To Edition or Not to Edition?

When I started making digital prints I hesitated for some time about whether the prints should be in limited editions. I found that galleries are only interested in limited editions, so from a practical standpoint that answered the question, full stop.
 
From one point of view the idea of a limited edition digital print is silly. With a traditional technique such as engraving on copper, the plate is relatively soft and prints gradually decrease in quality as the plate becomes worn. Thus in the traditional practice different prints from the same plate vary in quality, and there is a natural limit to the number of prints produced. If prints beyond this number are wanted, it is necessary for someone (likely not the original artist) to rework the plate, going over it with an engraving tool to sharpen up the lines. This may be seen as lessening the contribution of the original artist, so prints from the reworked plate probably don't have the same authority or value as those from its original state.

With digital prints there is no plate to wear out, the source being a computer file in a format like TIFF. Prints from the same file can still vary, according to the choice of paper and inks, the quality of the printing equipment and the ability of the person doing the printing to get the best out of the machinery. But this has nothing to do with edition numbers.

So, why limit edition numbers? The artist Marius Watz, well-known for working with computer code, has said in part:

"The simple answer is because there is no market for unlimited copies … the argument that limited copies imbue the object with perceived value might be uncomfortable to accept, but it's hard to refute. To sell to collectors … it is necessary to build a personal connection between the collector, artist and artwork. Scarcity is simply a shortcut to achieving this goal, however illusory."

(From https://www.quora.com/Why-should-an-artist-make-limited-edition-prints-of-a-painting-as-opposed-to-selling-an-unlimited-amount-of-prints)

So, that gives two reasons for making limited editions: they use scarcity to impart perceived value, and they give the chance of a personal connection, especially with smaller edition numbers. I accept these reasons, but there is something else as well. For me, having a limited edition gives a sense of boundary or closure to a project, and I want that. I'm not sure what I'm feeling here. It has something to do with the physical presence of the print once it has been made, an artefact that can be quite imposing and requires respectful handling. No doubt this is linked to the "aura" of the unique work of art, but that is a topic for another time.

 

What's in a name? (Again)

Some years ago I had to choose a name for my art practice. Now I am returning to this, as I am starting a Facebook artist's page (facebook.com/GordonMonroArtist) and an Instagram page (instagram.com/gordonmonroartist). It is apparently necessary to have a label that is at most three words long, in accordance with the idea of an "elevator statement" (U.S. usage, but "lift statement" sounds odd): you find yourself in a lift with an influential person: you want to tell them what you do, but you only have the time it takes the lift to travel a couple of floors.

My practice is to write computer programs that generate all or most of an artwork. There is an established name for the practice where artists set up systems (computerised or not) that generate artworks, and that is generative art. I would like to call myself a generative artist; unfortunately the term isn't well known, so it needs explanation; no good for elevator statements.

"Process artist" also needs explanation, and an artist's "process" generally refers to the personal process an artist goes through when making or developing work, such as reflecting on events or personal experience, gathering material, and so on. This is quite different from setting up a system that then makes the art.

"Computer artist" brings to mind someone who uses tools like Adobe's Photoshop and Illustrator to make art, which is not what I do.

I thought about "programmer/artist", since I write programs as part of my practice. But I am not a professional programmer, and "programmer/artist" (or "artist/programmer") emphasises the programming side too much.  For me programming is a means to artistic ends.  Also I don't want to use "software artist", as "software art" has had the meaning of art, made in software certainly, that is about software (and about the way governments and big corporations use it); my art is not about software as such, nor about its political implications, except in a very indirect fashion.

I have a similar problem with "mathematician/artist". It is quite a while since I have been active as a mathematician. I certainly use ideas from mathematics as one of the major inspirations for my work, and I use a certain amount of relatively low-level mathematics while writing my programs, but "mathematician/artist" over-emphasises the mathematical side (even if it might be good branding).

So the best three-words-or-fewer approximation I can think of is still "digital media artist". If I am allowed five words I could say "generative artist (digital media artist)", but it would have to be a long lift journey.

