socratic dialog
You: when did you become the one we tell our secrets to?
Me: I dream in monochromatic grays and I know how the bells echo in the tired winds of the Himalayas and what it feels like when you think you have taken your last breath as life whispers its goodbyes but I don’t think you would understand, you have to have seen what I have seen.
I cannot explain my life to anyone else but me.
You: Do you only learn by seeing?
Me: I learn by applying and seeing. I need to copy in order to seek originality. Words do not teach: time, experience, but mostly more then anything else, mistakes teach me. Without making the right decision, that later taught me it was the wrong decision, I would probably have not learned much of what I have learned at my age. People say I am old for my years but really its just that I’ve made a lot of mistakes and kept moving forward.
You: If time is immeasurable, how do you know when you are finished, how do you know you have reached the end?
Me: We are temporal; we never know when the end is the end is the end. Today, tomorrow or fifty years so we live knowing today maybe the day we finish last. Art has
often been viewed as artifact of an artist; it is often the pieces that surpass the person. We have museums as mortuaries of thought, collecting the remains of brilliance and genius (as measured by collectors and curators not the artist themselves) for an open casket viewing for decades or century or until their moment passes or the social definitions of brilliance shifts.
Genius often is not recognized in the moment but only when what we have is lost.
You: If humans are temporal and art is often not, yet technology is, then what do you leave behind?
Me: Nothing.
You: Then technology is not art?
Me: Technology is a media, just like paint is not art until the painter employs it onto the canvas or the sculpture molds the clay from idea to creation.
Technology is temporal in the sense that it is never constant and always changing and how we will store the artifacts of thought from today in twenty years is maybe yet to be discovered. Everything is changing at every moment, it always has. The world is not the same today as it was yesterday yet technology continues to adapt to the present. The concept of art is always changing.
You: What is art?
Me: What is the meaning on life? Why am I here? There is no concrete answer. Nothing and anything can be defined as art simply by who is viewing it. I find art in natural structures flowers, insects, geography, in trash dancing in the air of sewer vents and in the most famous paintings in the biggest museums in the world.
Perhaps computational media allows for depersonalization compared to the traditional definitions of art by taking out the connection of the artist to their art and much of the viewers response is not raped by distance but allows and encourages often interaction between the viewer and the piece.
You: So are you saying computational media in a sense is more interactive then traditional arts?
Me: It can be. Much of computational media has an interactive element that requires the viewer to be an active participant in the piece, rather then creating a forced space and distance as traditional art often has or museums have at the very least enforced.
Although all art can be reduced to the media, no matter how profound, computational media can often be broken down to code written by the designer and likewise, painting broken down to a canvas and oil, or a sculpture broken down to simply metal. Art like many things in our society has a very broad definition and is best defined by the viewer and the creator.
You: Then how will computational media be installed or shown when the code or technology becomes obsolete?
Me: Perhaps computational media and much of the work we create will be remembered for the idea behind the work, rather then a tangible object or physical piece as much of traditional art is in the form of a canvas or piece of paper, ‘arts’ definition may have to shift to the idea as the legacy rather then the physical work.