Seven on Seven: Where Art and Technology Actually Meet

I think you’re mistaken, Tom. Art does not automatically mean creative greatness; most artists (just like most people in any field — field taken in the normal sense or the Pierre Bourdieu sense) are no more inherently special, bright, or insightful than anybody else in this world. They’re just people who have entered into to a particular field of interests (the art world) with an array of historical traditions. The problem is that this field has gotten away, in a sense, with the huge trick of inventing and advertising some kind of privileged type “creative greatness”, which must be of a more lofty breed than other types of creativity, basically through conceitedness and complicity with wealthy collectors. This is Baudrillard 101, and it is no wonder he was thrown out of the art world for having come out and stated this. I’m not saying art isn’t amazing, I’m just against the attitude of “oh look at the nerdy little computer geeks getting their feet wet in the cool sexy art world of creativity”. Get real; people like Matt Mullenweg make the world go round for the blogging generation of artists and art enthusiasts.

Chardonnay, I didn’t say art automatically means creative greatness. The term art is used to convey creative achievement in fields outside visual art, e.g. “Al Pacino is a true artist.” This creates confusion when Pacino shows up at the museum wanting to know why they won’t show his “performance art.” (Not that this ever happened–I’ll think of a better fr’instance.) In some cases, the non-artist has enough clout in his own industry to get the coveted stamp of art approval, e.g. Tim Burton. Your “conspiracy of art” line of argument is familiar to me from the Rhizome.org comment boards. Resentment about lack of inclusion in the art world is bread and butter over there. In a nutshell, the argument is “coding is an art; we are artists working in code; why won’t the art world recognize us? must be because of conceitedness and complicity with wealthy collectors.” As for your Mullenweg example, speaking as an artist who moved from custom software to a Word Press blog, don’t even get me started about how much he doesn’t understand about my field. Word Press may be great for journalists but as a non-verbal platform it’s pretty constipated.

A note to those waiting to have their comments approved: Those who knowingly fabricated information and presented it as though it were fact in the past, will not have their comments posted.

Thought I would contribute this article “When Science & Poetry Were Friends” by the controversial Freeman Dyson:

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/22955

I’d like some of whatever Freeman Dyson is smoking, with this fantasy of early 18th Century collegial romantics. When Blake said “Newton killed the cosmos” he wasn’t exactly expressing an abiding love for science.

Whoops, I meant late 18th Century.