Anita Traverso Gallery closing in Richmond

Anita Traverso is closing her physical space in Albert Street, Richmond, Melbourne, after ten years at this location. Anita and Irina intend to continue with an online presence at http://www.anitatraversogallery.com.au/. I have had a connection with Anita's gallery for some years, and it has greatly helped my professional development as an artist. Thank you, Anita and Irina!

 

Art binge - Part 2 (of 2)

 

At the end of my last post I was looking at the Incinerator Gallery at Moonee Ponds.  At Screen Space I had been told that they had curated a video program at the Art Fair, including a video by Peter Daverington.  I had looked briefly at the videos at the Art Fair and not seen any that interested me, but I then realised that there were several video sessions and the one I would be interested in was on in the afternoon.  So I went back to the Art Fair.

Back to the Art Fair

I did see the Daverington video.  It starts off in a very abstract-geometric fashion and eventually introduces synthetic scenery (which seems to be a theme of today).  I have seen it before, but it was well worth a second look.

Presentation: most of the videos were shown on flat-panel displays with headphones; one was projected at a large scale with sound through speakers.  Unfortunately the sound for this video included quite loud synthetic noises meant to represent the clucking of a hen, which made it hard to hear any subtle sounds that might be coming through the headphones.

There was also a space set up as a proper theatrette, showing (in the afternoon) a video by Baden Pailthorpe  about drone warfare in Afghanistan.  Certainly the darker space, seats, a proper screen and multi-channel sound system made a difference (though one of the speakers had a problem).  The bare mountain scenery in Pailthorpe ’s video also appeared to be synthetic, but unlike the Piccinini piece the whole thing was an overt techno-fantasy about something that ought to be a techno-fantasy but is all too real.

Globelight at the Abbotsford Convent

The last instalment of my weekend art binge was a visit to Abbotsford Convent, in the opposite direction from Moonee Ponds (and a moderate hike from Victoria Park station).  By now it was dark, so I was able to see the various works to best advantage, especially the outdoor sculptures.

Outdoor sculpture by Sean Diamond

 

Among the outdoor works an  intriguing piece was a pendulum by James Tapscott, the organiser of the festival.  This was a globe that swung freely over a satellite dish,  The colour of the light inside the globe could be controlled and affected a sensor hidden in the dish, which controlled the generation of sounds.

Among the works inside buildings the most spectacular was Orb, a large disk with lights forming vertical stripes that turned on and off in various patterns.  There was a sonic component to this work also.

There were a couple of interesting video projection ideas.  One work had two projectors aimed at a considerable number of hanging gauze panels; not a new idea, but well done.  Another had what must have been a small screen at the bottom of a long triangular tube: looking down it produced a dazzling kaleidoscope effect.  Kaleidoscopes were a sub-theme of the weekend: apart from the Perpetual Light Machine there was a work in the Art Fair that made a similar use of mirrors, though it didn’t have a screen inside it.

A projection by Kate Geck

 

The last thing I saw was the audio-visual performance by Abre Ojos (Scott Baker).  This used three video projectors: as well as the main screen there were two more pointing at the ceiling showing a separate video feed, all being controlled in real time by Scott.

Globelight has another major component , a month-long exhibition at Anita Traverso Gallery in Richmond, which I had seen on an earlier visit to Melbourne.

On Sunday I went home!

Art organisations

My little art binge of a day and a bit sampled quite a few types of art organisation.  One high-end public gallery - ACCA.  One municipal gallery, with its brief to show local artists and to bring art from other places to the local populace  - Moonee Ponds Incinerator Gallery.  One very commercial Art Fair, though to its credit it did offer a bit of space to non-profits and the like.  One not-for-profit space, which I assume survives on grants and voluntary labour - Screen Space.  And one festival, which has come about largely because of the vision, energy and huge personal input of one person, James Tapscott – Globelight.

Art binge – Part 1

 

Recently I went down to Melbourne on the weekend for a bit of an art binge.  I wanted to see some of the things associated with the Globelight festival, and I was looking for ideas concerning the presentation of video and screen-based work.  And it was Melbourne Art Week (not to be confused with Melbourne White Night, Melbourne Nite Art, the Melbourne Festival, or whatever).

Australian Centre for Contemporary Art

On the Friday night the Australian Centre for ContemporaryArt (ACCA) had an open night.  There were two shows, Christian Capurro’s work Slave in one room and Optical Mix, a range of works exploring light, colour and perception, in the other.

