What Brian Eno says in the following interview is very similar to what I have been saying about digital art, his “gloss over substance” is akin to my accusing most digital images/videos of being mere “Visual Karaoke” done by way of “techno-plumbing,” and to be caught in “Entertainment Dependency”.

THE DANGERS OF DIGITAL: BRIAN ENO ON TECHNOLOGY AND MODERN MUSIC

“Gloss” is also the product of most people’s reliance on “photo-realism,” which is not just visible in figurative imagery, it is also present in so-called abstract works which are done using a “slick” look and feel in order to be palatable, thus denying the journey true abstraction could provide to both the doer and the viewer (which is one and the same person in the case of the artist).

What Marcel Proust said about “…painting that one does not see...” is at the heart of this issue.

Here’s the full quote in French from his Jean Santeuil, followed by a rough and partial translation:

"Quand, le soleil perçant déjà, la rivière dort encore dans les songes du brouillard, nous ne la voyons pas plus qu'elle ne se voit elle-même. Ici c'est déjà la rivière, mais là la vue est arrêtée, on ne voit plus rien que le néant, une brume qui empêche qu'on ne voit plus loin.

A cet endroit de la toile, peindre ni ce qu'on voit parce qu'on ne voit plus rien, ni ce qu'on ne voit pas puisqu'on ne doit peindre que ce qu'on voit, mais peindre qu'on ne voit pas, que la défaillance de l'œil qui ne peut pas voguer sur le brouillard lui soit infligée sur la toile comme sur la rivière, c'est bien beau.

Et quand c’est une cathédrale, c’est beau aussi, car le portail que l’on ne voit pas est une bien belle chose mais c’est une chose qui vit dans la nature.  Et certaines heures de sa vie sont de ne pas être vues, d’être visitées par le brouillard et qu’alors personne ne puisse approcher, et cette heure de sa vie est belle aussi."

Extrait de Jean Santeuil de Marcel Proust (1871-1922), he is talking about his experience in front of one of Claude Monet’s paintings:

“At that very spot on the canvas, one must not paint what one sees because one sees nothing, nor paint what one does not see because one must paint only what one sees, but one must paint that one does not see, that the inability of the eye to sail on/penetrate the mist be inflicted upon it on the canvas as it is on the river…"

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  • Monsieur,

    Vous êtes libre de quitter le forum si ce que vous qualifiez de Karaoké visuel vous exaspère tant.

    Ce n'est pas la première fois d'ailleurs que vous cherchez à provoquer.

    Il est clair, que techniquement, vous n'apportez rien.

    Contrairement à vous, je ne me prend pas au sérieux, mais suis juste là pour m'amuser !

    • Touché?

      Mais soyons sérieux, ce problème de techniciens qui se prennent pour des artistes dépassent de beaucoup votre simple personne, il se retrouve un peu partout, et ce n’est même pas nouveau, c’est simplement plus évident maintenant avec le web.

      Quant à quitter le forum, ce n’est pas à vous de le décider pour moi, mais je vous avouerai que j’y reviens de moins en moins souvent car être confronté d’office par vos “images" me donne souvent l’envie pressante d’aller ailleurs.

      Si ce n’était pour ma très longue association avec Studio Artist et John Dalton (je suis du genre fidèle), il y a bien longtemps que ce serait fait. 

      Et plutôt que de m’abaisser à attaquer votre personne et travail "seulement”, je fais toujours en sorte d’apporter au forum des sujets qui, bien qu’ils puissent vous irriter (et ce, à juste titre), soient à même d’intéresser d’autres usagers de Studio Artist (l’article de Brian Eno n’est pas une peccadille tout de même, à moins que lui aussi ne soit pas assez “technicien" à votre goût?).

      Les sujets que j’apporte à ce forum sont de vrais sujets de réflexion, le genre de réflexions qui habitent les artistes que j’ai eu et ai le bonheur de côtoyer. Nous ne parlons presque jamais de technique, et quand nous le faisons, nous sommes toujours  très conscient de la place qu’elle occupe dans nos démarches respectives.

      N’oubliez pas que si contraintes techniques il y a, cette technique est toujours au service de quelque chose, et ce “quelque chose” ne peut être réduite à la technique.

      “Science sans conscience n’est que ruine de l’âme” comme disait Rabelais.

      En ma qualité de prof de dessin et de peinture, j’ai toujours eu bien trop de respect pour le talent inné de mes étudiants pour leur dire comment faire: on tombait parfois d’accord sur un but, un objectif, aussi vague soit-il, mais le cheminement pour l’atteindre était toujours laissé à leur discrétion, ce qui leur permettait de faire des découvertes qui les ont bien servis ensuite.

      En fait, m’accuser de ne rien apporter sur le plan technique est pour moi un réel compliment qui, venant de vous, me flatte beaucoup.

      Je vous en remercie.

      • Vous lire est aussi ennuyeux que tout ce que vous avez posté !

        Mais il est vrai que l'artiste c'est vous. C'est donc vous qui avez raison..

        • Not boring Bernard, just a bit too pompous.

  • Visual Kareoki and Techno Plumbing. That's a bit harsh and blank and white to the extreme.

