Wednesday, January 30, 2013

Response to Hovagimyan's article by Maxwell Legocki


        I agree with the article regarding the idea that technology has opened up many new mythos and areas of media to explore. My belief is that as long as technology continues to develop (which in no doubt it will) there will be endless possibilities to create new, original forms of media. For example, online education has grown into a large industry with numerous universities being founded on providing online degrees.
        Looking back on Hovagimyan's article exploring the various types of media such as the creation of the telephone, I find it fascinating how far and quickly media has developed over time. Not only has areas such as education evolved and been expanded upon, but also the way we communicate and go about our daily lives has changed immensely. If people 10 years ago were to see how we live today with present day media, I can imagine they would be quite overwhelmed. Social media has exploded in the last 5 years and grown into something people encounter on a daily basis.
        Although people have been expressing themselves and sharing their ideas through various mediums of media such as theatre, silent films, and television, I feel that in today's media it is easier than ever for one to share their ideas. Just a few ways one can express themselves is through Twitter, Youtube, Instagram, and Kickstarter. I'm excited to see what the next big thing is for today's media which could come any day now with how easy creativity can be shared.

This is a video of Tupac Shakur performing at a live concert in 2012. The amazing thing about this performance is that Tupac Shakur has been dead for over 17 years. With developments in media, it was possible to create a realistic hologram of 2Pac and keep his spirit alive through his music.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TGbrFmPBV0Y

So much media

This piece starts off listing so many different terms for media that my head began to spin. Once it was made clear that the focus of the piece was "post-media" things began to clear up a bit. He then spoke of the "generative" nature of post-media, which made me think of the internet. The same way that "mechanical recording and reproduction media" changed art in the earlier 20th century, the internet is changing art now.

The internet is a vast source of knowledge and it is a place where people can share and modify different forms of art. However, the internet, and data itself can be considered art on it's own. For example, take a look at what pepsi and Beyonce are doing for this year's super bowl half time show. By the power of the internet, and photo capturing technology they are creating the first ever crowd sourced half time performance. Another example of what I believe to be post media would be the new genre of Glitch Art, in which data is bent or tampered with, leaving a distorted image:






ON*****MEDIA

In the article Hovagimyan states that we are moving into a "Post Media" information environment, however he does a bad job of explaining what exactly he means. He spends much of the article explaining different types of media, how it has advanced, and spends time explaining how they are a form of communication. Later he seems to say that with the advances in technology and art, such as the sampling culture of Hip-Hop and Electronica music, the post media environment is coming and will be characterized by "the art being ever-changing and there being no master or subsequent copies."I agree with Hovagimyan that art and media is a form of communication but i disagree with the fact that a new "Post Media" age is coming. Art and media has always been about expressing ideas and creating, the only thing that has changed is that technology has advanced and taken art and media in a radical new direction. It has become much easier for the common person to produce art and media and use them as forms of communication but they are still used to express the same ideas as they always were. With regards to the idea of there being no "master copies" i also disagree. I understand what he is saying about how everything is becoming so accesible and people adapt things and there so no copy will end up being the master track. This is very evident in music as remixing a song has become very popular, but sampling and covering songs and other forms of reproduction have always been prevalent now maybe more than ever, but there is always a defining copy that lasts for years while all others fade.
I posted a video about the effects media usage can have on a person.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hv5Z2Xv8iJU

Post Media and the Gif


Like Hovagimyan, I also believe the twenty-first century has brought a dramatic shift in the current climate of the arts and, what Hovagimyan refers to as, "our cultural mythos." But I think "Post Media" may be the wrong term to designate this shift. Hovagimyan describes the "Post Media" environment as generative, as art that exists beyond the limits of reproducibility, taking the place of both master and copy. When we visit a website, open a computer program, or view a work of digital art, we encounter a kind of omnipresent original, a piece of media in its most authentic form and yet capable of being experienced in two places at once. Benjamin's aura becomes null and void in the digital age as New Media melds together its reception and creation. 

But can this cultural or epistemological shift really be considered "Post Media?" Although these new forms of media may differ from previous or old media at the level of experience, they are nonetheless rooted in the meaning and processes of media in the twentieth century. In other words, New Media may speak a different dialect but it still shares a language with old media, with the photograph, the film, and television.