Slave consists of videos, apparently shot on a mobile phone, of some of Dan Flavin’s fluorescent light works.  It came across to me as another introverted art-world piece, art-about-art-and-its–conditions-of-presentation-and-reception.  The presentation was very well done and the scale was impressive.

Christian Capurro's Slave

The works in Optical Mix were very varied, including a colourful Bridget Riley, a hypnotic circular piece by Ugo Rondinone and another circular piece by Jean-Pierre Yvaral, a kind of optical illusion that played with two and three dimensions.  The most visually dominant was by Cake Industries, consisting of two towers of rapidly changing coloured lights, intended to be considered as pixels.

The Melbourne Art Fair

On the Saturday morning I went to the Melbourne Art Fair, in the Exhibition Buildings in Carlton Gardens.  I suppose I went to get a sense of the commercial end of the Zeitgeist.  Certainly there were a lot of things to see: a lot of large things, a lot of brightly coloured things, a lot of large brightly coloured things.  A very large and brightly coloured work by Del Kathryn Barton pretty much summed it up for me. Of course it wasn’t all like that: a stark contrast was provided by some beautiful, and beautifully understated, ceramic pieces shown by Yamaki Art Gallery from Osaka, Japan.
 

I only tried to talk to one gallerist, and when she found out that I was an artist she very quickly said “Sorry, I don’t have time to talk to artists.”  Telling it like it is, but it made the pecking order of the Art Fair very clear.

Overview of the Art Fair

Screen Space

After that I went to Screen Space in Guildford Lane in the city.  They have a “small screen” ( a flat-panel monitor in the foyer area), a downstairs gallery, which is a dark room with projectors, and have just recently expanded into an upstairs gallery.  I went partly because Magda Cebokli, whom I know, currently has some of her geometric paintings in the upstairs gallery, in company with some largely geometric works by Peter Daverington and others.

In the gallery downstairs was a three-channel video work (three simultaneous projections) by Patricia Piccinini.  It showed views of rolling ocean waves, which on inspection were clearly synthetic, as the general shape and distribution of the waves wasn’t convincing.  The piece was made in 2000 and is perhaps showing its age, as such near-photo-realistic synthetic scenery is no longer a novelty.

The piece on the small screen, by Leela Schauble, was more interesting to me.  It showed an imaginary marine creature, translucent and pulsating, supposed to have evolved from the plastic bags that now litter the world’s oceans.

Leela Schauble, Synthetic Species Motion Study No.7

The Incinerator Gallery at Moonee Ponds

After Screen Space I went to a place I had not previously visited, the Incinerator Gallery at Moonee Ponds (a moderate hike from Moonee Ponds station).  The building was designed by Burley Griffin as a municipal incinerator; it is now an art space of the City of Moonee Valley.  There was a component of Globelight here, the installation The nature of things, is that even the strong will want to fall by Sam Mitchell-Fin.  This consisted of a number of coloured fluorescent tubes (much thinner than Dan Flavin’s) arranged at various angles.  I suspect this piece is better seen at night.

There was an unexpected bonus here in terms of presentation, in the form of the Perpetual Light Machine by Autonomous Black (Paul Irving and Chip Wardale).  Inside were six enclosures, each of which had portholes that revealed a screen and mirrors arranged to give a kaleidoscope effect; very well done.  I am less certain about the aesthetic content, but that’s another story.  The whole structure also functions as a stage for musical performances by Autonomous Black.

Autonomous Black, Perpetual Light Machine (external view)

To be continued ....

Transfield withdraws from Biennale of Sydney

I have just seen the news that Transfield have withdrawn as the major partners of the Biennale of Sydney and that Luca Belgiorno-Nettis of Transfield has resigned from the Board of the Biennale.  This has happened because Transfield has been involved with offshore detention centres and has recently won a contract worth over $1 billion to operate the detention centre on Manus Island.  A number of artists involved with the Biennale were planning to withdraw from it because of this issue.

