The Modernism Age

Modernism has now become part of the 21st generation of living. It began with the industrial revelation with two main factors. One being the Industry and the other concerning the cities. Within the cities, modernism was taken over with involving art into architecture with museums or public sculptures etc. A new sense of seeing artwork was invented which could only be described as inexpressible. An example of modernism through art is Jackson Pollock, a drip paint artist. His artwork shows a demonstration of art can be expressed as something that doesn’t have to be detailed or perfect but can be just about colours and patterns that show emotion and messages through a mixture of drips, splashes and heavy brushstrokes. This made Jackson very popular from his unique and creative sense of style which had a tone of confusion in it. Each painting had a story to tell behind it, and even though this style of artwork was hard to figure out that’s what made his work famous. This painting named ‘ Full Fathom Five (1949) was one of his most famous forms of art: Though, artists who produce art that is too different or expressive can cause confrontation within communities such as writer and artist James Joyce, for he was banned from Ireland for his forward and shocking artwork. A particular piece for this was named ‘ Finnegan’s Wake”. Modernism is now about obsession with knowing about you. For example, what you are doing? Where you are going? etc. This is generated to be a search for ‘yourself’. It is also obsessed with physiology, example, the Pavlov’s dog which was an experiment tested by Ivan Pavlov and Jung who were both great physiologists, analysed the flow of the past into the future. Another great physiologist was Freud who believed that everything was based on sex or was somehow linked to the topic. Postmodernism is now a new form of how we live today, is has brought a sense of boundaries and discipline. It is about us, and our views and opinions on how we see things. Another topic that has been debated on has been about intertextuality and how most of the world that we see today isn’t real such as movies etc and how easy it is to copy ideas off other writers and producers. Subjectivity is an emphasis on impression and how seeing (reading or perception) takes place, rather looking at what is perceived example Big Brother. It’s all about you. Shallowness as another term following the idea that everybody is self centered to a degree that we do not care about the important things half the time and whenever we do, we delay looking into it further for another time. Finally Non-linear Narrative is an emphasis on another way of seeing the world through fragmented forms, discontinuous narratives and random seeming collages of different materials. At the end of the day, our society is run by self pleasure and self service through the community being self involved. But if people weren’t selfish once in a while then they wouldn’t have the opportunity to aim for certain goals and wouldn’t get what they want in life, so that saying, post modernism may have changed society for the better.

The Term of Network Art

Network art is all about Identity. Modern sources of data are used as infographics which is a new way of visually showing statistics. Through infographics, we can now show information in a simpler form, to help more people understand statistics and data in a graphic image instead of reading vast amount of text and not making sense of it. Open source is giving the code to everyone, the ability to transfer information or software onto other types of technology, which is how Arcade Fire was able to make that music video by allowing people to openly share data to view different browers of information. For example our tutor brought in a DELL notebook but had the setting and programming of a Apple Mackintosh which was then given the name ‘Hackintosh’. This just shows how easy it is to use open source to transfer even programming to different forms of technology like the DELL notebook which proves that everyone can be open to use these codes for personal use. Finally our tutor gave the class an experiment to see how we would react in certain situation and for us to give our thoughts and views on the matter since we use our lives as a open source via. Facebook because we were given an example of an artist who wrote a novel written entirely by tweets called ‘The Black Box’. So to start off we were asked a question of: revealing a secret monogamy by tweeting a women with two lovers, one poor and one rich, who should she chose if she had a choice? I personally stated that if the poor man shows you more affection than the rich man, then its a decision between fortune or affection. Then we were asked to think of a secret that we wouldn’t share publicly, not even to our closest friends, write on a slip of paper and anonymously post it up on the board. After our lecturer would read out each secret to reveal what kind of people we had among us in the class room. This shows that if we can’t reveal our secrets to the classroom because we may feel ashamed or embarrassed then why post our feelings and situations up on a public network? The Network art, is a rapidly changing system. There is a term called ‘The New Aesthetic’ which means: the physical world/ the digital world is different compared to marking your territory or sharing information physically or digitally by using phones etc. There is a video of youtube called ‘Mark your territory’ which is of a man who experiments with connecting pink coloured paper to a mobile phone and then applying it to either a wall or a certain place on the ground and simple urinating on it to see if it would pick up the data, which it did. This acted like a GPS. How this worked, was that seeds were planted within these slips of paper and whenever the urine hit it, it would release these seeds to grow over. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rRdfeb7vDWg#t=15 Arcade Fire was the name of the company who came up with this inventive idea to create a music video using the data of a GPS reading and Google maps to show you the location of where you are. This particular video lets a story constantly flow throughout the song whilst a man is running down a street, but, with the GPS data showing where you live, this information transfers to the video making it look like this animated man is running near to where you are, with different browers of animations opening up to add a range of amusement and involvement of sharing data. I find this use of method very interesting and creative with being able to use your own data to tell a story and create something entertaining.

