How new media has restricted and liberated artists?
Discussion
I have to write a very short essay (1500 words) for my course based on how new media has restricted and liberated artists.
I have plenty of ideas based on liberating them, for example I can write about the technological advances with films such as Avatar, and also how photoshop / illustrator has allowed more scope for designing graphic and illustration work and getting it online to a wider audience.
I'm just lacking ideas for how it has restricted them. I can only think of one example which is about a short film that was designed to be viewed on a mobile handset, therefore restricting what effects etc would actually be useful for viewing on such a small scale. Otherwise I'm stumped and got myself into a rut thinking about it.
Also should probably mention I'm doing an illustration course, but the whole creative arts department has to write the same essay so it can be linked to other things such as film / tv.
If you have any ideas at all I'd be so thankful.
Cheers
I have plenty of ideas based on liberating them, for example I can write about the technological advances with films such as Avatar, and also how photoshop / illustrator has allowed more scope for designing graphic and illustration work and getting it online to a wider audience.
I'm just lacking ideas for how it has restricted them. I can only think of one example which is about a short film that was designed to be viewed on a mobile handset, therefore restricting what effects etc would actually be useful for viewing on such a small scale. Otherwise I'm stumped and got myself into a rut thinking about it.
Also should probably mention I'm doing an illustration course, but the whole creative arts department has to write the same essay so it can be linked to other things such as film / tv.
If you have any ideas at all I'd be so thankful.
Cheers
Is one of the restrictions in tv is that the programme has to be "commercial", even "documentaries" seem to be dumbed down to sell to the Heat generation? Feel like an old fart but comparing Panorama of old vrs new etc Big Brother and its iterations make me want to puke tbh but someone must watch it and Make A Celebrity Keep Me In The Jungle pap grr
Louisa911 said:
I have to write a very short essay (1500 words) for my course based on how new media has restricted and liberated artists.
It's made it possible to do anything, whilst also earn no money from it.ETA: 1500 words into 14 - not bad!
Edited by Simpo Two on Monday 25th January 22:26
Isn't most art about *choosing* your restrictions and working within them? (I.e. choosing to work in watercolour painting vs. choosing to work in marble sculpture). I don't see the mere existence of 'new media' (needs definition!) restricting anyone not working in those media.
That said, choosing to work in new media definitely implies restrictions. For example, the cost of entry: if I want to sculpt in marble, I need to buy a big chunk of stone and some tools; new media implies expensive techno gadgets. Assuming 'new media' means electronic presentation, I'd think it rules out working on a monumental scale (compared to landscape art, for example.)
That said, choosing to work in new media definitely implies restrictions. For example, the cost of entry: if I want to sculpt in marble, I need to buy a big chunk of stone and some tools; new media implies expensive techno gadgets. Assuming 'new media' means electronic presentation, I'd think it rules out working on a monumental scale (compared to landscape art, for example.)
Simpo Two said:
Louisa911 said:
I have to write a very short essay (1500 words) for my course based on how new media has restricted and liberated artists.
It's made it possible to do anything, whilst also earn no money from it.ETA: 1500 words into 14 - not bad!
Edited by Simpo Two on Monday 25th January 22:26
It's made it possible for lots of people to have a go at various media meaning you have trawl throught alot of s
t to get to something good (see my flikr for st and alot of guys/gals on here for good 
) bit like a trying to find a diamond in the ground e.g. Youtube, Flikr etc etc in the old days you had to be good (or rich) to get signed for a record label or sell your idea to a film studio now you knock one off in your room (so to speak) which could be good or bad I guess..I think it may have been Simpo or An other who mentioned Digital media gives opportunity to learn quickly how to take a pic or vid but not to take or make a good one ie snapp everything rather than think about what you are taking/composition etc etc guess that might be a plus for family snaps not so good for thought provoking shots*
- I'm rambling now, so er good luck
Louisa911 said:
I have to write a very short essay (1500 words) for my course based on how new media has restricted and liberated artists.
I have plenty of ideas based on liberating them, for example I can write about the technological advances with films such as Avatar, and also how photoshop / illustrator has allowed more scope for designing graphic and illustration work and getting it online to a wider audience.
I'm just lacking ideas for how it has restricted them. I can only think of one example which is about a short film that was designed to be viewed on a mobile handset, therefore restricting what effects etc would actually be useful for viewing on such a small scale. Otherwise I'm stumped and got myself into a rut thinking about it.
Also should probably mention I'm doing an illustration course, but the whole creative arts department has to write the same essay so it can be linked to other things such as film / tv.
If you have any ideas at all I'd be so thankful.
Cheers
intesersting essay, big title for that many words- i could write a dissertation!I have plenty of ideas based on liberating them, for example I can write about the technological advances with films such as Avatar, and also how photoshop / illustrator has allowed more scope for designing graphic and illustration work and getting it online to a wider audience.
