Art Seekers

Within minutes digital artists can place “21st century man” in heaven:

or cast him into hell, just by exercising a few keystrokes as opposed to thousands of brush strokes:

The ease of use, the ever growing power provided by hardware and software development and the drive for increased productivity are propelling the advancement of the Digital Arts at a monumental pace. Within two decades we have gone from slapping a little ball around and playing “PacMan” on crude computers to full length digital movies, both animated and realistic. The digital arts now pervade ever increasing sectors of our lives as individuals, challenging our economic livelihoods, cultural moral fabrics and international relations.

As with any tool, the digital arts can be used for “good” and “bad”. I could just as easily dynamically update this page with the “porn picture of the day” or with the “bible verse of the day”. Some even argue that the proliferation of pornography over the Internet is a component of the Moslem distain for the Western culture.

Whatever your opinions are, digital art technology is going to continue “forward” at an ever increasing pace. There is an old saying:

“Wherever there’s money, there’s time”. (unknown)

Modifying that for the 21st century it should read:

“Wherever there’s money, there’s time, hardware and software”. (Ken Webster)

These facts are behind news stories we see in the media every day. Chain stores are dropping film development services. Disney is producing more animated movies. Large digital arts (gaming) companies are merging for mega-dollars. The time savings and resultant cost benefit in advertising and entertainment media contributes to our continued march toward more productivity.

Just this week it was announced for the first time in decades that health organizations have lowered the life expectancy of Americans due to the current high level of obesity (30%) in our children. How much of that is due to setting around absorbed in computer games? Digital art companies are producing extreme games where warriors prove themselves, join up in platoons and do war with other factions in real time, against other players on-line. For some, that is extremely addictive entertainment. Can we blame the digital arts for making our kids fat, when beginning at at early age, we depend on those technologies as electronic baby-sitters?

Can we blame the digital arts for robbing traditional artists of their income since we can laser sculpt 3 dimensional objects and digitally reproduce texture on canvas? It seems like a 10 sided coin. The strongest prevailing argument by and for traditional artists seems to be the “Zen” quality and the intrinsic value in the originality of a “hand made” object, and indeed there is that element. This time of year, when I am cold, I love to snuggle up under a beautiful multi-colored afghan my wife made for me. It’s “one of a kind”, it keeps me warm in the winter, it’s brightly colored and full of “cheer” on cold, dark, gloomy days and best of all, I know it was made with love, warming my soul every time I use it. You just can’t buy that in a department store. If this aspect of appreciation weren’t still present, Sotheby’s and Christie’s would be out of business as well as every antique dealer on the planet.

Differing views are often based on “economies of scale”, especially where the general public is concerned. As the digital arts close the gap between the perception of “machine made” and “hand made” for many, does that infringe on the value of hand made originals or enhance their value? Even though Christie’s International recently held the second largest auction in art history during questionable economic times, it was deemed as unsuccessful due to the fact that the total revenue was near the bottom of the projected monetary envelope.

What if the “digital original” is a “hand made original” occupying a space of it’s own? Is that possible? What value does it retain? Are digital originals “hand made” with just a different set of brushes (electronic)? Those questions are easily answered, or are they? Will “Blue-Ray” win out over competition as the preferred DVD technology?

Below we have included an image of a milestone digitally created traditional “Still Life” by Gilles Tran:

This image was created by Gilles Tran with POV-Ray 3.6 using Radiosity. The glasses, ashtray and pitcher were modeled with Rhino3D and the dice with Cinema 4D.

If you would like to view this image in closer detail or want it for wallpaper, you can down load it from us in 3 different sizes:
Glasses - 800×600 - (154Kb)
Glasses - 1024×768 - (227Kb)
Glasses - 2048×1536 - (635Kb)

Western History is ripe with visionaries envisioning the “Digital Revolution” as far back as when computers less powerful than we have on our desktops took up large rooms and hummed with glowing vacuum tubes. James Bond’s 1963 Aston Martin DB5 featured in several films: Goldfinger, Thunderball, GoldenEye, Tomorrow Never Dies, and Casino Royale had an onboard navigation system strikingly similar to current day GPS navigational systems many of us have in our cars. His didn’t even speak to him in a digitized voice though. Another popular 60’s character; Batman had a red mobile phone on the console of his Batmobile long before mobile phones became a reality.

Digital Art is only a couple decades old, but it has changed the world we live in dramatically. Everyone has had to adjust from individuals to multi-national corporations.

Many artists have had issues dealing with the changes the Digital Revolution has ushered in. Have you?

Ken

Tags: Digital Art by Ken
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What is Creativity? How does the Creative Process work? Can it be enhanced, forced, manipulated, structured or restructured? What do the terms “Right Brained”, “Left Brained” and “Centered” really mean? What drives us to become artists, writers, performers and engineers?

