slowMoving sunYunfan

The Old Crocodile

sound drawing

make your own snow flake

sand drawing

pollock

In year 2030, the biggest surprise for a time traveler from year 2009 would be the energy consumption meter. The nonstop natural disasters since year 2015 finally shocked human race enough to realize that our nonstop technology advance have made the earth inhabitable and endangered our own existence. The United Nations passed multiple resolutions in year 2020 to restrict global energy consumption. From then on, every citizen of the earth has to wear a energy consumption meter everyday. It automatically calculates a person’s daily energy consumption and sends the data to the tax department of the person’s native country. People and companies with less than average energy consumption is rewarded financially, and those with greater than average energy consumption is taxed severely. The money collected from energy tax is used to buy lands from private owners and plant trees and turn the lands into national parks.

The biggest change in design field is the revolutionary invention of biofabric, or as we call it now, secondskin. Secondskin is a fabric that can adjust its temperature based on the weather and the body temperature of the person wearing it. It can also easily be decomposed and recomposed into different color and texture by personal biosawing machines. A person just needs to put the secondskin in the machine at night, and choose a design (or individualize a design) in the morning, in 5 minutes the secondskin will be recomposed into a brand new taylor made outfit. Since the birth of secondskin in 2026, the globle fashion industry has shrunk dramatically, and people everywhere have never looked as fun and charismatic as they do today.

I watched a DVD collection of Jan Svankmajer’s short films and liked this one most. I think it’s about memory and good old times~

http://www.metamute.org/en/In-the-Name-of-Art-Ewan-Morrison-and-Matthew-Fuller-on-imaginaria-and-digital-art

Of all the reasons why Digital Art is having a hard time being accepted as fine art listed in the article, I respond most to this argument:

2. ‘Digital Art’ does not exist. In proclaiming itself as a new medium, Digital Art has failed to recognise that art is no longer medium specific. Artists now operate across disciplines – text, image, moving image, event, and use whatever tools are at their disposal. Digital artists are mistaken in thinking that a medium can have inherent properties the realisation of which can be called art. As such it shares a common history with photography. Photography struggled throughout the century to become realised as an art form in its own right. It experienced a period of fine art credibility in the mid-eighties with Jeff Wall, Cindy Sherman and Sherry Levine, all of whom were ‘artists who used photography’ but none of whom could call themselves ‘photographers’. The recent retreat of photography into ’specialist’ galleries is a testament to its failure to become an artform ‘in itself’.

Technology and the history of modern art have make it much easier for today’s artists to practice in multiple media. Many artists today choose to let the content decide the form/medium, i. e., let the specific project decide which medium suit it best. On the other hand, Digital Art is not the only medium that is facing recognition crisis. In today’s art world, medium alone will not grand any work the fine art status. Take painting as an example, there are commercial painters, artisan painters, hobby painters, and professional painters, most of them are not artists. And why does it matter if you are recognized by today’s art world as fine art or not? Art happens besides the contemporary art scene, besides art fairs, galleries and museums. Chances are, 99% of Digital Art produced today are not great art, just like 99% of what we see in today’s contemporary art scene will be forgotten in 20 years.

http://www.ted.com/