on the relationship of art to medium

      The very form of the medium or technology you are working with irrevocably effects the outcome of the piece, regardless of what your conception might have been. The most creative, mind blowing epiphany of an idea is meaningless without execution. In this, I suppose, technology is a space that we work within whether we are conscious of it or not. This is part of the problem that I have had before (as I'm sure many other beginning art students have), in that my ideas may have merit, but my inexperience with the materials with which I am working frays the edges of the impact. I've never in any way thought that it is the medium that decides what is art or not. The very fact that someone could have difficulty in getting a video camera or a computer to express what you want it to illustrates quite nicely the fact that neither are merely mirrors of what we want them to contain, but forms that need to be molded skillfully and artfully.

      As I see it, however, there is technology in a paintbrush, in the weaving of a canvas. There is technology in using a stick to toss mud on a rock. In that sense, different degrees or types of technology do not make or unmake art. The fact that an artist is working with digital images rather than wet clay doesn't make much of a difference to me. Both are going to have limits of presentation and demands of skill, and both are going to have their own content to add to the mix, as well.

      Much of the art of the past century has been about this, examining the content that the medium itself brings to the work of art. This hasn't been done to such a great extent in various recorded mediums, for a number of reasons. The first and greatest of these is that they are most commonly used to sell things. And when making a sale, it doesn't always matter how skillfully the presentation is being made, but rather how many people you are able to reach. One of the inherent qualities of mass media culture is its mass-reproducibility, as well as its capacity to reach any number of audiences anywhere, anytime, without limit. The capacity to which media culture permeates our environment keeps it from having to impress us. Instead, it can overwhelm us. The louder you shout, the less you have to make your words meaningful in order for others to pay attention to you.

      I think the problem most come to when they try to experience recorded material as a potential medium for art is that most of the content pumped out in current mass media is rather devoid of artistic merit, instead aiming for the lowest common denominator. Painting has been a mainstay of human culture for twenty thousand years, sculpture for nearly twice that. Recording technology has been with us for about a hundred. Our usual disgust with what it is used for is quite possibly because it hasn't been, or at least, isn't usually, exploited to its fullest potential. The fact that it is currently used for such mundane purposes does not mean that it couldn't enlighten, or provoke with new aesthetic experiences. Media, like any tools, are themselves innocent. It is the individual who uses it who determines its purpose and outcome.

      Bill Viola was right when he suggested that modern media technology creates a new kind of "space" in which ideas are presented and interact. Television is not simply another way to see something, but the very nature of it changes how we see as well--it establishes a new relationship between the seer and the seen, as well as all points in between. For an art participating in this kind of medium to be successful, it has to be self-conscious of what it is; it has to know its audience, and its form of lighted pixels or digital information. Too much self-consciousness can result in a shallow kind of narcissism--one of the lessons of the modernist period was that when art thinks about art too much, it finds out it has little else on its mind. But just the right amount can make the difference between using technology on all levels and contexts, or being used by it. The task of the artist then becomes not simply to know how to use a video camera, but to know how video uniquely makes us feel, how it shapes what it is recording or presenting, what can't be done with it, and what we think shouldn't. The fact that video can be broadcast indefinitely and in any place must understood in making a video work of art, because it is a fact of video. This same capacity gives it the potential to reproduce itself to the point of banality, but it also allows for it to reach us privately, and so to communicate to us in an intimate space. Learning how to use the technology is only the first step; the second step is to understand how it uses us. However much the artist intends for the medium to simply be a vehicle for his idea, the medium is part of the art as well, and speaks for itself. Once he understands this, then it can speak for him as well.

postdlf
1998

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