I was just having an email conversation touching on the influence of big donors on the boards of museums and public galleries.  The Biennale Board have had the courage not to let the piper call the tune on this occasion.  It is sad because the Belgiorno-Nettis family have supported the Biennale very generously since its inception, but this time it is impossible to ignore the source of the money.  Tobacco sponsorship of sport and art has long been unacceptable in Australia, so the principle of looking at where the money originates is not new.

 

Analogue Swallows Digital

Last week I attended Impact7, billed as the "international multi-disciplinary printmaking conference", at Monash University in Melbourne.  This is the seventh in a series of conferences that began in England in 1999.  The core subject-matter of the conference was traditional printmaking: woodcuts, drypoint, etching and so forth.  However, there were a substantial number of presentations referring to digital media, and presentations exploring links between print-making and artists' book, zines, photography and graphic design.  There was also considerable discussion of education in the visual arts.  In the four days there were nearly 150 presentations (talks and demonstrations) and a substantial number of exhibitions.

I was curious to know how the traditional print-makers have reacted to the invasion of their field by Photoshop, inkjet printers and so forth.  The answer appears to be that the new methods have simply been incorporated into print-making practice: there were repeated references to the new technologies as providing just another set of tools, and discussion of the "expanded field" of print-making.  Analogue has swallowed digital.  Whatever debate there was in the printmaking community about digital media is now over, though occasionally concern was expressed that the "hand" of the artist might be missing.  I did hear a response to the effect that the mind of the artist is more important.

My own presentation argued that the computer can be more than a tool and that having outsourced the work of the artist's hand to machines, we are now starting to outsource the work of the artist's mind to machines also.

What’s in a name? (What is computer art?)

(Long post)

On my website I have called myself a “digital media artist”. I don’t like that name very much; I would like to call myself a “generative artist”, but that would require an explanation. What I have not done is call myself a “computer artist”.

This is on my mind because I have been reading a short book called A Philosophy of Computer Art, by Dominic McIver Lopes (Routledge, 2010). I agree with much of what is in this book: there are interesting discussions of various topics, including “What is an artwork?”, and a vigorous defence of computer art against various attacks; the discussion extends to computer games. My biggest problem with the book is with the title: it should be called A Philosophy of Interactive Computer Art.

Lopes makes two central definitions, of “digital art” and of “computer art” (more precisely of the “computer art form”).

Digital art: An item is a work of digital art just in case (1) it’s art (2) made by computer or (3) made for display by computer (4) in a common, digital code. (Lopes p. 3)

(Here “display” has a broad meaning, so it includes sound and other forms of output.)

Computer art form: An item is a computer art work just in case (1) it’s art (2) it’s run on a computer (3) it’s interactive, and (4) it’s interactive because it’s run on a computer. (Lopes p. 27)

If Lopes had called this the “interactive computer art form” I would have little quarrel with it. As it is, I have two main problems with this definition. Firstly, it is too late. For most people, “computer art” brings to mind works made using programs like Adobe’s Illustrator and Photoshop; indeed this is why I don’t call myself a computer artist. Lopes’s book will not change this.

Secondly Lopes’s use rules out works that are computer art under any reasonable definition. Black Shoals by Lisa Autogena and Joshua Portway (http://www.blackshoals.net/), which is not discussed by Lopes, is a work that has virtual creatures breeding and evolving, feeding on real-time stock-market data. The work would be inconceivable without a computer, it changes in real time, and it is unpredictable, but according to Lopes’s discussion of the term “interactive” Black Shoals is not computer art, so by implication is lumped in with Photoshop collages and the like under “digital art”.

The difficulty arises because Lopes wishes to identify computer art as a new art form, as different from (for example) photography and painting as they are from each other. For Lopes, an art form is an appreciative art kind, defined as follows:

Appreciative art kind: A kind [of artwork] is an appreciative art kind just in case we normally appreciate a work in the kind by comparison with arbitrarily any other works in that kind. (Lopes p. 17)

Lopes goes on to argue that digital art is too broad a category to be considered an art form in this sense, which is surely true, and that (interactive) digital art is an art form in his sense; here I think he has drawn his boundaries too narrowly. Black Shoals can surely be appreciated by comparing it with a work like A-Volve by Christa Sommerer and Laurent Mignonneau (http://www.medienkunstnetz.de/works/a-volve/), which also involves virtual creatures breeding and evolving, but where visitors can specify “DNA” for the creatures and interact with them once they are “born”. Yet for Lopes, A-Volve would count as belonging to the computer art form and Black Shoals would not.

