Response to "Between the Academy and a Hard Drive"

Innovative practice has pioneered not only new media but also new ways of perceiving through a given medium, a practice that has localized art not as a way of representing but as a way of making.” (173)

This is the quote I agree with the most in terms of experimental and animated writing. The new media that has been created to present text and other forms of writing to the public has in a sense forced people to change their idea of what something represents.

This goes back to a discussion we had in a class a few weeks ago where we talked about is it possible to create something without it representing something? There is no right or wrong answer to this question. But from my experience making animations the main thing the composer must keep in their mind at all times is that every animation will mean something to someone. This is different from the experimental print writers who could have a flaw or a mistake with their work and they could have it overlooked. With computer animations the viewer is sort of trained to take every animation or every purposely or accidentally misspelled word as something that is supposed to add to the message the composer is trying to get across. Glazier says “It isn’t what he says that counts as a work of art, it’s what he makes.” (173)

I somewhat agree with the author that only some aspects of digital writing are innovative. I think the actual art that the artist creates is the innovative component but the art was built within a digital environment that was designed by someone else. So in theory the artist can only do what the designer of the new media will allow, unless the artist figures out a way to manipulate the software to their advantage. If this happens only then is the work truly innovative.

Then you have this question of what is innovative? If an artist creates art within a digital environment it is not considered innovative. If that same artist draws a beautiful picture on a piece of paper, is it not innovative because the artist did not make or create the paper the drawing is on? If a photographer takes a photograph with a camera that someone else designed and built, is that picture not innovative?

The hardest part about creating art is being innovative because everything has been done. As the saying goes “there is nothing new under the sun”. Especially within the digital medium because it’s accessible to pretty much anybody with a computer, which means digital art is always being created. So if an artist’s primary motivation for creating art is to be innovative they might as well stop, because that innovative idea for a piece of art work has probably already been done. Not only has it been done, but someone probably did it better. Now if their motivation for creating art is to express themselves then by all means go ahead, because there’s nothing wrong with expressing yourself.