Take my personal favorite form of New Media, the gif. The gif strongly abides by, what Hovagimyan labels as, "the two strains of constructing reality and dissecting processes to create emotion," of art in the twentieth century. These two strains or processes are time-based art and multimedia presentation. Below, I've provided a link to one of my favorite tumblr galleries If We Don't, Remember Me. IFWDRM features gifs of "living movie stills." The gallery certainly abides by principles of multimedia presentation, combining film form with the digital form of a gif, while reevaluating the previously established time-based language of film and presenting it in different dialect- the brief, cyclic, time-based communication of the gif. 


The second link I've provided is a collection of 3-D gifs. I wanted to include this second gallery not only because the gifs are stunning, but because they demonstrate the continuous value of mimesis in twentieth to twenty-first century art. Here, the photograph has taken on a new realism by being rendered three-dimensional via the digital manipulation of the gif. 

Hovagimyan Response

The "Post Media" concept is an interesting idea, which I enjoyed reading about....in the very last sentence of the entire article. I didn't really appreciate Hovagimayan's scattered process in explaining what it means to be in a Post Media society. He went from painting, to photography, to movies, to television, to the telegraph, to the radio. There was no coherent order in my opinion that helped me to better understand this concept. And the only concept that he truly elaborated on was when he gave an anecdote of Alexander Bell accidentally inventing the telephone... and then he was off to talking about the tape recorder. I would like however, to talk about the few ideas within the article that sparked some reflection within me.

The first is the idea that "art loses that numistic aura when it is reproduced." The author interprets this to meaning that art is in the category of language as well. But there is more to this thought that I think went unexplored. If it means that art has a sort of a spiritual presence for the viewer, and reproduction lessens this presence, then in this 21st century we would have no art. We reproduce absolutely everything. I believe that this though can speak on what critics thought art to mean maybe a century ago. However, if art is in fact a language then we are able to communicate even farther the idea of art and it's spiritual qualities then we were before. Thus, making art more effective in today's society. I think that an issue is the art world (besides film) has not fully capitalized on the broadcasting quality of today's technology. Perhaps they do not do this because they are afraid of losing the authenticity and sort of exclusivity of art - which I think the author is more so referring to.

The second idea that I would like to talk about is the idea of mimesis, "notion of reproducing reality so completely that one can't tell the difference between real and recorded..." He goes on to talk about how film has an ability to do this in today's society. I think that he his mollifying the ability of film and all other art to take the viewer to a place that is in fact not reality. Last week in class, I especially enjoyed a comment that Whitney made when she told us that art is not real. What is the purpose then in focusing on how certain qualities of art try to mimic reality? I don't even think they did that before the 21st century, before this "Post Media" environment. Picasso painted a woman that looked nothing like a woman, Van Gough cut off his ear to make an unrealistic statement, and Michaelangelo made God "almost" touch man. Granted, these references are outside of the US, but these are some of the greatest influences on all art. Furthermore, he doesn't reference how recording devices such as radio or the telegraph influenced are technological culture to what it is today.

I may not truly understand the point that Hovagimyan is attempting to make, but from what I read, I am not convinced. The ultimate Post Media society that he is now referring to though, is an interesting concept in that our technology is now becoming an extension of our human lives. What I included in my post is what I interpret that to mean... iPhone art as the next new artistic medium?

http://www.artfulvagabond.com/iphone-art-the-next-new-artistic-medium-day-137/

Thoughts About On ***** Media


This article offers an interesting survey on different types of media and how “all of these threads of media ideas creates a meta-language of New Media discourse.” I thought that some especially interesting remarks were made when painting and photography were contrasted. The article read “One could no longer stand in front of a heroic painting or soldiers and generals and fantasize about the glory of battle, or rather one could compare the actuality of war by looking at a photograph.” Is the author saying that paintings traditionally romanticize their objects (such as war) while photography traditionally gives the viewer a more realistic sense of the object? If so, I would most definitely agree. Photographs of war are always more jarring and powerful than paintings. I think this has to do with a later statement the author makes; photography can be viewed as “reproducing reality so completely that one can’t tell the difference between real and recorded or real and reproduced.” It is cool to think about the realities of different types of media.
                One quotation that I really loved was “Meaning for any art work is a communication process, a shared tribal agreement on the meaning of any icon, symbol, etc. In this sense, meaning has more to do with language and the evolving nature of linguistic forms. I place art in the category of a language as well.” I found this quotation to be very powerful. I definitely believe that art is meant to be communicated and shared as much as possible. One of the reasons why I love art is because it is interpreted and experienced differently by everyone who sees it. The artist’s own personal messages and experiences can be communicated to others through their art, creating a unique blend of the artist’s thoughts and the viewers’ thoughts.
                Since I enjoyed reading the part about Alexander Graham Bell and Watson creating the first telephone, I looked for some sort of recreation of that event online. I found this funny little silent film on Youtube, which I thought I would include since the article also discussed silent films and how they incorporate text “into the moving image creating a binary presentation of text | image…”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QfLWtebubtY

