WORDS ABOUT AN ARTIST’S LESS THAN PASSIONATE RELATIONSHIP WITH HIS MOTHER

                Last week we were shown a short film (well, a short excerpt, anyway) titled ‘The Passing’ by a certain Bill Viola. By and large, the film was mostly harmless enough, bar three sections in particular.

                The first scene that stirred controversy was the birth scene, which reminded me of awkward biology lessons no-end. While not socially unacceptable, it’s not something I would watch voluntarily, particularly in a gallery environment, where my stomach already has to contend with wine and countless hors d’oeuvres.

                The second of the debate-fuelling sections depicted a man drowning, a rather melancholic metaphor of life. Thankfully, this scene used an actor, and not actual footage of a man drowning. It was quite eerie and unsettling to watch, so I guess it fulfilled Bill’s intention. Although, I must say, artists tend to have such a pessimistic take on life. In my eyes, a man who thinks that life is a constant, painful struggle is a man who hasn’t tried spaghetti hoops.

                Now, here we are; the main offender! Unlike the other two, where the actual content of the video was disturbing, it is the context of this section that caused jaws to drop. At a glance, it appears to show a lady, perhaps a mother, dying. Most people would go ahead and assume that the artist used an actor, as in the drowning scene; however, this is not the case. Viola filmed his mother’s death. As you’ve likely noticed, I have provided my own interpretation of what went down:

                I jest, I jest. While I do appreciate the artistic integrity of the piece, I just can’t set aside the seemingly sociopathic act of Mr. Viola. If I were in his shoes, incorporating my mother’s death into a short film would be the last thing on my mind, jus’ sayin’.

                This paragraph has no significance; the justification for its inclusion is based purely on grounds of providing “filler”. Filler, despite being frowned upon, is a vital part of our society; sausages, for example, are composed almost exclusively from filler, with actual meat providing a very small percentage of the ingredients. Another, equally essential, form of filler is poly-filler, without which our windows would literally be caked in condensation. Now, I must go, all this talk of cake is making me hungry.

DOUBLE BLOG, ALL THE WAY

                Since I missed last week’s blog for reasons not to be divulged (FYI, laziness), I shall consolidate both due posts into one small and monthly repayment, umm, I mean one single post. So, what’s first? Well, let’s see… how about the concept of a ‘simulacra’? The term was first used in this context by a stylish looking chap named Jean Baudrillard, who says our current society has replaced all reality and meaning with symbols and signs, and that human experience is of a simulation of reality. Of course, one can easily compare the concept of a ‘simulation of reality’ to the internet.

                The internet is increasingly being thought of as an actual place, somewhere we physically go; be it to communicate with others, seek entertainment, or even do the weekly shop. But that’s not the most interesting part, yesee, when somebody goes to the internet these days; they tailor their experience to cater for their interests. For example, a celebrity blogger is going to have a radically different online experience then an ex-film director hoping to make some viral videos. We each get our own mini, personalised internet; which I think is a lovely idea.

                However, some people believe that the internet’s encroach to IRL is far from a good thing. “Nothing beats traditional conversation!” they say, “It’s a waste of time!” they say, “Get a job!” they say. It seems to me that naysayers are simply Digital Immigrants - merely tourists in a foreign country they don’t understand.

                NOW, watch as the topic of this post shifts radically! Now, as if by magic, I’m talking about sound theory and practice. Boom. I’mma start with a quote from Walter Ong; “The world of sound is an event world and the world of sight is an object world.” The layman implications of this are as follows; when one looks upon a tin of spaghetti hoops, one sees a tin of spaghetti hoops, however, if one hears a tin of spaghetti hoops opening, one thinks not of an object, but of an experience, the tantalising tomatoey flavour, the contrast between the soft hoops and the crunchy toast. Arguably, sounds have a more profound effect on us than the visual.

                As I’m sure you know, sound can be exploited to create a visual image while simultaneously evoking an emotional reaction more powerful, even more personal than, say, a painting ever could. These techniques are commonly utilised by the likes of Boyzone, Westlife and Snow Patrol.

