Internet Art

The Internet is our everyday object in today lives and it is still and unstoppable growing. Its most drastic and biggest impact on our culture and commerce had since mid. of 1990. Where an options like communication via e-mails, instant messaging, first video calls, World Wide Web, blogs or online shopping. Internet space is personal, but public as well - it is always a "Micro" (user) and "Macro" (public). What means for example that we can write our own blogs, chose options as we want for ourselves, but if it is on internet, it is always share and open for anybody. It is new young artistic movement. Whatever we do with internet space and whatever idea we get and put it online, it will always be our own and different from others, new and original - Internet art! 

 Some people perceive Internet just like a software in machine called computer. Just a device which they can read through and look for information or any other reason. But for many of them, it is something more, opened doors to virtual world, be connected with anybody, anywhere and with massive amount of information. Great example of this theory is book wrote by Jay David Bolter and Diane Gromala, called "Windows and Mirrors". Main theme of the book is that many people believe that we are looking through the PC (windows) and there is no machine being there. Swimming in virtual space of information and options - called Notion of Transparency. Same theory is use for today smartphones as well. 

Movement sensor for Xbox 360 - Kinect

This "connection" between art and technology we can also see at Microsoft and his game changer - device called Kinect. It is a 360 mapping camera ( hologram ) which scanning our body, so we can control for example video games by our movements without any use of controller of interface. Personally, I call this idea art of technology, because they have done big jump forward in the way how to control things without any controllers. Also, by Kinect we cannot control only video games, computer geeks around world hacked it and use it for using desktop computer or even in medicine for controlling medical robots in laboratories. Here we can see the artistic way as well, how different person found and use one idea to create another. 

Stelarc

So what really creates a digital art are experiences, which user has with it. To design interesting and original artifact from internet, it is still bout interacting with the user! A new ways how to visualize for example web pages, its content and more. Something new then just reading of ordinary text on internet. By all this ways, internet art simply turns to personal way ( personal experiences ). It is all the time about one question - what is our relationship with technology. Good example is "Stelarc" (Stelious Arkadiou). A Cypriot - Australian artist who mixed technology interaction with human body and art. His whole body was wired into his nervous system. This system were then connected through computers to the internet on his web site, where people could press any button, by which they send a signal to the wires to make move his limbs! So anybody could simply a literally interact with his body in real life! This is called "Ultimate Interaction". 

We can call Internet space even as alternative space, what is anything what people are interest in and doing that in new way - Art. Today technology allows us to do much interesting things to happen and challenge people to thinking about things and art around them. Even in visual and sound way, mixed together. As for example VJ (Vee Jay), what is audio - visual art way, quite close as DJ. Their main three elements are about : sound experiences, up to date technology and artistic understanding. To create perfect and original visual sense to audience, all these elements have to collaborate with a bit of creative idea of VJ and good technology to make these effects. The basic WorkFlow of a VJ is "CONTENT (idea) - PROCESS (what equipment use to show the content) - OUTPUT (where is it going to happen ex. big screen or wall etc.) Many of Vj's are still use VHS, rather then DVD because it has nicer (analog) video quality for example on big screens, which they are using most of time for their visual contents. The video on the right, shows example of Vj's performance.

Sound and image theory

 Sound is not just mechanical wave transmitted into our ears. It is more than that and it has for us many meanings. In communication, sound and visual go hand in hand, and this does not match only in video, but mainly in our mind. In the more simple philosophical form we can say that sound has "best pictures", which are in our head. As american philosopher Walter Ong in 1971 said: "The world of sound is an event world, while the world of sight is an object". 

 Each kind of sound has different reaction on us and can represent any object, place or thought with emotional feeling or content. For example simple bird's tweet can for someone presents a memory from a child hood, make a good feeling, remind of some holiday place or just bird's tweet and nothing else. By this, we can say that sound as itself is a form of abstract art. In the ways how we are hearing sound is more than one. Most of them depends on our mood or high of emotional level. Deep listening is when we are focus and listening every singe sound around us - when we are nervous, in fear etc. Any simple everyday life sound can has strong impact on us, if it is connected with some thought or memory. As good example of this can be seen at Vietnam war movie "Apocalypse". Scene where a man in the hotel room  lays on a bed, looking at ventilator - its sound reminds him of helicopters on battlefield. This sound effect is also called "foley", which gets its name from Jack Donovan Foley, who was a sound editor at Universal Studio in the 1950s and became famous for his advancements in synchronized sound effects. So we would like to describe sound as vibrations and context ( the medium ) which is most important. 

