Contextual & Theoretical Studies: LECTURE 2 - TECHNOLOGY WILL LIBERATE US

4 BOOKS TO READ

DIGITAL CURRENTS - MARGO LOVE JOY
WALTER BENJAMIN - ART AND THE AGE OF MECHANICAL REPRODUCTION
JOHN WALKER - ART IN THE AGE OF MASS MEDIA
JOHN BURJILAR - SIMULACRA AND SIMILATION

What are the implications of technology on our design areas. Charting the path of art and technology until you

SUMMARY

technological conditions can affect the collective consciousness
Technology trigger important changes in cultural development
Walter Benjamin's essay 'The work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction' 1936 significantly evaluated the role of technology through photography as an instrument of change.

We are still getting critics writing on this essage because it is still having an effect on our work today. How technology is an instrument for change.

TASK

draw a doodle
faithfully copy this
and again
and again

The first drawing should be named ORIGINAL

The second one is the COPY

The next 2 are reproductions

By copying, reproducing - this became a work of art in its own rights, or an image representation of the original. Benjimans discussion on what is original, what is copies, and what is reproduced is essential - the relationship between art, design and media is born from this scenario. The relationship between who is copying who, who is reproducing who.

LInk between art, media, technology, design.

There are some designers who deliberately use this method of copying - and there are some artists who comment on the copying in society.

MACHINE AGE; MODERNISM

WALTER BENJAMIN & MECHANICAL REPRODUCTION

He claimed that the art guild was born from technology
The dialectical - key to understand in the role of the original, because of technlogy and the emergence of photography, there is now such a thing as THE ORIGINAL we dont need to negotiate the idea of the original unless it was with fogers, we didnt need to work out what was the original and what was the copy. It is only since photography that we have to lable the original because of the unique quality of it.
E.G - movies that have been remade / copied / there is an understanding of an original

PHOTOGRAPHY

It is at the beginning of this relationship between art and design.
It can come from an number of multiple points, it is not just your perception and what you see from your eye, it can be used to create multiple viewing points.
John Berger writes alot in response to the...
The camera eye has a variable gaze
Benjiman - idealism and faith and progress through technological process

PHOTOGRAMS

HE has 2 strands of

Frued - exstinctula side of human behaviour

Marx... - the economic that gave new political models thinking of art - changes the value of a work of art e.g. the original is worth more in general...but however IF the copy is made by a celebrity it may become more valuable.

ONCE art enters modes of production - the value of it changes. The original may be valued and valuable but the copy in reproduction is consumed and valuable.

labour and production through industrial revolution would naturally lead to a bigger consumption of art and design

Photography - has over turned the judgement seat of art the fact that which this course of modernmistn has impressed. It moves one thing into a new context - therefor the value of it becomes something different.

Frued looks at the materialism of technlogy and how the subconcious can impress...how they interact with our subconcious and deepest designs

It is the material way of looking at the developments of technlogy.

The idea of CAPTURING MOVEMENT
Etenian Jewes - Marey
1888 - he produced a series of successful images of the moving body - krono photography, the pre curser of cinema photography
His invensions of photography are vast - understand the dimenions of space, time and age. There are the start of exploring how we protray space and movement.
Understanding of space, time and a whole dialogue on the dematerialisation of art.
Moves into the relm of just image - once you move to just image you can replicate and transform it. With photography comes the dematerialisation of art and design.

Clearly using technlogy to create image - the DADA movement
INstead with photography and techlogy - images and objects become coded, ordered and styled - this is the beginning of the devleopment of art and desinn moving together.
How you order, style etc, - becomes resting in the context of desing
Now you see art images as part of fashion, advertising, graphics etc - why you see deisgn in art.

how technologic affects
logical relationship between tehcnlogy and how it affects economic productino and social positions
He examins closely the relationship between technology and enterprise
role and tool for progress, and the tool for AILIANTION

This is what he discusses

The original is produced by one person in their own mode of production, any copy is produced by the modes of technology, therefor the division of labour is to how labour is divided up in to a technological and machine industry - the maker may not see the beginning of hteir work right through to the end. That this has an effect of separating us from creativity. There are issues that are discussed, they are not decides. He essential establishes a materialist view of history.

Explores links between capitalism, competition and the selling of products and also the issue of power - who has the power in the capitalist set up - the is a distinction between the power and the labrer`.

Increasingly we look at information and conceptual based work - how people collected and recorded.
If you look at design now - there is a lot that has come from just re-ordering date/numbers
The computer is a natural metaphor for many social developments - it is the centre of our use for design both as an image and for creating design
It moves away form the modern aesthetic - tied up with consumerism which is tied up with new technology
We consume the technology and in tern develop new techniques - this is a shift away from the modernist techniques - everything becomes more image and illusion based and more shiftable
Because of this openness to industrial technique there are also openness to collaborations to art and science (the most obvious) but if you look at the cross boundaries you can see fashion and digital technology. - paired down clothing that is produced by digital data - fashion can can become conceptual (hadn't been before then) - cross boundary work

Performance group that was set up - dance performance and media that has projections - video instilation - the video becomes a form and itself becomes and object.

Text projections on cloth and body - just see the silhouette
Side issue - good for looking at deconstruction - the material object being broken down through the use of text, projections, image - breaking down and understanding the female body

Video workds - VIOPHONAGRAPH - experimentation between music, performance, video and instillation

Comes from the development of thought, and they tigh rightic attitue
He destroyed 13 years of art publically then wrote this 'i will not make any more boring art'

Direct development from the use of video image moving image still image within technology - particularly during the 1980's
Describes - simulation is a simulated image - a copy of an experience, replication of something, it is not meant to be real
However SILULARCRUM that the simulation also becomes real - this is a huge effect on art and design because you can apply it to so many things
Reproducing work digital, that digital work is not a work in its own right. That it isntt just a copy, that is a work and object in its own right
That playing with the hype real - what is real and what is an illusion
No need to have a relationship between anything that is real - what is real and what is fantasy
IS all the work you do on the computer not real because it is not an original work of art
Do we every really question what and if something has every really been there - no - we just take it as real and truthful and factual because we have heard it said. This is no different form the simulacrum.

Plays with the idea of what is real and what isn't real - refers back to the idea of PANOPTICISM - who is the subject and who is the object. The illusion of power. What is illusion and what is possible, what is real and what is fake

Critisizes on how art uses mass media
Also attatcks the serioussness of art and the relationship between art and design. Other people replicate art into design
At what point does art become design - how do you promote and develop these.

DIGTAL AGE (WE ARE NOW IN POST DIGITAL STAGE)

what everyou do, you are at the start point where boundaries can be crossed.

Jenny holzer - blue tilt 2004, boltic centre in 2000,

Istallations, projections, building and services - she played with similarcra - the projections of text were dont by projections, but on galss which was then projected, the text was also moving so it looked like it was extending beyond the building.