On ***** Media

Hovagimyan never seems to illustrate his point about what a "post media" information environment is, or what it would mean to move into a post-media environment from one so firmly focused on the importance of a medium and of the increasing value of McLuhan's work on medium in the sixties. He doesn't appear to have evidence for this idea of the future of media either; he closes a statement about how we are currently in a climate of "New Media discourse" by stating his belief that we are moving towards generative art.

His statement on generative art is interesting, in the nature of its ever changing ability, although I feel there needs to be more background behind a statement such as 'computer algorithms create or manifest the forms of art', like the question of how these algorithms would be developed, where they'd come from and why they would be an artistic medium rather than a scientific one.

The statement on the value of a medium that is everchanging, however, brings to mind a play called In the Republic of Happiness, playing at the Royal Court Theatre in London. There are eight actors, all of whom play fully realized characters in the first act, but in the second, these characters are removed, as well as designations of which lines belong to whom. The actors take turns saying the lines, or occasionally overlapping, eventually ceding to another actor who picked up the same line. The performance of this second act is different every time, due to the motivations and decisions of the actors in the moment, which while not technological or scientific, is somewhat like an algorithm.

Tuesday, January 29, 2013

Respond to Hovagimyan's article

After reading Hovagimyan's whole article, I like the idea that art is language and got a basic idea about the evolution of the media forms, but still can't quite understand what exactly is "generative art" in "post media environment".

First I tried to search on youtube and found some examples of generative art. Most of the videos consist of random images, and many examples include describing sound pattern using image. Then I found terms called "generative music"and "generative painting". People can interchangeably translate images into music or translate music into image. Though I didn't quite get what "generative art" and can't tell what it is, but I can feel it through those videos, and they look beautiful. Some of Mozart's music are great examples showing how generative music work because Mozart used a lot of mathematics in his music; it is still under debate because people don't know how exactly they work. Here is an example of "generative painting" I found online that people developed a system to  translate images from music.
                                  
However, I still can't quite agree with what Hovagimyan stated in his article "I do believe, however, that we are moving away from recording or what I term "Playback Culture" into a new form of generative art." Maybe it's because I misunderstood the concept of "generative art"; but since we treat art as languages, as Hovagimayan stated earlier before, then art should be able to store information and can be used to communicate. So far, most normal kinds of art we see now are still in these "recording" type.

Besides, since Hovagimyan talked about silence film in the article, here I'm sharing a silence film I saw in my film class last year which is my favorite. What attracted me more was the anecdote about this movie. Since it was the first motion picture, when it was first shown, the audience was so scared to see the train and they were afraid of being hit by that train in the screen. There are millions of examples of recording arts just like this film now. The recording form of art is alive, and they can be stored, shared, used to communicated. I feel that it is such an important form of art among human culture that it's hard to move away from it.
 
                           

Let post media speak the language of post media


If an English speaking martian were to land on earth and ask me, “what is abstract art?” I would show him a Kandinsky. I would not try to explain abstract art in words. When reading ON****MEDIA I felt like a martian who crashed landed and asked Hovagimyan “what is Post Media”. He explained it to me in words but I could not grasp the idea because, like abstract art, it would be easier to understand if shown an example.
As Hovagimyan mentions in his essay, art is not only something that communicates; art itself is a language. That is why art is awesome. We love art not because when we see a picture of a father and daughter at the airport we THINK to ourselves “this is a father who is sad and afraid of his daughter is going to war”, we love art because when we see that picture we FEEL with our bodies the warmth of the embrace and we FEEL the fear by bringing the emotion inside us. Language is like a living body and art as a language has been changing throughout history and will continue to change.
One of Hovagimyan’s points that especially stands out to me comes from his discussion on photography and the idea that media does not only change the way we see; it changes the way we think. Following his example, photography allowed people to think of war in a more realistic sense rather than think of it as glorious. Media (recording, video, etc,) is becoming more and more realistic. So perhaps the idea of Post Media is that we are progressing so far technologically that we are able to construct a reality more real than the one we live in???..
As my extra piece I would like to share this soundcloud. Our sound project and the martian analogy made me wonder what is abstract sound? and "Modesto" is what I found: https://soundcloud.com/coivara/modesto