    It reminds me of the person, who after looking at some work, in a museum exclaimed, "That's not art, my grand daughter could do that!"

  • Jean,

    Your prod of conscience here is appreciated.

    The point Eno and others in the article is making… or points - are well taken. I am sure anyone who has worked for a long time with "real world" and digital tools will have experienced the good and bad nature of the tools.

    I see parallels less from the use of Studio Artist for making art - but very much with the weight of material that is "art" on the web and print - that has a very clever, standardized, slick (glossy) "Adobe" look. The "Adobe" look - that clean bright, flat look that came in with the rise of digital tools which everyone can afford and easily make things with. The tools define the "look" to a great extent... and can almost supplant, zero out the "soul" behind the tool - the creator/person, very easily.

    (No disrespect to Adobe or similar tool makers for making such powerful tools - the tools are not to be faulted for what they are)

    I am the first to admit, because much of the art and animation I make has to look commercial and sell in the present day market, that I will rely on the tools to make my work easy… Standardize my personal touches (shaky hands) and preferences for expressive gestures and other personal twitchiness… I rely on the tools to make my work uniform with the times. I work almost exclusively with digital tools.

    I continue to enjoy Studio Artist because its "tools" break a lot of rules. 

    They are "unruly". 

    I rely (lazily) on SA's unruliness to break me from my "Adobe" habits. This might be an even deeper dependency on the facility of digital tools to do something for me…

    I would prefer to look at the unruliness as forcing me to go back to an(my) original intent. My desire to express myself. Precise digital tools can bulldoze my intent in directions I really do not entirely intend. Slick, commercial, regurgitated directions…

    The way I use SA doesn't allow me to be all that slick because the effect of using SA's digital tools stubbornly remains chaotic - only my intent survives in the chaos.

    I will also be the first to admit my work is hardly technically or contextually very original. If my intent remains more or less standard and maudlin and semi-regurgitated - well - thats ok. Because that was very likely what I was trying to express in the first place.

    I have to agree with Eno on at least the acknowledgment of the strange tension between using tools that allow for slick, easy, clean (and potentially vapid and impersonal) productions - and the benefit of the tremendous ease of use and flexibility that digital tools can give me - trying to express myself.

    • Craig,

      I truly appreciate your post.

      Thank you.

      You did not try to shoot the messenger, you dealt honestly with the message.

      And as you saw, Eno's message is one that needs examining, providing one is capable of doing so, as you are.

      Right from my starting with digital tools (around 1997),I was appalled by the slickness I would so easily get, and that did not work for me, my decades of work with natural media were spent in a world made of marks far more elusive than what Photoshop and even Painter gave me (there was no SA in my life yet), even if I was not bent on emulating natural media: if digital, then digital, but that should not be a condemnation to live in a slick and fake "plastic" environment.

      So I spent my first "digital years" fighting against that slick thing, and progressively managed to find/create ways that would use the (increasing) power of the digital tools without betraying my long involvement with natural media.

      I had already done quite a bit of that when SA appeared in my life: I had been so disgusted by the way MetaCreations and their stupid MetaStream venture had treated Painter (later rescued by Corel) that I was looking for an alternative. I saw a reference to SA on line, got the demo, was sold on it within 5 minutes of trying it, wrote to John, and the rest is "history."

      One thing SA made possible is my exploring the time dimension, its timeline placed it several notches above Painter, morphing (sooooo complex then) was a step in the "time" direction for my work, and the later addition of Paint Action Sequence with Sequential Keyframing made it an essential tool for what was then fairly new to me, working in/with/on "time," but if new, it was also what I sensed I had to get into fully.

      Interestingly, while I then spent 80% or more of my time drawing/painting, and the balance in editing (Final Cut Pro), that has completely flipped, I now spend at least 80% of my work time in Final Cut Pro and the rest in SA (and the GL Mixer).

      While I then focused a lot on single images, be they frames in an animation or self-standing images, I now work mostly on sequences, with a great deal of retiming and all, so that yesterday's movie may be used like a brief sequence today, or just one element in the construction of a new piece tomorrow.

      This amazing flexibility of the digital files is to me amazing and I see how that plays very well in the continuation of the works of our great predecessors, be they painters or composers (the magic of repetition and/or reuse is one I never tire of).

      As for technical originality, one can hardly be more conventional technically than, for example, Alberto Giacometti and yet, his work (paintings, drawings and sculptures) is amongst the most original in the 20th Century (to be honest, his work is the most original in my book).

      So it is not what the work is done with, or how, that matters, it is what the work is doing.

      In my years as a teacher, the various schools where I taught all had at least one supreme technician, a real specialist, on faculty. The guy who knew everything about supports, surface preparation (gesso and all), pigments, varnishes, mediums, the works.

      Invariably, without a single exception, that supreme technician was always the poorest painter on faculty.

      Originality of vision was, is, and always will be, what really matters.

      And that does not require exceptional technical proficiency, no need for big guns, a simple pencil and paper will do.

      It is the vision that drives the hand that holds the tool and too often, excessive technical concerns block the vision from becoming active, which is why, so very very often, technical fireworks yield works that are so poor as far as the poetry of Art is concerned.