LOTS OF ONES

11/11/11 Now that doesn’t happen very often now, does it? Once every one hundred years, if I’m not mistaken. You may have a very short animation I made earlier to celebrate (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HTTt1QiZSq8). Anyway, moving on… This week, I’m going to be wasting your time talking about the recent acceleration of technological development. As an introduction of sorts, I’ll begin with Moore’s law. Coined in 1965, the law states that “the number of transistors that can be placed inexpensively on an integrated circuit doubles approximately every two years”, or to phrase that differently, computers become twice as powerful or complicated every other year. For the most part, this rule has proven to be quite accurate, despite the fact that it’s 46 years old. Of course, this exponential improvement comes with its downsides, the most annoying being obsolescence.

Don’t you just hate that word? It’s thanks to that word your computer is only half as good as everyone else’s a mere 24 months after purchase. ಠ-ಠ The other main downside to technological advancement is that it happens so fast, some people get left behind. It was this idea that lead to the theory of Digital Natives/ Immigrants. Thought up by Marc Prensky in 2001, Digital Natives are people who were born after 1985, meaning that they will have spent most of their lives surrounded by digital technology, so they should have a sound understanding of how it works. Digital Immigrants, on the other hand, will have grown up without digital technology and tend to remain sceptical of innovation. This theory suggests that there is a clear cut-off point where people are more adept with technology, meaning elderly people are more likely to use a manual tin opener to get at their spaghetti hoops rather than an automatic one (which is ironic, since automatic tin openers were designed for the elderly). But surely something like being able to use a computer can’t be decided simply by your birthday? Dr. Ofer Zur thought so, and thus  suggested that Digital Immigrants fall into one of three categories; Avoiders (Avoid technology and only involve it with their life when they really need to), Reluctant Adopters (Can see the benefits of technology, but still try to avoid it) and Eager Adopters(enthusiastic toward technology and comparable to Digital Natives). I think that this tiered approach to defining a Digital Immigrant is a lot nicer, and not only because it reminds me of cake.

WHAT IS ART? BABY, DON’T HURT ME; DON’T HURT ME, NO MORE.

               Well here we are again; it’s always such a pleasure. So, what is art? Is this art? Well, you could argue so, since it does disrupt and challenge the ideal methods of formal assessment. But, to focus on that question again; “what is art?” Defining this has proven quite problematic in the past, but I’m sure it’ll be easy now Google’s here to do our thinking for us! So, art is (as defined by Google) “The expression or application of human creative skill and imagination.” As I’m sure you’ve deliberated, this is quite a broad definition. Apparently, anything is art, so long as it’s manmade and required imagination to make. But, hold on, surely EVERYTHING we do requires some level of imagination, be it getting dressed, writing blogs, or deciding whether or not you should put the toast on before you heat up the spaghetti hoops.

            So, do those things classify as ‘art’? Evidently, the popular answer is “Umm, NOPE!” despite the fact that, from a technical perspective, these things seem to fit the definition. It’s this kind of thinking that sums up the “dada” movement. Artists like Marcel Duchamp really pushed the boundaries of what we consider ‘art’. One of his particularly famous pieces was simply a urinal with “R MUTT” scrawled on the side. Needless to say, this proved to be rather controversial back in the early 1900’s. Many believed it wasn’t art, that it no right to be in a gallery, but the fact that people were thinking about that proves that it is art. His piece prompted people to challenge their beliefs of what art is, in a sense, the art was not in the urinal itself, the art was in the question “What is art?” This lead to the creation of ‘anti-art’, art created specifically to provoke that famous question, and, of course, poke fun at traditional art. And, in turn, this created something called 'anti-anti-art'. The worst part is; I'm not even joking.

And here it is; Marcel’s (in)famous “fountain”, still controversial nearly a century after its creation.

                These days, we are all well used to conceptual art; it has actually proven to become quite fashionable, but Marcel Duchamp was the pioneer. His fountain was one of the first notable examples of conceptual art, the art being in the concept of a piece of art challenging our perceptions of art (Inception, much?). So, thanks to Marcel, we are now swimming in art that would not traditionally be classed as art. It seems for every genuine, wonderful idea (e.g. A Score for a Hole in the Ground- Jim Finer), we get some rubbish churned out by some money-wasting pseudo-artists (Interior Semiotics, anyone?). Needless to say, I enjoy the Finer things in life.