Hovagimyan's article by Greg P

As Hovagimyan spoke about the previous types of media leading up to present day media, what he called “Post Media”, I would like to point out one ideas that stood out to me. This idea that media is the ultimate form of communication and the basis of our language. With this in mind, the first thing I thought of was social media. So Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, etc. are art right? I most certainly think so. These websites share pictures, information, and video both privately and publicly; but the part that makes this medium a “shared tribal agreement on the meaning of any icon, symbol, etc.” is that simple fact that it allows people to connect on so many different levels. This highest and accessible level of communication is what I think makes it a true art form. 

Another engaging point Hovagimyan had was “art is ever changing” almost in the sense of a computer algorithm. Social media is in the process of this exponential change and iterations. So computers may just become the future artists of the world. Or will art become self aware for that matter?

Anyway, here is a video on the growth of social media, and how it supports my belief that it is a device for both artistic and linguistic aesthetics.



Thoughts on On*****Media

After reading Hovagimyan's article I came to conclude four things:

  1. Art is a form of language
  2. If we are moving into the so called "Post Media" environment as he expresses in the article, art will always be evolving and therefore no same reproduction will exist. 
  3. Every medium has one main purpose or use: to communicate
  4. Art is a representation of life.
Throughout the article Hovagimyan presents several examples such as Film and Photography that prove art is a medium though which humans communicate. When we look at a film, whether it has sound or it is silent, there is always a meaning, an idea or a message that the director is trying to get across. In a picture, as Hovagimyan mentions, the photographer tries to capture a mood by altering light and filters. People often believe photographs present the actuality of reality in a more natural and truthful way. Perhaps he felt the need of expressing the symbolic language of representational painting can't be compared with the information of a photograph. 
Another point which I would really like to cover is how the basis of multimedia rose from film, which is a field that derive from a combination of mediums (sound, theatre, painting) that all came together to create a form of expression. I thought this was very interesting because there is no other form of art that uses more than one medium other than film. 
After reading such informative article about various media forms, I came to finally understand this term. Like Zoe, I am still not so sure about what the author is trying to imply with the term "Post Media". What I gather from the last sentences is that since our civilization is every day becoming more and more technologically-based "computer logarithms" will "create or manifest the forms of art". Human society will somehow become an extension of such technological advancements and in the future, rather than making art directly, humans will use technology as a medium to communicate and share ideas, thoughts beliefs, art.
Here is the link to a video of McCluhan explaining briefly what he means by "The Medium is the Message". 

Hovagimyan's Article - Kevin's Response

The first aspect of this article that I found interesting was when the author explained the differences between how people react to paintings compared to photographs. He brings up an example about war and battle. Once photography took over and became extremely popular, it took away all of the realism any painting had. The author talks about how you can no longer immerse yourself into a painted battle scene when there are photos of war that are more realistic. Its true that people do not relate as well to paintings and drawings compared to photographs, but I believe paintings and drawings still have certain aspects that help the mediums stay alive. Painting and Drawing show physical skill and a strong devotion to the art. Although a photograph is more realistic it doesn't always show me that the artist put time and effort into the work.
I liked how the author talked about all of the different mediums as art including the telegraph. His retold story of Alexander Graham Bell and Watson was a nice touch to this article. I learned something new. Although it seemed like it was out of place, it was a very good example to show how even the telegraph was used as an art form at some point in history.
Lastly, what caught my eye, was the last paragraph.  It sums up Hovagimyan's views in a short paragraph.  The author believes society is moving away from "playback culture" and towards "post media." We are taking what was done by hand and turning it into generative art using computers or technology.  In "post media" the art is created through technology, computer algorithms and less human intervention.  I believe this is true, this is what society is becoming.  I have mixed feelings on whether this is a good thing or not.  Although with current technology it is easier to reproduce art and create "fakes" but innovation in general is a positive.  We now have the capability to create art that could not have been created post 21st century.  

This website lets you create your own generative art.  The computer is using countless algorithms to create the art but all you have to do is drag the cursor.

