Thank you Motria Sabat from Toronto, Canada (is there another Toronto?) for your comments. It's always good to bounce ideas around: <<I don't agree with the statement "good work doesn't need technology". You're right to disagree. My phrasing was incorrect. I should have said "good work can be done without technology" <<It is somehow suggesting that technology acts as an extra factor, a separate entity in the art making process. You're right. Actually, there cannot be any outside entities in the artistic process. A piece of art encompasses all of its elements, transcending them. <<To me what is more interesting is the ongoing questioning of HOW one uses technology. Right again. But we technology-minded souls get so wrapped up in trying to get the most out of technique that we're often satisfied with doing something technically better than was possible before - and thinking that means it's good. The real artist is willing to throw out years of research when he/she is careful enough to notice that an old-fashion mechanical can opener simple works better than the electric gizmo. Or even better, throw out the can openers and the cans, and use fresh vegetables. <<The capabilities of technology now are astounding, and what is fascinating is how it is influencing our choices and processes. Technology will make a car go faster, it will make a bomb blow up more people, it will make it easier to do the house work. But it won't make better art. It may make it easier to accomplish certain means for making art, but art is made more of limitations than of possibilities, made more of choices than of potential. If Mozart worked today, no one would be surprised if he used synthesizers. Perhaps a computer program like Finale would allow him to write more music, by making the notation process easier. Perhaps his music would be different. But it wouldn't be better. I think of cinema, where the development of artificial lighting progressively allowed filmmakers to more easily create a natural-looking lighting. But the best lighting designers in the 20's and 30's realized that they couldn't do it - and turned the technological limitations into style. And before them, the first generation of filmmakers simply cut a hole in the ceiling - and had real natural lighting. And today it is the technology of increasingly-sensitive video cameras that allows us to get rid of one-hundred-years-worth of lighting technology developement - and use a single candle as lighting - just as Caravaggio did centuries ago. Technology changes the context; it changes the given; but does it change quality? <<I think the days of asking whether work should or shouldn't incorporate technology are over. It's fine if you have decided that technology is an inalienable part of your own work (though I suspect such a premise may lead you up some false routes). We all must make choices. But it would be silly to think that today all art must use technology. Just as it would be silly to find that canned food must taste better since it uses more technology. <<More importantly, we should be asking how it is affecting our physical relationship to our world and to each other. By being conscious of how we use technology, we will hopefully avoid falling into gimmickery and special effects, and begin meaningful dialogues. This is where "good" work begins. And you've just made your point using simple low-tech words. (I suppose we could argue that language is a technology.) The fact that your words were transmitted a few thousand miles by all this marvelous technology directly into my studio is certainly stunning. But scribbled on a piece of paper, they would have been just as effective. And carved into a rock, they might have been even more effective. David Vaughn Dijon, France
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