Digital Art, Computer Art, New Media Art, Electronic Art, Cyberart… What the f*ck do I do?
Most people think that this is not art and I don't even know how to name it
For a long time, I said that I was a filmmaker because I really am. I studied filmmaking and I make films. Do I need anything else? Yes, I’m on IMDB… Not that that proves anything. Anyway, the thing is that I’ve been working with digital video since the late 90s and what I do is mainly abstract, so it’s not what most people expect from a film.
Of course, there’s also experimental film, but the experimental film scene is a bit strange and not so open to digital tools. In general, if you work with digital tools, they consider that you’re maybe a video artist or a digital artist, but not an experimental filmmaker. My background is in film and most of my influences are experimental filmmakers, but I work with digital media, so I’m in a weird liminal position between cinema and digital art and most of the time I don’t know how to label my work.
A couple of days ago, I was reading the first pages of Digital Art by Christiane Paul. In the introduction, Paul talks about the terminology of “digital art”. In the 60s, they called it “computer art”. In the 90s, “cyberarts” was more trendier. Sometimes, it’s called “new media art”. I’ve also heard “electronic art”, “multimedia art”, and probably some other terms that I don’t remember.
I’ve never liked the term “digital art” because it can mean anything. If you search “digital art” in any Internet browser, you’ll find mainly illustrators, photographers, matte painters, and 3D artists. There’s a huge difference between a “traditional” art or design work created using digital tools—a photo or a drawing—and something that only exists in the digital realm. I’m not saying that one thing is better than the other, only that they’re different things and it’s confusing to use the same term for both.
That’s one of the main reasons why I prefer “new media art” to “digital art”. Of course, I work mainly with video and audio, and “media” seems suitable to those… media. When I asked on Twitter about this, most people vote “digital art” —only 44 votes, so that doesn’t mean much.
Google Trends reveals what I suspected. The term “computer art” is not so usual anymore. “Digital art” is much more usual, but as I wrote before, “ digital art” means a lot of different things, so I expected that. It’s funny to see that for some years it was not so trendy, I wonder why.
All the other terms seem to have vanished in comparison to “digital art”, especially “electronic art”. One of the main new media art festivals and institutes in the world is called Ars Electronica. The first edition of the festival was in 1979, and the art centre opened in 1996. Would it have the same name if it had opened 20 years later?
What term do you prefer and why?
Abstract comics
Yesterday I was listening to a talk about abstraction in comics. I’m really curious about it because I’m into experimental narratives. However, I know much more about film or even literature than comics. I read comics, but it’s not something so present in my life as watching films. Some years ago, I read several essays about experimental literature, but I don’t think that any of them included any comic.
There’s a good blog about abstract comics that is around since 2009. Andrei Molotiu, the administrator, who I’ve read is an artist and art historian who teaches at Indiana University, also wrote a book: Abstract Comics: The Anthology 1958-2008. I haven’t read the book. It sounds great, but it’s out of print.
Anyway, yesterday I discovered this wonderful comic—Escapades—by Olivia Sullivan, an illustrator, comic artist, and experimental designer. She has a lot of great works on her website, but this is my favourite because I’m into psychogeography. The comic is available at her shop for just £8.00.
There’s a lot of wonderful artists out there and it’s hard to make a living from art, especially if you do experimental stuff. I hope that this newsletter helps to highlight the work of some of them.
And talking about struggling artists…
Recently, I’ve read a couple of books about this subject. One is from the USA and the other one is from Spain—in Spanish.
The Death of the Artist: How Creators Are Struggling to Survive in the Age of Billionaires and Big Tech by William Deresiewicz.
El entusiasmo by Remedios Zafra.
Things in the USA are quite different from things here. As artists, we may have the same problems here and there, but the market and the chances to make a living are not the same.