Where does Creativity come from?

What have others said about creativity?..and what do their musings mean?

Picasso:

“I copied paintings at the beginning so I wouldn’t have to copy later on.”

Picasso seemed to accept as fact that our own creativity can be enhanced by observing the creativity of others. This would seem to indicate that Picasso viewed creativity as maturing through a learning process as opposed to being genetically inherent.

Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475-1564), Italian Renaissance artist:

“A man paints with his brains and not with his hands.”

Michelangelo is recognized as being “gifted” well beyond what most “artists” can hope attain in a lifetime, even with the more advanced tools we have at “hand”. In some circles he is labled as “Gnostic”. He certainly seemed to have felt the need to draw a distinction between the source of creativity and it’s matriculation or realization.

Nikos Kazantzakis (1885-1957), Greek novelist:

“What a strange machine man is! You fill him with bread, wine, fish, and radishes, and out comes sighs, laughter, and dreams.”

Are we creativity machines? We do seem to create something, no matter how hard we try, or don’t.

Charles Darwin, “The Origin of the Species”:

“It is not the strongest of the species that survives, not the most intelligent, but the most responsive to change.”

Darwin seems to indicate that creativity is so inherent in our nature, existance and world, that it occupies a position of a dominant force. Is creativity fed to all species by energy from the “plasma state” of the mass elements we are composed of?

Come to think of it, I do have an uncut Rotweiller that gets real creative about getting out of the yard if there is a bitch in heat within 2 miles.

Anna Freud, The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defense, 1946

“Creative minds have been known to survive any sort of bad training.”

Albert Einstein:

“Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.”

Both Anna Freud and Albert Einstein seem to refer to opposition that many creative people encounter along their path. These conflicts can come from within and from the outside. It seems as if the left brain and right brain can battle for dominance sometimes. Battles between the factions seem to abound all around us; creative vs intellectual, the art community vs the scientific community. Ultra creative people seem to scare everyone around at times. Creative engineers even draw ire from jealous collegues. Gifted and Creative children often grow up misunderstood and become rebelous without proper nuturing of their creative spirit.

People that are gifted both intellectually and creatively, can live a dichotic lonely and unproductive lifestyle until they bridge the gap by reconciling the confusion.

While you are thinking about creativity, here are a couple good reference websites on creativity:
The International Center For Studies In Creativity
7 Stages of The Creative Process
Creativity & Innovation in Science & Technology
The American Creativity Association

Let’s work together here to understand creativity, what it is, and how to nourish it. If we can better understand this elemental tool within our existance, we all stand a better chance of not only survival, but are looking at better probabilities of success in our personal and business lives.

Ken

Tags: Creativity by Ken
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Every artist struggles with Marketing and Sales at some time. This “Art Seekers” Blog Category is intendend for anyone interested in discussing Art Marketing & Sales, current events, methods, marketing and sales techniques, who’s selling and who isn’t and why.

The news media likes to sensationalize major Art events such as the recent lack of a bid for Vincent van Gogh’s “Starry Night” :

Southeby’s Impressionist and Modern Art Auction results totaled $269.7 million, well under the presale low estimate of $355.6 million and just half the high estimate of $494.2 million.

Christie’s International Impressionist and Modern Art Auction totaled $395 million, in the lower half of its presale estimated range of $349 million to $487 million.

Almost immediately “Art Market Doomsayers” came out tying those 2 “Dissapointing” art auctions to percieved faltering economic conditions, even though Christie’s had just conducted the second largest art auction ever held.

Then came the news of a record sales price for a Faberge Egg, fetching $18.5 million.

As an experienced marketer, its hard to determine anything by looking at market extremes, especially through macroscopic or microscopic lenses. Should we draw conclusions from the upper end of the Art Market? Should we all bow down and concede to the injured housing market, assuming that art sales is “dead on the vine”?

Christie’s resumes contemporary art auctions on Nov. 12, auctioning art from the estate of dealer Allan Stone. It will be interesting, but what will it tell us?

Let’s work together here for a more holistic approach to Art Marketing and Sales. There’s room for all of us to benefit. What’s real and what’s not, in art marketing and sales? Sometimes it’s its hard for even the “pros” to know.

Ken

Tags: Art Marketing & Sales by Ken
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Welcome to the “Art Seekers” Art Blog.

“Art Seekers” is a brand new art blog designed in, around, by and for the art community. It takes a while to develop a meaningful and informative blog for any community so we are inviting you to sign up and join us.

We are currently looking for Authors, Contributors and Subscribers. We encourage contributors to join in. If you would like to become an author, please contact us .

Authors who contribute meaningful articles will become eligable for a dedicated Author’s Page on the blog.

Ken

Tags: Administrative by Ken
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