If there is an art form that Black Shoals and A-Volve both belong to, what is it? I approach this via two more questions:

1. What is the most important characteristic of the computer? My answer: the computer autonomously carries out complex calculations and data manipulations. Interactivity is certainly not the most important characteristic; interactive computing only became widely available at least 20 years after electronic computers were introduced.
   
2. Is there an art form that has complex processes carried out autonomously as a defining characteristic? Yes: it is generative art.

Philip Galanter has given the following widely quoted definition:

Generative art refers to any art practice where the artist uses a system, such as a set of natural language rules, a computer program, a machine, or other procedural invention, which is then set into motion with some degree of autonomy contributing to or resulting in a completed work of art. (Philip Galanter “What is generative art? Complexity theory as a context for art theory”, available at http://www.philipgalanter.com/downloads/ga2003_paper.pdf)

Two generative artworks, then, can be compared via a discussion of the rules or “procedural inventions” involved in the work. Black Shoals and A-Volve use very similar rules: they both make use of evolutionary ideas concerning breeding, mutation and survival of the fittest; altogether clearly they are similar works and are appreciated as such. The fact that one is interactive and the other isn’t is a relatively minor consideration in this case, and surely does not make the works so radically different as to force them to belong to different art forms.

Not all generative art is computer-based: for example Sol Lewitt’s wall drawings made according to systems of rules are generative art under Galanter’s definition. But the ready availability of computers has lifted generative art to a new level and, in my view, has made it visible as a distinct art form. (I also note that Lopes concedes that theoretically a work of computer art in his sense could run on a human brain rather than a silicon machine.)

Most unfortunately, Lopes does not discuss the concept of generative art at all. If one is looking for an art form that makes essential use of the characteristics of the computer, and that has been given both an enormous expansion of possibilities and recognition as a distinct kind of art by the availability of the computer, generative art is a strong candidate.

Art Incorporated

[Slightly edited to remove typos]
  
I have been reading a small book by Julian Stallabrass, who lectures at the Courtauld Institute of Art in London. The edition that I have is entitled Contemporary Art: A Very Short Introduction, (one of a series of Very Short Introductions from Oxford University Press) but it was first published in 2004 under the title Art Incorporated, which better reflects its contents. The book discusses the period 1989 to about 2002, covering the collapse of the Communist states in Eastern Europe and the emergence of the U.S. as the sole superpower, the stockmarket crash of the late 1980s, the boom in the 1990s and the dot-com crash of 2000. The book contains a sustained discussion of the relationship of the art world to globalisation, neoliberal ideology, rampant capitalism and consumerism, with reference to a substantial number of individual artists and artworks.

A few quotes from the book:

"Art prices and the volume of art sales tend to match the stock markets closely, and it is no accident that the world's major financial centres are also the principal centres for the sale of art."

"Corporate culture has thoroughly assimilated the discourse of a tamed post-modernism. As in mass culture, art's very lack of convention has become entirely conventional."

And, even more strongly:
"The daring novelty of free art - in its continual breaking with conventions - is only a pale rendition of the continual evaporation of certainties produced by capital itself, which tears up all resistance to the unrestricted flow across the globe of funds, data, products, and finally the bodies of millions of migrants."

In the context of the proliferation of biennales in the 1990s:
''Just as business executives circled the earth in search of new markets, so a breed of nomadic global curators began to do the same, shuttling from one biennale or transnational art event to another ..."

"[A biennale] performs the same function for a city ... as a Picasso above the fireplace does for a tobacco executive."

In discussing an exhibition of Chinese art in Hong Kong in the context of globalisation, making the point that the welcome for "exotic" artists in the international art scene is very selective:
"... such works [in more traditional Communist and realist styles] were genuinely different from Western productions and therefore invisible to the global art system".

And a rather depressing conclusion:
"To break with the autonomy of free art is to remove one of the masks of free trade. Or, to put it the other way round, if free trade is to be abandoned as a model for global development, so must its ally, free art."

Despite the conclusion, I found the book refreshing!