I'm just lacking ideas for how it has restricted them. I can only think of one example which is about a short film that was designed to be viewed on a mobile handset, therefore restricting what effects etc would actually be useful for viewing on such a small scale. Otherwise I'm stumped and got myself into a rut thinking about it.
Also should probably mention I'm doing an illustration course, but the whole creative arts department has to write the same essay so it can be linked to other things such as film / tv.
If you have any ideas at all I'd be so thankful.
Cheers
I might have a couple of ideas:
1) new media is restrictive to me personally, as its hard to get forward in my career with a market saturated by wannabes who think its just a fun industry, and have no passion or respect for it. (god that makes me sound old and grumpy). New media has created a much more media savvy world, where everyoneone wants to be a director or a cameraman- because they think its fun. Which makes it harder for people like me who work hard and have a passion for what we do.
This might be a better idea for you:
2) new media means its easier and easier to make content, which is a double edged sword - while its great that its easy to share ideas, it does mean the world is awash with insane amount of content, and a lot of its rubbish. So its harder sometimes for a gem to be noticed amongst the sea of rubbish videos out there.
i hope im making sense, its early and i havent had a cup of tea yet! hope that helps a little
Maybe not a restriction per se, but one thing that 'artists' have to contend with is the very much shorter attention span of the..... oooh look, a pretty little flower.... sorry, audience.
Might be worth looking into any data there is about attendance figures for art exhibitions, etc., and whether they have declined, because people are more interested in living life via Facebook or Twitter rather than going out to museums, galleries, etc.. If they have then arguably it makes it harder for artists to get their art into a location where it can be viewed by the public, hence the success of the changing 'art' displays on the plinth in Trafalgar square - that took art to the people rather than relying on people going to see the art.
Finally, I guess the other question is around what counts as a 'restriction'. Competition for peoples' attention isn't a restriction, it just puts more pressure on someone to ensure their work shines through or captures peoples' eyes / imagination.
Similarly getting your work into a place where it can be viewed - a gallery, on a tv show, into a cinema, etc. - isn't a restriction, it's just harder. But where there's a will there's a way.
Nick M said:
... Might be worth looking into any data there is about attendance figures for art exhibitions, etc., and whether they have declined ...
The art gallery I work in has just had two of its busiest years ever. Mind you as we only have temporary exhibitions rather than a permanent collection it could just be that the last two years have been programmed better than before.Personally I think what Simpo and Fordo have said is right, it's easier for anybody to make something that the world can see but the content worth seeing hasn't increased at the same rate making it harder to discern the quality from the increased noise.
Dogsey said:
Nick M said:
... Might be worth looking into any data there is about attendance figures for art exhibitions, etc., and whether they have declined ...
The art gallery I work in has just had two of its busiest years ever. Mind you as we only have temporary exhibitions rather than a permanent collection it could just be that the last two years have been programmed better than before.Personally I think what Simpo and Fordo have said is right, it's easier for anybody to make something that the world can see but the content worth seeing hasn't increased at the same rate making it harder to discern the quality from the increased noise.
A restriction, to me, is something where an artist is forced to compromise to meet the 'needs' of their audience, e.g. by cutting the length of a film to ensure they don't get bored.
Dogsey said:
Nick M said:
... Might be worth looking into any data there is about attendance figures for art exhibitions, etc., and whether they have declined ...
The art gallery I work in has just had two of its busiest years ever. Mind you as we only have temporary exhibitions rather than a permanent collection it could just be that the last two years have been programmed better than before.Personally I think what Simpo and Fordo have said is right, it's easier for anybody to make something that the world can see but the content worth seeing hasn't increased at the same rate making it harder to discern the quality from the increased noise.
now, do we all get credited in Louisa's essay? 'as referenced in the 2010 edition of Pistonheads, Peter Ford quotes how "the signal to noise ration of todays content is getting worse"......
Edited by Fordo on Tuesday 26th January 11:04
Thanks a lot for the contributions, its helped simmer things down for me a bit, going to make a start on the essay with a clear head this morning.
As usual I presumed it would be the simple part of my course that could be left til last minute, now the deadline is thursday and everybody seems to be taking hours to write a couple hundred words... Oh I'm already waffling on here
As usual I presumed it would be the simple part of my course that could be left til last minute, now the deadline is thursday and everybody seems to be taking hours to write a couple hundred words... Oh I'm already waffling on here
Simpo Two said:
Louisa911 said:
I have to write a very short essay (1500 words) for my course based on how new media has restricted and liberated artists.
It's made it possible to do anything, whilst also earn no money from it.ETA: 1500 words into 14 - not bad!
Edited by Simpo Two on Monday 25th January 22:26
Quantity > Quality.
In essence, it's made it easier for lots of people to produce crap, rather than fewer producing fewer, yet higher quality or better-conceived/considered works.
OliPolo said:
Guessing that was the dreaded visual culture judging by your UWE studies,, i could of done with help for this years 5000 words! Visual Culture is possibly the biggest and poorest excuse to create work out of nothing! Hope it all went well in the end!