 Each sound has three phases: the attack, the sustain and the decay. These make up the sound envelope. Sound always has a number of characteristic marks : it is immersive, so all around us and all the time. It cannot be shut out, it contains depth and has no directionality. Also sound cannot be frozen, there is still some kind of sound around, even in complete silence. Sound can also have physical way - for example vibrations through our body in disco clubs. In the perspective way, there are three main points: figure, ground and field. Figure is most important, ground is the listeners social world and field is the physical world around the listener. So if we want to use example the class room with students and lecturer, then he would be a figure, students would be the ground and field would be an objects around us. All sound interaction has forms of distances : intimate, personal, informal, formal and public - "government way" speeches. 

 Sound is also a concept of semiotics. In the best way, we can see it by musical artist John Cage and his live performance "4,33" what is the 4 minutes and 33 seconds of completed silence. By this way, he is creating of sense that silence is music as well! Audience do not know that there is not going to be any music at all. Art should be profokation, and Cage is perfectly provoking people in this way. The admission ticket for his concert is about £400. "All sound is music, music is all sound!" The most important on how do we see sound and how we understand it is idea of presenting of sound. We do not however hear sound in this technical way, we hear sound in exactly the same way that we see images - as semiotic indicators. Also sound means different things for different community. Even when creating video, most important is what kind of sound we have to use to get our way of meaning from images to the audience. The next creative thing, which should video, especially film contains is meaning. Everything is about meaning which belongs to audience. The story of film should not be obvious and audience have to figure it out. Even if it has to be successful it has to be "aesthetic" (beautiful). By watching it, we need to have enjoyable visual experiences in every way and should have emotional impact. Sometimes, great film or movie does not need million budget, many special effects of best movie star actors. Most of time it is about idea, about the meaning and emotional feeling to the audience. Also each video piece has different emotional impact on each person. For me personally, the most strong emotions create this video about Chernobyl nuclear disaster. The short music video is created from original shots from the days of disaster and even from nowadays camera records from the the Prypiat - now and forever called as Ghost Town. This video and whole accident is close to me because in that time, east side of my birth country - Slovakia, was hit by radiation as well. 

How we evolved into digitalized world

The world and our life styles are changing every decades. We always do progress of how simplified and expands our everyday living in any possible way. Humans are socialized kind from our beginning. We always want communicate witch each other, be in touch with our family, friends and with world if it's necessary. In nowadays, we know that it is for granted to by digitalized in more than one way. The technology has changed our ordinary lives and it completely controls today world. Whatever if it is television broadcast, internet or mobile phones. Nearly everything run through digital form and this process is still and unstoppable growing by each year and modernization. 

One from the first monochromatic TV

The one from the first digitalized era, which came to our society began by radio and television broadcasting. The first ever TV broadcast was 75 years ago today, on 2nd of November 1936. "High definition" TV's, which we use todays, have 1080 lines, which make up a current - day television HD picture. In 1936, first television system used just 405 lines, and was in monochrome. This was a huge step forward in digital way for people.

iPhone - world famous smartphone

The next big digital "revolution" in our lives are mobile phones. The portable device, which allows us to be in contact with anybody, anytime and anywhere. The first text message ever sent was in December the 3rd, 1992. British engineer Neil Papworth of Sema Group sent an "Merry Christmas" from his computer to Richard Jarvis of Vodafone on his mobile phone. This was the beginning of a new way of communication between people. Text messaging is most favorite and common way of conversation. Also it is still increasing and technically improving. For example in USA, 30% of teenagers sent more than 100 texts a day, what mostly depends on affluence. This generation of people, just cannot live without this form of non - verbal communication, and they use it more often. Text messages completely wiped out communication via handwritten letter, so we can say that it's destroying the "art of conversation". 

Two biggest social networks

There has even been a next huge shift in the way people around whole world are connected with each other through new phenomena called social networking. This is the biggest influence in the way we live and communicate. In nowadays, about 72% of teenagers chat via social networks. At beginning, it started mainly on desktop computers and laptops. But for very short time it became one from main options of mobile phones with internet access - called smartphones. These devices pushed digitalized world further again. A child with a smartphone has instant access to more info than the US president 15 years ago.

The options and even numbers of smartphones always grow. There are three times as many smartphones being activated every minute, than babies being born. 

We still think that literacy is just about reading, writing and maths. But if we want or not, digital is becoming a big part of it and it will be still more and more important, even in technical or social way.