      I never have worries about technique, what I fail to do today for lack of technical know-how gives me what will be the new norm from now on, at least for a while.

      As Camus so rightly said: "The failure shall be the measure of success."

      My best to you Craig 

      • To be sure, I don’t hand out much technical information, I trust that it is when “working without knowing" that we make our most valuable, and lasting, discoveries, but that does not mean I do not contribute to the evolution of Studio Artist.

        Far from it!

        Here’s a movie done with/for the National Film Board of Canad about 10 years ago, it would not have been possible without Studio Artist, and it also contributed to the evolution of the software:

        Liaisons by Jean Detheux, National Film Board of Canada (select the “1080p” quality option for best viewing experience)

        This movie has been in festivals all over the world, is also on several commercially released DVDs which are available from the NFB store, and can be viewed in (borrowed from) many libraries in schools as well as public, in the US, Canada, and several European countries.

        People who are using SA today may not realize the number of features they enjoy that came from the work done in collaboration with John Dalton.

        Here’s a frame pulled from “Liaisons”: 2472680902?profile=RESIZE_1024x1024More here: http://visualmusic.ning.com/photo/albums/liaisons-stills

      • I am certain that there is much digital art "terra incognito" to explore - and that digital media - tho trapped in a strange other world of electrons skating across monitor screens and abstract numbers hidden inside humming boxes - has barely been tapped for the wonders that can be produced with it, or visions that can be communicated.

        I will add that the very slick and very precise digital tools that are made to make imagery are in the worst way focused on precisely the production of art. Maybe more specifically commercial art. What caught my attention immediately when I first pulled the SA demo back in the last millennium was the sensation aspect of drawing/painting the the application. The sensation dimension that was conspicuously missing from all the other digital tools I worked (continue to work) with. The functional core of digital art applications has always been art "production". SA seemed to have the extra dimension of play at its core.

        I recall some little drawing/painting events in my "artistic" life that still resonate as both acts of art and just "acts" - play! - with a component of sense thrill included:

        Using finger paints for the first time - when I was maybe five… Just swishing my fingers thru the pigment and seeing what happened… Seeing my marks. Anticipating more.

        Drawing with both my index fingers in sand in the street when I was six or seven - swirling my hands and arms each finger mirroring the other as they dragged thru the sand… Drawing with both hands simultaneously… never done before but totally natural feeling. Just truly enjoying the sensations and phenomena of marking that my fingers were doing. I remember seeing a shape that made me think "owl" in the mirror… But making recognizable shape/thing symbols was not my intention.

        Later in my teens - well in to explorations of the techniques of illustrating - encountering (or re-encountering) the realization that I could make up my illustration from large physical gestures - that had no direct bearing on the shapes and forms i was trying to render. Swirls and lines that captured areas i wanted to define.

        These sorts of experiences represent a play dimension of natural media that is typically lacking in digital tools. It should almost be marketed as a feature of Studio Artist. A feature unparalleled in digital art making tools.

        I suspect a portion of my fixation on "natural media" is borne of the recollection of that play dimension. I look at natural media emulation as a starting point - a launch point into digital media. It is a predefined limited form (appearance of materials) that habit brings me back to, that I seek to step away from - by exploring it til it has no more to offer.

        The play aspect of SA is my door to another art dimension.

        • Craig,

          It’s funny you mention finger painting, even adding “drawing with both my index fingers."

          As soon as I started using digital tools, I was struck by how dumb and limited they were, given the power of the computers, and that was more than 15 years ago (imagine how I see the power of today’s machines!).

          Here I was, with a keyboard, a mouse and a Wacom tablet, and I had to paint and draw as if with one finger/stroke at a time only.

          That was so pathetic, the only way to work “globally” was to use filters and such, which was/is interesting, but a far cry from using the input of my body, through my hands (which I believe is essential for remaining/becoming “human”).

          Enter Studio Artist and its intelligent drawing-assisted functions (action, etc…), and bingo: I was no longer limited to one finger/stroke at a time, I had the impression of working/playing with chords, just as I was when painting on large canvases (I am totally ambidextrous when painting, including with intricate shapes, even if I can barely write my name with my left hand), I was usually holding half a dozen brushes, loaded with paint, and applying strokes with both hands, often at the same time, much more like playing a piano than typing a letter on an old typewriter.

          As I wrote earlier, I am not interested in emulating digital media, but I most certainly want to continue, in the digital realm, the kind of exploration I was fortunate to embark on when I was still able to use natural media (no longer possible because f sudden deadly allergies to solvents and all).

          But something has changed, the work made possible by digital tools is taking me into another dimension, that of “time,” and what I find most fascinating is that all the “stuff” I have learned over decades of dedicated work with “still images" applies to that dimension as well: echoing shapes, inherent composition, open/closed, thick/thin, soft/sharp, positive/negative and equivocal space(s), and so on.

          All that is true too in time, not “just” on/in one still image.

          I get up each and every morning eager to work, am sorry I am getting old and not because I am worried about death, I deplore the lack of time that is required to explore “all that."

This reply was deleted.

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