Digital Approaches to Fine Arts

“What are digital approaches to fine art?  What can digital approaches to fine art be? What does it mean to use a digital approach?” Well when I first tried to answer these questions I started by looking up definitions for fine art. I remember these being all very different and quite broad. I remember also, being confused with all the different approaches to art, fine arts, craft arts, visual arts, etc. Yet after a semester studying digital art, I do have a new outlook. I still believe that a definition would be art created using some form of technology and that because of the wide ranging uses of technology; digital art can be used in conjunction with every other form of art no matter how it may be classified. It is essentially “the creative combination of art and technology.” After taking this class in conjunction with two individual studies, I was able to think about technology in conjunction with a variety of other media. Now it seems to me that with the smallest incorporation of some digital aspect, the work can still be seen as a digital approach. The whole thing doesn’t have to necessarily have to be made on a computer, or strictly digital. I had a chance to listen to Christopher Saunders talk about his work, which is primarily painting. But he uses Photoshop to make his sketches, just to be able to see the colors he wants to use. I think that having a knowledge of digital approaches to fine arts can in a way give you more opportunities as an artist. It can be incorporated in many, many, many ways and be a completely digital piece or not really one at all.

Documentation of the 15 hours I spent on my Final Project. I did spend time on this project!

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http://www.stephenvitiello.com/?page_id=5

Stephen Vitiello is a visual and sound artist. Originally a punk guitarist, he has been influenced by video artist Nam June Paik who he worked with after meeting in 1991. Vitiello was a resident artist at the World Trade Center 1999 where he recorded sounds from the 91st floor using home-built contact microphones, as well as photocells and used that material in his Bright and Dusty Things album as well as in an installation environment, World Trade Center Recordings: Winds After Hurricane Floyd. Vitiello has had solo exhibitions of sound installations, photographs and drawings at museums and galleries including The Project, NY, Museum 52, LA, and Galerie Almine Rech, Paris. Group exhibitions include the 2002 Whitney Biennale, the 2006 Sydney Biennale.

I found Vitiello’s work very interesting. I am not really that familiar with sound art however. But, being a violinist for 14 years, I really just like music and of course sound in general, so I was really sucked into his work. I feel that sound art give you a very different way to experience art. The viewer, of listener in this case really has to be willing to stop and actually listen, and in doing so, has an opportunity to be drawn into this momentary world of art based on pure sound. I also love the fact that Vitiello can push the boundaries of being a musician, by incorporating it into an art form. Also being an installation artist as well, I love that he takes into account the physical aspect of sound and its potential to define the form and atmosphere of a spatial environment.

Paul Pfeiffer was born in Honolulu, Hawaii in 1966, but spent most of his childhood in the Philippines. Pfeiffer he attended Hunter College and the Whitney Independent Study Program. He is the recipient of several awards and fellowships, most notably becoming the inaugural recipient of The Bucksbaum Award given by the Whitney Museum of American Art in 2000. In 2002, Pfeiffer was an artist-in-residence at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and at ArtPace in San Antonio, Texas, and in 2003, a traveling retrospective of his work was organized by the MIT List Visual Arts Center and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago.

Pfeiffer’s work in video, sculpture, and photography uses recent and up to date computer technologies to take apart the role that mass media plays in shaping consciousness seen in a series of video works focused on professional sports events, including basketball, boxing, and hockey. Pfeiffer digitally removes the bodies of the players from the games, moving the viewer’s more towards the attention of the audience/spectators, sports equipment, or trophies won, everything but the athletes. These works are presented on small LCD screens and most often looped. Pfeiffer’s works have often been interpreted as meditations on faith, desire, as well a contemporary culture that is obsessed with celebrity, be it in sports or film. Many of Pfeiffer’s works invite viewers to exercise their imaginations or project their own fears and obsessions onto the art object. Several of Pfeiffer’s pieces also include eerie, computer-generated recreations of props from Hollywood thrillers, such as “Poltergeist,” and miniature dioramas of sets from films that include “The Exorcist” and “The Amityville Horror.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6-V7in9LObI

Ocean Without a Shore

Bill Viola is internationally recognized as one of today’s leading artists. He has been instrumental in the establishment of video as an important form of contemporary art. For 40 years he has created videotapes, architectural video installations, sound environments, electronic music performances, flat panel video pieces, and works for television broadcast. His works focus on universal human experiences such as birth, death, and the unfolding of consciousness. His work often derives its background from Eastern and Western art as well as spiritual traditions, including Zen Buddhism, Islamic Sufism, and Christian mysticism. Since the early 1970s Viola’s video art works have been seen all over the world. Exhibitions include, the Museum of Modern Art, he represented the U.S. at the 46th Venice Biennale in 1995, in1997 the Whitney Museum, and the Guggenheim.

Bill Viola received his BFA in Experimental Studios from Syracuse University in 1973 where he studied visual arts. During the 1970s he lived for 18 months in Florence, Italy, as technical director of production for Art/Tapes/22, and then traveled widely to study and record traditional performing arts in the Solomon Islands, Java, Bali, and Japan.

An ongoing theme that he constantly explores is dualism, the idea that you must understand he opposite to understand the subject.  For example, a lot of his work has themes such as life and death, light and dark, stressed and calm, loud and quiet, etc. This itself begins to take on a very spiritual aspect, what with God creating everything in the Earth in opposites. Viola’s work often exhibits a painterly quality, his use of ultra-slow motion video encouraging the viewer to sink into to the image being displayed. I think that his work is absolutely beautiful and haunting at the same time, I can only imagine how these emotions would intensify seeing his work in person. I was particularly drawn to his piece “Ocean Without a Shore,” which can be seen in the Church of San Gallo in Venice, Italy. I can’t picture a more perfect setting for the kinds of themes that Viola is working with.

20 photos that “define a space”

The first and basically only information I could find on Jeff Baij was his bio…which states…

“my last name is pronounced “bye” and i live in venice california where the sun and the beach were born.

to date i have made $65.13 from the sale of my art.

Rodin Rhode was born 1976 in Cape Town, South Africa. He currently lives and works in Berlin, Germany. In 1998 Rhode received his National Diploma in Fine Art from Witwatersrand Technikon and in 2000 he attended the South African School of Film, Television and Dramatic Arts in Johannesburg, South Africa. Rhodes works predominantly with everyday material like charcoal, chalk and paint. He began with performances that were based on his own drawings of objects that he interacts with. He then took this same idea and began creating photographic sequences and digital animations. These works bring aspects of performance, happening, drawing, film and photography all together. Rhode says he was first “inspired by a high school initiation rite whereby young pupils were unwillingly taken into the boys’ toilets by senior pupils and forced to interact with chalk-drawn objects on the walls.”  Rhode often returns to his native South Africa, where he makes work in the streets of Johannesburg. He usually works in public spaces, using walls, public basketball courts or even just the street as his “canvas.” As a result of his materials and accessible location, his works stand out through its simplicity and clarity, emphasizing the idea over how it is actually produced. Rhode transforms simple shapes into elements of narratives, interacting with only imagined presences. I love the idea of playing with street art; it’s fun, clever, and accessible. Yet Rhode’s art is not just simple chalk drawings and he really uses a lot of different art forms in his work; he has a very multidisciplinary approach to his work which I really like. It isn’t just a drawing or a photograph. Its often both, as well as many other things.