The Fundamentals of Digital Art

My notes:

Ed Burton - software artist - http://sodaplay.com/

• Software to represent how children draw - takes a drawing and converts it into an image that looks like it was drawn by a child
• Life of the software - people spend time engagiing
• Gallery and Fine Art establishments are "a parasite on the back of" engaging with the software.
• Fine art doesn't give software art a home, it's left to places like the Science Museum

Panel discussion

• There's a reluctance to see digital art for what it is
• Is used as a tool for learning
• Digital art is being adapted into other practices
• Digital artists (from net artists to software artists) are connected by the technical (equipment, coding languages)
• Generational thing - for a new generation interacting with this technology is second nature, it's completely natural
• Will there still be a place for digital art when everyone has this second nature?
• Institutional divide between traditional and digital - traditional art gets a light, open space, and new media gets a dark room
• Allows people to reach a large audience, collaboration - an arts and craft ethos!
• Marginalisation - is it possible for Digital Art to engage with the Fine Art world?
• Ed was approached by a gallery to sell a limited edition CD Rom - thereby turning something free and democratic and widely available into an art comodity
• This contrasts the popular open source movement where knowledge is accumulated and shared
• But this open source approach doesn't work for galleries and auction houses.
• It is what has happened to video art
• The long tail - it makes more sense to sell alot of many things than to sell a lot of a few things
• The role of the user. Without the user the work doesn't exist.
• you can say the same for a painting, but we all know that when you leave the room it does still exisit.
• The art work is trying to incorporate interactivity
• Duchamp needed the viewer to interact
• When is digital art good?! When you like it!
• We currently think about how a work was produced and not what it is
• Works delay engagement
• It takes time to know a piece and change the relationship with it
• Keeping things open
• Money - artists could create alternative markets like the music industry
• Relationships with organisations
• People producing technology can bring interesting ideas to these companies
• Artists manipulate software and technology

I found the talk very interesting, discussing a number of issues that were relevent to my work and my opinion on digital art, particularly the involvement of the user and the marginalisation of digital art within the fine art world. It was a good evening for £6 - and we had free drinks after :D And Vivienne Westwood walked past me.

I also found it interesting to see the audience (Most of the audience were in there 40s or 50s.)- I didn't really know what to expect, having been to artists' talks before and been the youngest person there. I think I was expecting a larger number of people to be my age - but then maybe people my age don't want to spend a night listening to people talking.