Comments on: Novels are digital art too

By: Infovore » Links for October 16th through October 17th

Infovore » Links for October 16th through October 17th — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 12:03:17 +0000

[...] Novels are digital art too « Alex McLean "A great deal of what is called `digital art’ is not digital art at all, and it seems many digital artists seem ashamed of the digital. In digital installation art, the screen and keyboard are literally hidden in a box somewhere, as if words were a point of shame. The digital source code behind the work is not shown, and all digital output is only viewable by the artist or a technician for debugging purposes. The experience of the actual work is often entirely analog, the participant moves an arm, and observes an analog movement in response, in sight, sound or motor control. They may choose to make jerky, discontinuous movements, and get a discontinuous movement in response, but this is far from the complexity of digital language. This kind of installation forms a hall of mirrors. You move your arm around and look for how your movement has been contorted." (tags: art literature novels digital culture ) [...]

By: Fredrik

Fredrik — Mon, 16 May 2011 15:13:16 +0000

“the digital element carries no information for me.” Yes, they do — just not what the author intended.

By: Jamie Bullock

Jamie Bullock — Wed, 13 Apr 2011 09:14:56 +0000

Interesting post. I don’t think analog and digital are mutually exclusive — an object can be simultaneously analog and digital depending on the resolution of perception. Taking your analog interactive art example, if we ‘zoom in’ far enough we see it is digital ‘underneath’; but I guess that’s your point: why hide this digital-ness behind an analog skin?

I wonder if this has something to do with our ability to decode digital information? I can decode the latin alphabet and so it is effectively digital. However, if I look at text that uses an alphabet I don’t understand — say runic — I perceive it as entirely gestural and the digital element carries no information for me.

So I wonder if exposing linguistic computation in digital art has a similar effect. If I understand the language, it is effectively digital because I interpret it as such. But perhaps the decontextualised and re-formatted latin alphabet in the context of computation — to those who don’t understand it, becomes symbolic or gestural and the digital component loses its (intended) meaning.