SECOND BLOG POST, IN WHICH I TALK ABOUT THE MODERN AND POSTMODERN MOVEMENTS

Since I’m never quite sure how to start these things, I’ll tell you a story. It was Thursday, and I had just got home after a hectic day at uni. I was completely pooped, but rather insistent that I complete this post in the three-hour(ish) gap in my schedule I had set aside for it. However, I was offered to spend the night partying instead, so I decided to head out and write the blog after I came home, in the early hours of the morning. Of course, I did this purely to ironically represent the deterioration in the standards of modern youth. Oh, how delightfully postmodern of me.

Now, as if by magic, that seemingly unplanned story has led us perfectly to the topic of postmodernism. Just what is postmodernism? Well, by definition, it’s whatever comes after modernism. So, it seems to fully understand what postmodernism is, we must first understand what modernism is. Modernism, simply put, was a social movement generally agreed to have taken place from 1900 to 1950. Thought to have been a revolt against the more conservative values related to realism, modernism in many ways was an accumulation of all the new, modern ideas at the time. Things like the theory of evolution (causing some to believe there is no God) and new theories based on psychology (many claiming that people aren’t really any different to animals) were incredibly controversial, but incredibly interesting new ideas which both help fuel the modern movement. Also very influential in modernism is technology, a lot of technological devices premiered in the 1900s, and many of them were just as fascinating as the ideas mentioned above. Despite all these new ideas, there was still the general belief in a grand narrative, that mankind was progressing toward something. This is referred to as ‘Marxism’, the basic gist being that a society has a set of ideas, these ideas are challenged by ‘anti-ideas’, creating new ideas to start the process over.

Now, imagine people in the modern era just stop caring, they realise that there is no grand narrative, no goal or purpose in humanity and they can just do what they like. Welcome to postmodernism, where the social movement becomes self aware. In postmodernism, anything can be referenced (or stolen) from other social movements, you could well get a renaissance-style portrait with an outer-space background spray-painted on the side of a building.

So that’s postmodernism. Are we in the postmodern era now? Well, many people would say yes, however, a lot of the po-mo ideals have gone out of fashion (does anyone still use the phrase ‘po-mo’?), leading some to believe that we are at the start of the post-postmodern phase. All I can say is; I don’t look forward to defining it…

Involuntary First Post

In a lot of ways, blogs are like social movements, both begin their life in relative obscurity, in what is called an ‘emergent’ phase. The first few posts of any blog tend not to be created for a particular audience, rather for the blogger’s own enjoyment. However, as time passes and followers gather, the blogger learns what content is more popular and thus, the blog evolves to further suit a particular audience. Now the blog is in its second phase, ‘appropriation’, where the blog has been specifically tailored to obtain as many followers as possible, sometimes to such an extent that the actual content suffers. Now, the third and final movement is rather different to the previous two. It takes place after the blog has lost the majority of its followers, and has become unfashionable. While it may seem that the blog is dead, the blogger could choose to utilise humanity’s natural sense of nostalgia, and regain followers by celebrating the blog’s out of date content. This last stage is called ‘historisation’.

Well, that’s the awkward first paragraph out of the way, and I think it went pretty well, despite the fact that I spent its duration chasing a metaphor that only half worked… Ah, well, onwards and upwards. The original idea of three-phased social movements was coined by Raymond Williams, Welsh academic and all-round cool guy. Despite the length of time that has passed since Raymond theorised these phases, they have yet to be challenged.

Now, on a radically different note, I shall talk about the digitisation of the music industry. I’m sorry; I haven’t really nailed these transitions yet… Anyway, as we all know, a select few actually pay for music these days, which is thanks to the internet making data sharing easier than taking your snuggie off and walking to the fridge. Despite this, music fans not only stand up, but also travel to the shops to purchase music, knowing fine rightly that they could obtain exactly the same music for free online. But why? The most obvious motivation is that, by going to the shops, people can obtain a physical object, something with three dimensions that they can see, feel and, in this case, hear. It’s irrelevant that this object has no practical use; it was bought with the intention of storing it away on a shelf and maybe looking at it from time to time (with the slight possibility of using it as a makeshift hat when no one else is around). Just what is it that drives people to buy CDs? Is it the artwork? The artwork is an integral part of the CD’s struggling, yet ongoing, success, particularly if it’s LIMITED EDITION. However, I think it is mostly the urge to possess an actual object, something tangible and, of course, collectable that drives some people to invest in the useless, obsolete product.

BONUS FACT: ‘Art’ is, in fact, not art. It is an obscure branch of science created by the Egyptians to make stupid people feel smart.