Nam Jun Paik

The Question: Nam June Paik innovated the use of video, should this type of medium (video) be considered art or simply just an advancement in technology? Why?
What influence do you think Nam June Paik's work had on the development of new media art today?

Video is an art form. Why? because it is. If it wasn't I'd be wasting my time taking Video Art classes.
Nam June Paik's work definitely had a very strange style that I think massively influenced some of the main stream pop culture we saw in the late 70's, early 80's. Some of his cheesy filters and effects became mainstream staples of that bright and colorful time period for video. His innovations in manipulating video tech to create art pieces also had an influence on artists at the time. He was changing people's paradigms and understandings about how video could be used. In more recent times, it could be said that he set in motion a new mindset that various forms of presenting and manipulating video could be considered art.

Reasearch, Presentations, and Art

The CAUS research symposium had a wide range of presentations, many on personal research of the faculty into artistic mediums. However the one that drew me in the most was the presentation on the future of Graphic Design classes. The entire presentation centered around new technology and teaching techniques that Ben, Troy, and Somaya have been pushing. There was an interesting contrast between the challenges and benefits of 4 design versus freelance work. Both seemed to be positive options to prepare VCD students for the real work world. The real world for the computer artist often alternates between freelance and employed jobs. I'd love to see this idea expanded on across other art dept. such as creative Tech. During my time here I've both worked for Tech as a normal job, and done some free-lance work as well. Unfortunately my experience was varied, working for tech yielded very few hours and most free lance jobs were unpaid. It would be useful to have an option like VCD students have to learn about the best ways to approach these issues.
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Bill Viola new how to pick powerful locations. As zoo as they showed the interior of the silo he had chosen for 5 Angels, the aesthetic was immediately obvious. His choice of raw, industrial, metallic, and inhuman setting was the perfect frame for his projection piece. The video had an immediate effect, mostly utilizing a common color across them. This sort of contrast of colors is an aim of my senior studio. Although I'd like to have more subtle contrast, I do want the stark dramatic effect of lighting the was apparent both in Bill's videos and in his setting. The sound must correlate with the mood that the lighting is trying to convey. His art piece was more than just a narrative, it really was about creating moods.

Rights and Obligations

What right does an artist have to their own artwork? Once an artwork is bought, should the artist have any say to how it should be presented or kept? What legal responsibility does an artist have to society?


An artist has the full right to their work, however to protect it from the rest of the world (whether through variants, re-mixes, copiers etc.) you have to go through the proper legal channels for copyrighting. Luckily the passage of Creative Commons 2.0 makes this a fairly easy means of protecting your work. As a new media artist, very little of my work manifests itself in the physical realm. So I am quite used to not have the ability to sell my work, as it is usually produced with a group for pay. However, in the instances where this applies, the terms should be agreed upon at the point of purchase. If the artist had special request for how the piece was to be displayed and where, then he/she should ensure that it is included in the contract.

The Pepsi-Cola incident at The Pavilion is indeed unfortunate, but immediately made clear that the artist must lay down terms of their work at the point of purchase. Once the money is laid down, I believe the power the artist can have over their art quickly diminishes. Not to mention how much these options vary by country's law.

The legal responsibility is naught for the artist. I think we have an obligation, if the artist is exploring new frontiers, to break laws. The only real limit of an artist should be their own moral boundaries. Of course this is a dangerous idea, as morality is relative to individual people. However art is often dangerous, all new things are. We have an obligation to society to forge new territory and ideas. A responsible artist would know how to bend the rules and expose new truths and viewpoints without endangering anyone. Because of the fluid nature of law, considering it often varies from state to country, it can't be an ultimate reference point for where artists should stop. I think there is at least a certain degree of common sense that an artist must employ when making and showing art. It would be desirable to be libertarian about this, and set this limits to whatever doesn't disturb others. However the power of art lies in it's ability to expose people to concepts, ideas, and aesthetics they haven't seen before.

What the Future means for the Past

What becomes of old art forms as new technologies develop? It is a difficult to answer, because it is quite rare to see entire art forms die off. Usually there are still a few artist that cling to old techniques. Consider photography, nobody makes callotypes or daguerrotypes anymore. The question arises, as new technologies create new techniques from creating and showing art, are we still creating the same art? Fundamentally in many cases it is the same idea. Graffiti to cave painting, photo shop to canvas painting, drawn animation to FBF computer animation. However there entirely new forms that have arisen from technologies such as photography and video that crate a whole different art. This is mentioned in the article that these form pierce into reality and demonstrate a deeper meaning in our daily real world. However previous art forms had to recreate and interpret these using human imagination and bias.