Modernism and Postmodernism

The certain period usually has its own visual culture and style. Based on these factors, we can easily recognize from what period is each piece of art. In 60's, people were separating culture into two groups, 'high culture' and 'low culture'. Behind the term of high culture we find theatre, opera, art museums or ballet. These are high preferable aspects of art with strong history and traditions in human culture. Low culture contains new art styles, which did not have much world spreading at beginning, for example as pop art or use of collage in paintings. As a good example of start of pop art is painting of Richard Hamilton from 1964. In this painting he tried to represent what life was at 1960's. Here we can see how he used collage of different images from this period, as for example television, 'Gammon ham', which was big thing in 60's, or photo of athletic man ( Mr. Universe ). By all these symbols, he wanted to show what to show iconic image of modern family home in this period. Even next world famous pop art piece is massive painting of artist Ray Lichtenstein in comics book style. What pop artists wanted to try to say is that pop culture is modern way of high culture and it is important. In simple term it is the fight between modernism and postmodernism. In the timeline, modernism has started around 1900 - 1950. Then, it took about ten years of transition period when it turned into post modernism ( since 1960 ).

One from the main characteristic of modernism is that everything is objective, has logical explanation and that there is believe in progress, like grand nartifs ( bible and religion ) or 'Marxism", which believes that world always move forward. It is based on process of 'Dialectic', what means that the idea ( thesis ) combined with anti - idea (anti - thesis ) always creates new idea ( synthesis ). But this does not work always, for example cold war between America and Russia, or second world war where term of 'idea" was based on german democratic and anti - idea was Hitler himself, who completely wiped out democracy and took it backward, so it was opposite of synthesis. One from next modernism's characteristics is believe in new technology and that it is giving us a progress. People started use new and up - to - date materials and designs in every industry, like in architecture where were rapid increase of use of glass materials on buildings. Even at nowadays, proof of modernism of still here around use.

Post modernism is opposite and it is based on bigger subjectivity than objectivity and sentence of "enjoy what you have". A number of characteristic factors of post modernism is 'shallow - ness', what makes us not think deeply about things, so if it looks good, its good. Next important factor of post modernism is 'minimalism'. By this term, it is "cut away back" system. For example we can see progress of minimalism in web design, where early web sites with many bright colors, fonts and chaotic layouts turned into more simple and clear web design with easy layout, white background etc. Also this idea has presented Robert Lowie on his Coca - Cola bottle design, when he tried to present rule of "less is more". At the present, we have to try minimalise each thing or design.

So if we would like to compare differences between modernism and post modernism, as example we can use differences of television and iPad. iPad perfectly contains characteristics of post modernism, such as minimalism because of its size, thickness and style, shallow - ness by own iPad only because of reason that it is big boom, stylish and person just wants to be seen with it. Also there is present of intertextuality what is simply put together more things together, in iPad such as tv, music, books etc.

Visual art in music industry

 Since our early age, people were always influenced by many different factors, which make behave every social generation. Like for example religion, education, family or media. These are the spectrum of different forms of communication with masses.
 In nowadays the strongest influence, which we are getting from every day life is media. Music has always been important part of human culture. It is the way of visual culture. The way in which artist wants to tell some message or share his thoughts with audience. Music industry is one from the biggest part of cultural economic base. We are always in interest of music from many reasons. From one way it is a type of art which leaves some emotional feeling on us. As type of music has changed over the decades, even whole music industry changed as well. Buying music records and cassettes or CD's is now past, because of streaming by internet and online stores. This connection between music industry and internet community has been apparent because of common fact with the evolution of the internet technology. As first who brought this idea to the public was Apple Computers, by its iTunes music store.

Example of psychedelic album cover

 We can see how much visual art touched music industry by every time period. From first simple album covers with basic text and image on it, until more stylish design artworks, fonts, photographs and whole package content. The big change of covers design is visible in 60's, where the term 'psychedelia' takes place. It was the new popular music genre, which is inspired by altering experiences of psychedelic drugs. Time by time 2D artwork images turned more to 3D covers. As the good example is Dj Kid Koala, whose covers are based on his own graphic illustrations, which already are short comics stories for each of his CD.  Even from simple look on album cover, we can nearly recognize the period that it came from.  It is obvious from style of text or photograph, also from fashion or hair style of artists. Each period has its own visual aesthetics. Because all these designs have changed, most of favorite artist's records are pretty rare  as historical artifacts. As critique of culture and arts Raymond Williams called it 'historization'.  This definition  is quite highly used in music industry at present. It means to redesign some famous records into special or limited edition with variety of bonuses which are included. So simply sell it again and make it more value for buyer.

Kid Koala album cover

Even many artists are trying to do same thing by theirs personal or visual style to emulate other music idols. Raymond said that for all cultural movements are three faces. The first is 'emergent', what is actual product. The second one is 'appropriation', so it becomes business product. As third is last step, which is 'historization', turn product to historical artifact. As it was all the time, music industry has been changing its form and has been shaped to fits each generation of people, theirs life styles and needs.