define the word digital. 10011001001010 and on off came to mind, but this isnt a clean definition and i wasn’t entirely sure how they related to the word. I was curious to find out how much other people knew about digital, so asked a few people to give a brief description of what was supposedly digital.  What was apparent was that people mainly associated the word with objects they knew to be digital.

‘ the internet, bus stop times, announcement boards. Calculations, accuracy, technology.’

The word analog also seemed  to crop up a lot in peoples descriptions. If digital is an advance from analog then i needed to understand analog to appreciate what we have advanced from. I came across a nice metaphor which helped me to visualize more clearly the contrast between digital and analog. That being the difference between a record player and a CD player.

Record players work by having the needle run gently over the grooves of the record, which are imprinted on the vinyl. The vibrating needle reproduces the recorded sound. There are no gaps in the record when it is playing  even when the record is blank.  So its strange that people would describe digital as being more accurate and yet the record player which uses analog technology is realler in the sense that no information is lost, it is constantly providing a continuous signal. Differing from the CD player which provides a continuous signal but as a series of points of information. Rather than a needle reading the information on the compact disk a laser is focused onto the grooves, and is reflected back onto one of two sensors, creating a series of data points that are turned into music. Although it provides a clearer, crisper sound it is perhaps not as honest as that of a record player.

I started to categorise objects and things as either analog or digital and found out that the written language is considered to be digital. Thinks such as morse code, braille, smoke signals and in fact DNA are also categorised as digital. If DNA is digital and the way we communicate through written language is digital it led me to wonder what we are as humans whether we process the world around us digitally or analogically. When discussed with the group the general consensus was that humans were analog.  If this is the case, then does submerging ourselves within a world where everything that surrounds us operates digitally mean that its harder for us to connect, on the same level as it is for us to connect with objects that operate analogicall? I spoke earlier about the music produced by a record player as being real and many would ague more soulful in comparison to a the sound produced from a CD playerwhich almost like an airbrushed photograph, information is lost to create  a crisper more enhanced image which isnt as true to the object the picture it is taken of.

week one.

Week One Theory

Untill today i had always used the word aesthetics as means of describing the appearance of something, from a 3D Design perspective it’s not the function of the object, it’s what it looks like, its form the ethos it gives of. Though perhaps aesthetics covers something broader. In many ways it is the link between the creator and their audience. Without it the designer, the artist, the creator is unable to communicate what it is they wish to express. When you visit an art gallery you generally dont receive reams and reams of explanation the work is  self explanatory, what people take from the work is very personal to the individual, but it’s the aesthetics of the object  that put it into context.

Within the lecture the group was confronted with the quote.

Aesthetics is for artists what ornithology is for birds.’
Barnett Newman (debate with Susanne Langer at Woodstock Art Conference 1952)

When I first read the quote it seemed to make sence to me, and i was in agreement having  deduced the  meaning of  Ornithology and the art of flying as something that comes  naturally to a bird, as aesthetics comes naturally to a creative person.  Though when i  began to actually break the meaning of the words down, it didnt seem to make sence. I had confused the word aesthetic with the word creative. Flying to a bird is instinctive as is a humans creativity. However aesthetic is  not creativity. I have quite often heard people say that creativity is not something that can be taught you can be given the tools and the understanding to go about creating but not creativity itself.

Although we often aspire to create something completely original we are all ways inspired by our experience we can not eliminate are preconceptions. This is where I believe aesthetics comes in, whether conscious to it or not when we translate or express the image in our minds we have to be able to visualise how apiece of work is going to communicate and are therefore always influenced by the culture that surrounds us.