What about musical composition? here we have an art form with a long
history of creation in a form of notatation rather a performance. In
what way is the musical score the "original"? The score is then
interpreted by musicians in an original performance, as opposed to a
digital print, which is not an interpretation in any meaningful sense
but a simple transfer - more or less adequate into another medium. The
issue of originality in relation to the artwork is much older that
digital technology. The composers score is arguably even more radically
a virtual piece of music than its digital counterpart in a digital work
of art since it exists on a level beyond any perceptual similarity to
the 'hard copy', or rather hard interpretation, of the musical
performance. Originality is now as it has always been a relationship
between an individual and the social conditions in which they produce
new embodiments of the human potential. Originality has never been an
absolute coming to be of some new thing since there is always something
else upon which it is based. In the case of an historical origin of a
whole art-form the creation of new conventions and methods can
sometimes be traced back to a single individual, or individuals, but
still in relation to the art-forms that have been before. In the case
of art as such and its origins - perhaps some cave-man scratching in
the dust discovered drawing as such - here too the conditions in which
they did so would have been of a collective nature. All this
notwithstanding it is still individuals - non-individualistically
construed - who create things with their own efforts. It is just that
the materials that they shape are not to be construed as crass matter
but as social materials. What we give shape to as, well as what is
shaped, is the socially existing fact/value of a particular artistic
medium, and this holds even where the artist is at least partially
responsible for the origination of that medium - as was Cervantes in
the development of tragi-comedy for example.
On 10 Jul 2006, at 12:41, richard jones wrote:
> hi folks,
>
> hi mark,
>
> maybee one of the central problems of digital art is the fact that the
> product is
> entirly "virtual". there can be no original and as you rightly say any
> hard copy is
> merely a print... tho this is also problematic as any print you care
> to make is a
> copy of an original that does not actualy exist..
>
> so in accepting digital art as fine art we first have to accept that
> the notion that
> originality is no longer a a neccisary component of art perhaps ....
> or we go back to
> jean baudrillard and ask him if he has a fifth degree of simulacra in
> mind to help us
> see what is comming next=)
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