While the old techniques and mediums for art still exist, largely a lot of the principles that come with them can be lost. Tens of thousands of people can use photo shop, but probably only a hand ful of them probably know what the burn/dodge tool actually means. In fact such an effect can be replicated by different means than that algorithm. That is if we wish to replicate the effect at all. A lot of post photographic techniques arise out of a need to fix a picture because the machine (camera) failed to represent something the way we want it. It is possible for such concepts to drop out completely. (We do however see a revival of intentionally making error in film, to recreate our old feeling of film.) We spend a lot of time in 3D animation avoiding the computer perfect look.

Something that old mediums and techniques do face today is new expectations. The people viewing these mediums expect a level of convenience and an amount of public notoriety that can draw their interest. Like the British dude said, the days of patronage are over. It can also be argued we expect more content than used to be expected. many musician release multiple albums to stay "relevant," and using old techniques and mediums usually take longer to achieve the desired effect. The expectations are simply different, especially as new technology streamlines the art making process.

Metropolis
“The mediator between brain and hands must be the heart”

The obvious metaphor for this is the important means of communication between the upper and lower classes. That it is only through "the heart" or compassion and understanding of where each person comes from that compromise can be made. Of course there are much larger real world implications of what the heart could stand for. Understanding human nature, we can't all work in perfect harmony and hope that we can depend on everyone to be trustworthy and not abuse power.

Ultimately the heart could stand for any number of things from the establishment of unions, to the invention of democracy. I assume government is the heart mediator that ensures that abuse does not go on, and guard against a serious divide between the economic power of the lower and upper class. Now the question is what system help establish a fair working order for all those involved? The idea of capitalism allows the room for growth and is perhaps one of the most profitable economic systems out there. Of course the only way to make that system work would be to ensure a government could regulate everything necessary to ensure standards were fair for everyone. The scenario played out in the film would be an existence where the companies own everybody, and the opposite would be a government that ran the economy.

It can certainly be argued into today's day in age of political corruption and a system that is loaded head to toe with powerful lobbies that influence our politics more than the regular vote, taking the power out of the hands of everyone and favoring the elite. We are approaching a divide between upper and lower classes that only existed during 1920's era. Some would say this is an inevitable result of capitalism, but a purer system of politicians could ensure that the worker is guarded against the oppression of Elite.

The system works in the reverse extreme (which we don't see often today, but exist) when systems like trade unions grow too powerful, making demands for lifestyles that a company cannot afford to perpetuate (I believe an example would be the union struggles with the auto industry.) This a teaspoon sized opinion on what could help a government re assume a fair role in mediating between worker and employer.

Artistic Stereotypes and Public Perception

Question
NM(new media) art is usually made by teams of people, has NM finally destroyed the myth of the artist or has the myth just been changed to accommodate computer programmers and designers?

After a good bit of thought on this, I find myself jumping back and forth between the fence on this question. In relation to whether the artistic label could/ should be extended to designers and programmers, I think yes and no. I still see programmers as tool designers that aim to help the efficiency of regular life and of course the artist. That is not to say that programming lack creativity, but it is far too focused on the functional. Designers are closer to artists because both the functional and the aesthetic is key. Programming is a little too focused on function, at the point that you call in a designer to adjust a GUI to be aethetically pleasing is when the artistry is happening. The programmer's contributions are about efficiency and making tools better.

Now about the stereotype of the artist. If we consider artist as in the typical professional sense I would say that perhaps new media did shift some public perception of it. However, I think the stereotype lives on today, especially in education. Consider the way Virginia Tech's Art program is structured. Creative technologies is still embedded with Studio Arts. This may be a bit more of a technical issue (making a new major is really difficult.) Yet, when I tell people that I went for a Studio Arts degree, the immediate response is that I just wasted A LOT of money. The perception of the uselessness of an art degree is still an existing stereotype, unless you specify some technical field associated with it. This implies that the technical field (whatever it could be from animation to graphic design) is still separate from art in the public mind. Ultimatly after a few seconds of thought, most people would come to the conclusion that all of these jobs are art related and create art in it's own right. However the association still exist that commercial new media art is too functional (entertainment, advertising, etc.) to be immediately thought of as art.

The exception would be perhaps new media art used in non commercial means. In the traditional sense of putting up mixed media art projects in galleries to be sold for large sums of money. In Exit Through the Gift Shop most people didn't associate graffiti as a real art form (despite it's traditional nature) until Banksy and Mr. Brainwash put up their graffiti projects in a gallery opening and sold his pieces for tons of money. The mentioned in the documentary that art is viewed as such because an artistic elite chooses what is art versus the common people.

New Media Theroy

The blog is being picked up again to cover the various topics of New media Theory! So now you can hear all my self important ramblings on what I think of various out of touch, modernist, high concept, low aesthetic modern art stuffs.

Just kidding, much love Duchamp <3