It was! Are you at UWE too then? Terrible, terrible excuse to make us arts students do some writing. The fact that they presume we are all dyslexic amuses me too.
Funk said:
I can sum up in three..
Quantity > Quality.
I was thinking along the same lines.Quantity > Quality.
Everyone these days has a camera if not a dedicated point and shoot, then one on their phone. Easy uploading and sharing means everywhere is saturated with uninspired "look at me" snaps. even 10 years ago most people only took a few photos a year on holiday with a disposable or cheap film camera, anyone wanting to do more would alost certainly be more serious about it as the cost and basic knowledge required to operate were higher.
Combine that with comercial interrests steering what gets accepted in the mainstream. A new idea is much harder to express to a wide audience these days if it doesn't catch on immediately, which it usualy won't unless it's easily digestible by anyone without much thought. Resulting in a kind of fad culture where everything is seasonal and nothing lasts.
Avatar is a good point actually. While I did like the film, like most people, I feel that in the long run it will become dated partly due to technology coming up with the next big thing and the simplicity of the story once you look past the initial wow effect. Many of the films we concider real classics and artistic marvels these days are decades old and were not top budget, high tech films. Look at Kubrick films, using lighting and sound to paint a complex picture that forms in your mind, far outstreaching the part of the screen you can see. But as the experiance requires some effort from the viewer to get the best of it, a movie like that is unlikely to be a big success these days.
That's my view anyway.
I think the signal-to-noise ratio point is a good one. Milan Kundera summed it up nicely in "The Book of Laughter and Forgetting", albeit in the context of writing , rather than the arts generally - but I think it holds true as a general principle. This quotation crops up, unsurprisingly, all over the kind of navel-gazing blogs which specialise in musing over What Blogging Really Means...
"The irresistible proliferation of graphomania among politicians, taxi drivers, childbearers, lovers, murderers, thieves, prostitutes, officials, doctors and patients shows me that everyone without exception bears a potential writer within him, so that the entire human species has good reason to go down into the streets and shout: “We are all writers!”
For everyone is pained by the thought of disappearing, unheard and unseen, into an indifferent universe, and because of that everyone wants, while there is still time, to turn himself into a universe of words.
One morning (and it will be soon), when everyone wakes up as a writer, the age of universal deafness and incomprehension will have arrived."
On the credit side, the rise of new media offers amateur artists extrardinary access to technical help and advice. Advice of the kind one would, even 10 years ago, have had to seek out in person from an expert is available to anyone with an internet connection and the inclination to post one of their photographs on a forum and solicit critique.
Of course, in photography specifically, this brings up one of the other limitations of the new media age (or the Age of the Affluent Amateur, as it might just as well be called): the pursuit of technical perfection at the expense of considering the photograph as a whole. So often, open-forum critique of photographs focuses on "shooting correctly" rather than "shooting the right thing". So you end up with reams of technically excellent, artistically dull photos, and lots of people who understand perfectly how to get a pixel-perfect photograph out of their DSLR, while they utterly lack any kind of "eye" for an interesting subject or an arresting composition.
"The irresistible proliferation of graphomania among politicians, taxi drivers, childbearers, lovers, murderers, thieves, prostitutes, officials, doctors and patients shows me that everyone without exception bears a potential writer within him, so that the entire human species has good reason to go down into the streets and shout: “We are all writers!”
For everyone is pained by the thought of disappearing, unheard and unseen, into an indifferent universe, and because of that everyone wants, while there is still time, to turn himself into a universe of words.
One morning (and it will be soon), when everyone wakes up as a writer, the age of universal deafness and incomprehension will have arrived."
On the credit side, the rise of new media offers amateur artists extrardinary access to technical help and advice. Advice of the kind one would, even 10 years ago, have had to seek out in person from an expert is available to anyone with an internet connection and the inclination to post one of their photographs on a forum and solicit critique.
Of course, in photography specifically, this brings up one of the other limitations of the new media age (or the Age of the Affluent Amateur, as it might just as well be called): the pursuit of technical perfection at the expense of considering the photograph as a whole. So often, open-forum critique of photographs focuses on "shooting correctly" rather than "shooting the right thing". So you end up with reams of technically excellent, artistically dull photos, and lots of people who understand perfectly how to get a pixel-perfect photograph out of their DSLR, while they utterly lack any kind of "eye" for an interesting subject or an arresting composition.
Edited by Quaint on Wednesday 17th February 13:46
Quaint said:
Of course, in photography specifically, this brings up one of the other limitations of the new media age (or the Age of the Affluent Amateur, as it might just as well be called): the pursuit of technical perfection at the expense of considering the photograph as a whole. So often, open-forum critique of photographs focuses on "shooting correctly" rather than "shooting the right thing". So you end up with reams of technically excellent, artistically dull photos, and lots of people who understand perfectly how to get a pixel-perfect photograph out of their DSLR, while they utterly lack any kind of "eye" for an interesting subject or an arresting composition.
An excellent point, and succinctly put.Gassing Station | Photography & Video | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff