#MMS194 artjournal computationalart

[fleomae]

MMS 194: JOURNAL

Beginning this journal with the ultimate art question of "What does art mean to you?"

I liked what Thomas McEvilley, professor of art history in Rice University said, "The last time I was in Houston, I went to a place called Media Center, where someone had set up posts as in a back yard with laundry hung all over. I immediately knew it was an artwork because of where it was. If I had seen it hanging in someone's yard, I would not have known whether it was art, though it might have been. It is art if it is called art, written about in an art magazine, exhibited in a museum or bought by a private collector.". 

To continue with his point, "What's hard for people to accept is that issues of art are just as difficult as issues of molecular biology; you cannot expect to open up a page on molecular biology and understand it. This is the hard news about art that irritates the public. if people are going to be irritated by that, they just have to be irritated by that.". 

Something I also find meaningful to this most asked question is perfectly worded by Arthur Danto from Art critic of The Nation, he says, "You can't say something's art or not art anymore. That's all finished. There used to be a time when you could pick out something perceptually the way you can recognize, say, tulips or giraffes. But the way things have evolved, art can look like anything, so you can't tell by looking. Criteria like the critic's good eye no longer apply. Art these days has very little to do with esthetic responses; it has more to do with intellectual responses. You have to project a hypothesis: Suppose it is a work of art? Then certain questions come into play -- what's it about, what does it mean, why was it made, when was it made and with respect to what social and artistic conversations does it make a contribution? If you get good answers to those questions, it's art. Otherwise it turned out just to be a hole in the ground."

And as a religious type of person I find this short saying from Robert Hughes striking. He says, "The Puritans thought of religious art as a form of idolatry, a luxury a distraction, morally questionable in its essence, compared to the written and spoken word.”. 

From here you can see the art differences from Catholics, Orthodox, and the many many denominations of Protestantism. I guess growing up in the Philippines most art I experience is about the religious if not historical. It's always been my dream to visit France and Rome to come and see all the "art" people are identifying as but as society moves forward with nano technology, we can see many forms of Computational Art. 

For example are the three below...

Digital illustrations, sounds cool right? Well, I was thinking of Digital Kinetic Art at first but I couldn't find an artist that purely does a digital version, so I had to look for other options until I finally found this amazing artist named Sean Charmatz. He was born on August 28, 1980, in San Diego, California. He is an animator of Spongebob Squarepants, LEGO Movie 2, and Trolls. He spent several years as a writer, artist, and storyboard director for the television show Nickelodeon. He also shared his digital art talents with the companies like Dreamworks and Disney.

He is making the mundane normal ordinary things as something worth looking at, with a story to portray from scratch!!! Looking into his art, I don't know if I have a bias reason because I grew up watching Spongebob and I really like the show and other types of cartoons too like "The Adventure Time", "Princess Sophia", "Barbie Movies", "Dora the Explorer", "The Amazing World of Gumball", and the like. It's something I find pleasurable as a younger child (actually until now, but I don't have the leisure time I used to have), and as I see his newest digital illustrations, I can't help but be in awe and smile with a childlike smirk. I might do something like this as he inspired me to make the mundane objects into something fun with a cool story to tell. 

Especially now during pandemic, and everyone is asked to stay indoors and minimize social interactions at most. We should be creative to learn in entertaining ourselves and making the most of our everyday situations. He is truly inspiring, and maybe with the practice I'll do, I might be able to make cute short children's comics for the next generation.

Here are some of his recent digital illustrations,

Moving from visuals let's talk about our hearing, let's talk about Generative Music. Majority of my life I've been listening to Pop songs and classical ones, usually made the traditional way 100% human, learning about this algorithm or computer composed type of music is a bit odd for me because it feels technical and numbers complicated, in a way distant and out of touch. Computers are a recent invention by the human race, so we can understand why more and more innovations related to it are still growing everyday, a lot of people who doesn't see it's importance will be left behind and soon enough more and more generative music art will enter the music scene, digital divide will be inevitable. 

This type of music scene is "experimental" as it's unknown to a lot of possibilities and very different from the traditional music producers and artists, we still don't know how will it click, is it a fad or here to stay? I'm not sure, but I think more types of sounds will be incorporated in music, specially in movies and other types of effects if it doesn't get popularity in the music industry.

Hatsune Miku, the first ever open-source singer is having popularity around people specially those who like anime and the things of its kind. Only this year I was able to discover this type of music scene and I never expected that Hatsune Miku Youtube music has millions and millions of viewers and subscribers. Music analysis software exists that can predict hits with increasing accuracy, and Google Labs have an ersatz neural network up and running that can make convincing music. Along with all the other jobs currently being destroyed by automation, it looks like the most human of all – music – is under threat.

To move forward let’s go back in 2017, I liked this guy from the College of Business Administration and he is one of those cool distant type of guy who gives this big mystery vibe, and what do you do when someone is mysterious? You stalk them online, so I did and that's how I found out about "hello poetry". I didn't know digital poetry actually has a term, a name but I knew it has a community online, which is cool because you can make an online library and records of all your poems easily accessible online if you're into this thing. I actually joined the platform "hello poetry" after reading a ton about my crush's online poems, in a way I was inspired. Once you join it's nice to see other poets about their works, what others are raving about, and sometimes judge inevitably although some are very beautiful others are also unconventionally short and seems like a tweet. This category of art can fall on art & literature which is something purely human, well as of now. Soon enough computers will be able to make their own poems, maybe there already is.

Here's a link to my first and only poem I published in the community, https://hellopoetry.com/fleomae/