Generative Art


Monday, January 28, 2013

ON ******* MEDIA (Zoé)


After reading this essay, I have a greater understanding of the effects media had on the world in the 20th century; but, I’m confused what the author’s definition is for “Post Media.” I need a different explanation for how “computer algorithms [will] create or manifest the forms of art.” Because, frankly, this sounds a little bit less like art and more like a science fiction movie. The authors definition is rather ambiguous, but from the final paragraph I believe that the introduction of the internet could serve this idea of “Post Media.”
The definition I found suggests that Post media is, “art that is made using electronic media technology.” Well that’s great and all, but I wonder how far this line of what we call ‘art’ goes. Because the term Media covers many areas such as newspaper, so does post media include this non-stereotypical ‘art’ form? 
The author gives two vague details to the idea of Post Media, both of which include newspaper’s internet cousins. First, the art is ever changing. Second, there is no “master or subsequent copies.” The first example that came to mind is Wikipedia, which is user contributed, edited, and constantly updated. It makes me squirm a little to put Wikipedia in the same grouping as fine art and radio (my two favorite things), but it is the 21st century version of an encyclopedia, and due to it’s ever changing nature, another news source. Unlike a Britannica or The New York Times, the pages are never sent to print. When the information changes the page does, and there is no value given into the first edition of the page. Because of these things it is the perfect and clear example of a Post Media art form. 
Now that that’s all cleared up, I do have a few unanswered questions. Is the definition of this author, and the internet source I found, popularly agreed upon, or is it still up in the air? And due to it’s collaborative nature, has anyone taken up the title of Post Media artist? 

Here's a video by Francis Alÿs. I really like this piece because the action itself is rather banal, but the background actions keep you engaged. 




Response to Hovagimyan

I'm not entirely sure I understand Hovagimyan's assertion about the movement into a "'post media' information environment." I disagree with his assertion that "we are moving away from recording," unless I'm taking it too literally. I think, as a society, we are moving towards recording more and more useless things (and uploading them to youtube).
The only idea I had that vaguely supports Hovagimyan's notion is the realization that all forms of media are becoming digitized. We are scanning newspapers, publishing e-books, making movies on digital cameras, and recording sound digitally. Therefore, all media is becoming stored as data, thus homogenizing the various types of art we have. However, this suggests that all art is constantly moving forward. For better or for worse, this is untrue. Not all media is made digitally, nor do I believe there will be a day when that is true. Also, the preservation of the past (newspapers, movies, pictures) by digitization is not an exact copy. The original will always be better than the digital version.
Hovagimyan makes a comment about generative art, music and theater (something I had to look up and came to understand through wikipedia and the video below). I don't believe that generative art is the future of all art. Computers open up a new form of expression, like celluloid film opened up photography to the masses and allowed for motion pictures to be produced. However, the creation of film did not render paint useless, it simply, as Hovagimyan notes, forced painting to become more abstract. We don't remember the 20th century as a century void of painters, but of a period rich in different movements within the realm of painting. Similarly, we won't remember the 21st century solely for the role of computers in art (the exception being the digitization of other art forms that I just discussed).

Here is a video I watched that helped me understand generative art:

Frozen in time.


While Hovagimyan’s article examines several types of multimedia, the most interesting his segment on photography. He highlights how one of the main efforts when taking a photograph is to express a feeling that has been frozen in time. This is accomplished through various lighting and filters, or through the cultural impact of a specific photo.
The most intriguing part of this is how single moments in time often shorter than a second can have an immense social impact. Such is the trend with Mathew Brady’s war documentary photographs. Shown below is a photograph he took of a prisoner of war. The picture itself is shocking, not only because of the state of the subject, but because at first you don't know what you are looking at--it could be a person or a skeleton etc. More important than the pictures themselves, are the cultural impact Brady's photos had. As the article states, the pictures didn't stop people from going to war, merely they stopped people from glamorizing war in visual media. Again the amazing part of this is that such a tiny segment of time can have such a widespread impact.


A separate expample that comes to mind is the photograph of the Afghan girl by Steve McCurry. This is one of the most recognized photographs ever, and became a symbol of the late 1980's. The photo itself is striking, mainly because of the girl's piercing stare. Again though, the photo is important because it brought awareness to the middle east, not just because it beautiful.


Audacity 2.0.3

The manual for the newest version of Audacity