Both books are interesting in their own right and it’s a good exercise to compare both markets. However, I prefer the book by Zafra. Obviously, as I’m from Spain what she explains is more similar to my own experience, but her book is also more intimate and poetic. Deresiewicz’s style is more… American, I guess… Anyway, I recommend both of them if you can read in English and in Spanish. The one by Deresiewicz is also available in Spanish.
A computer art pioneer: Véra Molnar
[I’m not sure about the spelling of her name because I’ve also seen “Vera Molnar” and “Vera Molnár”, but I’m going to spell it as I’ve seen it in the © of the PDF documents on her website].
Véra Molnar was born in Hungary in 1924, where she studied painting and art history. In the late 40s, she moved to France. She started working with combinatorial graphics in the 50s and with computers in the 60s.
She learned Fortran and Basic and started making drawings using a plotter. If you’re really young maybe you haven’t heard about any of those programming languages, but when I was a kid in the 80s we learnt how to code using Basic.
Now plotter drawings are quite popular and some of them are terrific, but let’s not forget that this is not something new and that computers are just a tool.
The computer used as a mere tool cannot help us at all. It can produce a fabulous quantity of images following our instructions. If our ideas are real painters' ideas—and we don't know what that is—, the resulting images will be good. But if the initial ideas are banal, neutral, or worse, kitsch—we don't know what that is either—, the images collected at the end will be bad.
L’art et l’ordinateur (1982), Véra Molnar. [the translation into English is mine]
A couple of days after writing this, I discovered by chance that some of her work diaries are online. The first journal starts in 1976.
A podcast, or a book, or both…
One of my favourite books from 2020 is Invisible Women: Exposing Data Bias in a World Designed for Men by Caroline Criado Perez. I’m worried about how big data and AI are affecting our lives—in general for the worse—, and design and data bias are an important part of that equation. Criado Perez writes about lots of different subjects: medicine, public transport… You should read her book, but if you are not sure if you’ll like it, you can have a taste listening to this podcast by 99% Invisible in which she explains some astonishing examples. In the interview, she doesn’t talk about public toilets though, which is the most shocking part of the book.
A Danish film
The other day I watched Retfærdighedens ryttere (Riders of Justice, 2020, Anders Thomas Jensen). I didn’t know what the film was about and, funnily enough, it’s about big data, algorithms, and statistics. It’s not specifically about technology, but at heart is about how we look for patterns in data.
The film may not be perfect, I have my problems with films in which women are just an excuse to motivate male protagonists, but at least in this case the male characters are not “normative” at all.
Jensen is a filmmaker that I like, I’ve seen three of his films—this one, De grønne slagtere, and Mænd & høns. His stories are always a bit weird and he likes outcasts. Also, Mads Mikkelsen is in them, and he’s one of the best actors right now.
Some articles
Machine Learning and Language
Machine Learning Won't Solve Natural Language Understanding
I worked for a long time as a translator and I can assure you that proofreading a translation made by an automatic system is slower than translating from scratch. The article is not exactly about that, but it explains some of the reasons why automatic translation is so bad and Natural Language Understanding is so difficult—mainly because “language is not just linguistic data”.
Artificial Intelligence and health
The Pain Was Unbearable. So Why Did Doctors Turn Her Away?
Big data is supposed to help, but in many cases, it just makes things worse. A lot of people is having health problems because of big data and machine-learning algorithms that make decisions that should be made by a doctor. I’ve read a lot of stories about this in the USA. I don’t know why I haven’t read much about it in other countries. Maybe here, in Europe, things aren’t so automated yet, or maybe there’re fewer people researching about it.
If you want to support my work or this newsletter, a warm cup of tea is always welcome. One of my favourites is Japanese Sencha.
The first time someone—my Japanese calligraphy teacher—gave me a cup of Sencha, I thought that it was like drinking a cup of grass soup, but, hey, people are allowed to change their opinion.
Another way of support that it’s completely free is just sharing this.
If you have anything to say about any of this or if you’re curious about my stuff, I’m here and:
[at] twitter
[at] vimeo
[at] bandcamp
Be good to each other and support your artists, whoever they are!