Reading an Image

That in this generation, graphics or art in general now appears to be looked upon as a bitmap or a ‘pixel-lated’ world.That we have not fully understood the concept of art in its highest or creative form and we still need to investigate on what makes art, art. So we started off with learning about ‘Semiotics’ and that it split up into two forms, the study of media and the study of language. From the subject of the study of language a French philosopher called Rolland Barthes, studies and had his theories on the matter. For example, he murdered his wife in a sense of passion and emotion. For more likely a romantic gesture. Then we looked at the topic sociation briefly and just clarifying that the definition is that is makes people believe what certain images or objects are to them. For example, is someone drew a certain image which was shaped like a tree, someone could easily mistake it or interpret it for a dog if that’s what they believed it was. Another example of sociation would be the three terms, past, present and future tense in subliminal messages which would be sign, signify and signified. The main note taken of this topic is whenever you bring sign into a equation you must look for the ‘sign’ or the sub – text (hidden message).The Denotation would be term for the sign, and Connotation would be the term for signify and then the final stage would be the concept of gathering and understanding. We then focused on a few painters and how they can produce art that has a certain style which can be convenient for a type of movement, form or position so therefore it has a reason behind it. We looked at both David Hockney (a painter) and Andy Warhol (a printer) and started investigating more into their art. For example David Hockney, was a painter for many different forms, but mainly portraits, and whenever it came to a certain exhibition he noticed that for every painting the body forms were similar or not in proportion but that was only because he used a certain technique called camera obscura which reverses an image, so the reason being for a certain series of painting that would have similar feature or positions. This Is an image of the camera that was used for this technique: And as for Andy Warhol, people have questioned why his work is so expensive through the reason of no signature. But the reason behind it is people do not necessarily buy an artist’s work for his signature, they buy it for the art and creativity. Art can be seen upon as pointless and irrelevant in some cases through the artist mainly making their self’s famous through their work that they produce, therefore, their finished pieces become irrelevant. Different methods of art can debate on whether it is art or not, or whether the artist is an artist. For example, is a graphic painter or designer uses Photoshop or a graphics tablet to produce their art work is it the technology that creates the art or the artist? But as a quote has said about this matter ‘ The technology doesn’t matter, it’s what you do with it.’ Finally we looked at psychedelic patterns which also have their own forms of hidden messages and images to make you have an influence without even knowing it.

What is Creativity?

First class of term, we were asked to discuss the topic of ‘What is Art within Creativity?’ As natural, there are many way to try and sum up different conclusions to this answer from an artistic mind. But from an outsider’s point of view, what does creativity really mean? We were asked to draw on a blank sheet of paper in a matter of seconds to draw whatever came into mind. This was the image that came into my head. Portraits have always been part of my creative ability. It will always be my style of art which helps inspires me to produce more. Creativity doesn’t have to be based on whether someone can draw a simple picture. Anybody can draw a picture, but does it show depth? Meaning? Or is it just pencil, paint or ink on a page? Just like other artists, it takes time and patience to be creative, to make a mark on the world. For most artists, even the simplest of art can be creative through how it is portrayed through its audience. Yet, I have a very different opinion on that myself. I believe that creativity needs to be ‘big’ and ‘’brilliant’ not ‘small’ and ‘simple’. I expect art to be filled with vibrant colours, patterns, beautiful sculptures. Something that makes someone feel inspired. But, this is just an opinion from someone who enjoys art, who is an artist. Then again, to be an artist, you need to stand out, to be recognized and your work to be unique from your own style. My opinions are only a matter of one, creativity doesn’t always have to be big or bold, it could be small and simple. Creativity doesn’t even have to revolve around the concept of art, it could be with how you think, how you act, how you speak. Even with art, it takes a creative mind to think of a story behind the art, to see through it. It takes a creative mind to produce novels or plays, to act out scenes from a character, to design cities and buildings throughout the world, to create technology for cars, aircrafts, mobiles, tablets, computers etc., to make a beautiful garden from a range of different plants and flowers and to design a range of different plates of food. As I come to my conclusion on what my theory of ‘Creativity’ is, it’s not depending on how creative you produce something, it is all about how creative you are in yourself, on how you dress, how you make yourself an individual from everybody else, to make a statement that ‘I am Unique’. To most, the term creativity can be defined by generating a thought in your mind and exposing it to the world in either shape or form. Being creative, can be the basic essential to surviving in such and competitive world, like for the fact that I am an art student needing to survive a competitive class through using my creativity to produce ideas. Creativity is not about what you make, it’s about how you make it through pushing yourself to the limit.