For the last five or so years I have extensively worked with digital media. My art works use digital technologies and I have taught digital technologies. In my day work I use computers for almost everything. I have to say that many things run very smoothly with digital technologies. Pictures, video, programming (naturally) -All this enables me to do-and create- many things.
But…
I recently read Christopher Steiners: Automate This: How Algorithms Came to Rule Our World (2012) which is a good overview of how computer algorithms have become commonplace in most unusual places.
Steiner starts his journey with the 2010 flash crash in Wall Street, when Dow Jones suddenly lost over trillion dollars of it’s value in one day. Which is by the far the largest single loss ever recorded. Reason for this loss was a bug in one of the automated trading algorithms. Steiner then expands to the history of algorithms and how they took over stock trading and how they are now taking over many other areas, like entertainment industry, medical and health care industry. Steiner’s book is a good introduction on algorithms and their importance in our lives. The book got me thinking about algorithms in culture creation, where they are also already utilized.
Tietotekniikka kattaa nykypäivänä yhä kasvavan osan elämämme alueista. Yhteiskunnastamme rakentuukin yhä enemmän tietotekniikan ja ohjelmistojen varaan. Tietotekniikka on ehkä suurin murros sitten kirjapainon keksimisen. Se on mahdollistanut yhteiskuntamme uudistumisen monella tavalla. Paradoksaalista on että tietotekniikan yhä yleistyessä ja vallatessa uusia osa-alueita elämästämme, me ymmärrämme yhä vähemmän miten tietotekniikka toimii.
This post is only in Finnish, and is a copy of article I wrote for Stylus magazine (magazine for art educators in Finland) Read More
Electronics and sensors allow artists to create interactive smart garments that produce sound and images in reaction to movement. They sense and communicate with the environment and the user, and may react to them. In some cases the garment is in connection with the Internet and exchanges information based on the data it has measured.
As the term ‘wearable’ suggests, these interactive artworks are carried by the user and in bodily connection with him or her.
The Wearable Electronics course has been organised during autumn 2011 in collaboration between Aalto University School of Art and Design, and Muu Artists’ Association. The participants who come from a variety of backgrounds such as new media, costume design, textile design, fine art and performing arts have been encouraged to create their own visions of wearable technology. They have worked in teams to carry out their ideas based on the Arduino development platform.
Welcome to experience these six unique projects – to see them in use and even to try some of them on.
Place: Muu Gallery (Lönnrotinkatu 33, Helsinki) Time: Monday 5.12. at 17-19
Organised by Muu Artists’ Association and Aalto University
Teachers: Tomi Dufva and Jukka Hautamäki, and visiting teachers More about the course: http://wearable.mlog.taik.fi/
This is my quite informal and not so scientific text on the subject. More of a ideas and questions on this subject than a real essay, which I hope to do later on as a part of my graduation work from Univeristy of arts and crafts.
I have been lately reading “Program or be programmed, ten commands for digital age”, “Life inc” by Douglas Rushkoff and “You are not a gadget, a manifesto” by Jaron Lanier which all are really great and very wise books which I wholeheartedly recommend to anyone or actually to everyone. But I do not mean to promote these books (I bought my copies btw.)but rather to first acknowledge that I might be a bit biased toward quite critical attitude on web 2.0 and on social media.
Today opened Please Participate! exhibition in Saarijärvi museum as a part of Live Herring 11 event series. I am showing my collaboration work with my brother Mikko there. Our work is a visual representation of the water quality in finnish lakes from 1976 to 2010. The color shows the quality of the water. We have a user interface where you can select which year to show and also what data to show. (phosphor & nitrogen, for more info see this pdf.)
Next friday, the 8th of april, new exhibition called Please participate! will open in Saarijärvi Museum. Exhibition focuses on new, mainly Finnish media art and emphasizes interaction and participation.
Me together with my brother Mikko will be showing our collaboration there as a part of the exhibition. Our work is called Illuminating lakes and is a large data visualization of water quality in Finnish lakes from 1970′s to 2010. Read More
Continuing my quest on digital art, which I started on my previous post, I started thinking about the aura of digital art as I was reading Rushkoff’s “Program or be programmed: Ten commands for digital age” .(which is a great book by the way and a must read for everyone, really, it is.) Anyway Rushkoff reminded me of early 20th century philosopher Walter Benjamin who wrote about the Aura of the original artwork. I started thinking if there exists an aura in digital artworks. Digital art is so abstracted from real life and exists in real life only through electronic media. Without electricity there would be no digital art.
I have been wondering for quite a long time that why is it thatI prefer programming as a way to create digital drawings and not just simply use some clever drawing programs, like painter or illustrator. And there is some great drawing programs out there, that can mimic real life mediums and go well beyond them. Like Painter with it’s watery watercolors and liquid inks. Somehow digital paintings just feels wrong, even if they are nice programs and the works produced with them fairly good. Come to think of it, I have never seen any convincing abstract piece of art that has been made with such tools. There is some very nice figurative works, Like Mikkö Ijäs’s iPad drawings. But I havent come across some nice abstract paintings or other digital artworks made with such tools. There is some, but they’re probably ment to be just some filling in website or similar.
Obviously the answer is simple: they are just copying real life media. They are not original. And it can be felt. Hardly ever have I seen digitally made paintings that would move me. They cant, because theyre superficial. Abstract art is all about the media, it shows the quality of the media, like the material of oil colours or the light of watercolors and that way it also conveys some larger intents of the artists. Digital copies don’t do that, they are mere copies trying to be original.
Still, coded digital art moves me. I always find and feel it interesting. Painting by code. It feels natural. And that it is: programming is the very core of digital.
Well this is simple thing really. Just something I think of importance to ponder on.