Hi all
A few more random-ish thoughts on this subject.
As much as I'm enjoying reading the thoughts of people much more
educated than I am, like Sean, Simon, Ele... just about everybody in
fact; deep down I'm still questioning the need to search for
definitions of analogue and digital, as well as many other terms that
are used to refer to certain kinds of cultural activity, creativity
or 'art'. Is it just a convenience, so we can say “thats what that
is” and “thats what this is”? Or do we really need to pin it down for
other reasons? Obviously in the harsh world of day to day survival we
need to be able to communicate the difference between bread and
molten rock clearly and with precision, but in the world of the arts,
culture and society i'm still not convinced its so necessary. The
very term 'new media art' is obviously referring to works that are
now using media developed in the last century, so beyond being a
handy peg to hang things on its basically meaningless. I feel that
trying to pin down what kind of media or form of expression an artist
is using mainly serves to direct us away from what the work actually
is... what it represents, what it means, etc etc. Unfortunately,
being a not very educated, autodidactic, non-acedemic i'm struggling
for juicy quotes to back this idea up. Obviously its no ground-
breaker though.
I think an idea which has been emerging is that its actually very
difficult to seperate the two, and that the two may in fact be a one.
Maybe unless an artist is specifically using their work to dicuss
dichotomies between analogue and digital process (and again, someone
would need to help me come up with examples of such work), then we
should accept that there is a 'third thing' formed by the use of
combined media and processes and enjoy the work on more important
levels.
As has been mentioned, our way of perceiving, interacting with and
enjoying art is pretty much analogue anyway. My computer uses digital
processes but it is an analogue thing. I can't touch or get direct
physical feedback from what's happening inside it, I can't get my
fingers in there and manipulate the processes as they happen. The
purely digital is seperate from us, inaccessible and alien. Maybe
people like Stelarc and Kevin Warwick are closer to dissolving this
barrier, but most of us need some kind of haptic – and therefore
analogue - feedback to perceive what is happening digitally.
Finally, I was reading this morning that progress is being made with
quantum computing with the development of the RezQu architecture –
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-12811199. There have
already been some beautiful references to the strange continuities
and wackiness that happens once we approach the quantum level, and
I'm certainly looking forward to the discussions on 'Analogue/Digital/
Quantum' art that we will be having in a decade or two's time...
Best
Andy
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