I don’t have all the answers maybe, you have some #2
December 17, 2011 · Posted in Discussion
So, we are firmly in to the digital age, the amount of tools and their accessibility is massive; is creativity on the increase or the decrease?
When was the last time you used the word art in a discussion?
Who or what was being discussed?
Do you feel that art and/or the development of artists are being sufficiently subsidized?
Do you have any examples of people that you consider to be true artists that have appeared during your lifetime? (artists of any type, writers, visual, film, music, architecture, dance etc…name as many as you wish.)
Comments
10 Responses to “I don’t have all the answers maybe, you have some #2”
Leave a Reply
-
Pribek At Zazzle
The post to blame: Most Peculiar Mama (Don't Eat Your Cat)
One of my standards:
Before the creative spirit departed
They spoke in their childlike voice
To breathe the gift of life or not
Is a personal note of choice
I breathe the stone of life
Remarkable is stays unknown
Have mercy Lord over my soul
Indeed it is a poem.
Oh, yes. I forgot to say:
We should all aspire to be more like Miles Davis …!
how thoughtful of you to read my mind and know that I spent four hours reading Miles interviews…a common batch of themes, don’t compromise, play what you want, don’t play for the money…Miles made a lot of dough though…
The last conversation about art that I had was with a colleague who is somewhat older and had an actual background in design and marketing. We were discussing my impending nervous breakdown brought about by an endless stream of experiences disturbingly similar to this. I don’t like the ‘oh but I’m an artist’ mentality…it annoys the daylights out of me but I was really struggling with my stuff, you know? Her take: Web design/code/tech wrangling is not art; it’s problem solving. My take: Then why does it feel like I’m slowly being crushed every time I pour my heart and creativity into something for an idiot?
Having to do this is a hell I wouldn’t wish on anyone.
Sufficiently subsidized? Hmm no but capitalism is fail at anything not superficially beneficial. I think we’re all artists but the system is setup for exploitation, not support. The majority of us would rather stand behind a cash register or an assembly line welding station (hah like we even have those mindless modes of employment available to us anymore) and be exploited that way. Or that could be my cynical emo naïveté showing. *shrug*
Examples…hmmm… Neil Gaiman and John Frusciante come to mind immediately.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mdcl1teQG3A
That’s about how I feel lately…I definitely recommend his solo work.
First off, you should know that I have done assembly line welding and the is still in operation even though I did set fire to the plant while welding a safety rail after my regular shift (oh..it’s a long, sad, funny, true story that also involves a mallet and a supervisor’s skull).
You want to know something that strikes me odd? The context that I most often hear the word “creativity” used in is, web and/or software design. And, the irritating part of that is that people seem to always cite some copy/paste piece of shit as being creative rather than something innovative, thought provoking etc…
I don’t see capitalism as being the problem for the money situation…at least not the theory of capitalism directly; In my little world of music, things looked less bleak when labels were spending money to develop artists in hopes of a windfall. This was more prevalent however in the decades before MTV, homogenization and corporatization. A Marxist friend says that the ultimate goal of capitalism is a monopoly…may be something to that.
I dig Frusciante, seems to me to have a lot of knowledge yet a free musical spirit. Haven’t read Gaiman…
Lately I just grab a WordPres theme, copy paste their content into it, slap a logo at the top, and mail the invoice. (Egad, I hope no one ever finds this) That is not art; That is a PTSD coping mechanism that results in a paycheck. It is also radically different from my previous work. Web designers are typically tasked with evoking a feeling. You might feel one way about something, I might feel another way, and the owner of the company might think we’re both nuts and *insist* that there be a dancing hamster on his homepage to show how fun they are. The rest of the world just sees a hackneyed pile of garbage. I’ve had to learn a lot about letting go and just doing what I’m told. Sucks sometimes.
I think the open source community has the potential to be more innovative and creative than any megacorp software stuff could be but there’s lots of politics and other issues that 5+ hour long IRC based rants have been devoted to expounding upon so I won’t do that here.
Re the welding, Oh really? Definitely sounds interesting. xD
I did not exist in the time before MTV so I will take your word for it.
American Gods is a good place to start with Gaiman if you ever feel the urge.
Well, it sota’ goes back to Miles Davis, he was big on the idealism and quick to slam those cats that were doing it just for the money. But, he was also fond of saying “My Daddy’s rich and my Momma’s good looking”. And, if you dig deep enough in to his history, Miles hung around NY on Daddy’s money for a while before he had any financial success.
So, it’s the age old dilemma for the creative type…juggling the paying the bills and trying to find a way to come from soul.
You don’t have to take my word for anything, that’s part of the deal. Record labels all started out as furniture companies. For a long time, the bad suit wearing, cigar chomping big wheels didn’t have a clue what the kids were going to like next so, they weren’t above taking some chances. At the same time, they tried to formalize things and construct hit record assembly lines. In doing so, they gave a lot of staff writers and studio musicians a way to pay bills while honing their crafts and developing their art. Just part of the story but, along with allowing acts 3-4-5 albums to develop a sound and thus, a career…the evil old record companies weren’t all bad.
I have no clue about open source and politics but, there are a lot of politics involved in every thing that most perceive to be outside the main stream. Potential is overrated; everybody has it.
I looked at Gaiman at Amazon and the greedy bastard actually wants money for his work so, I’ll just have to wait until I have a few of these upcoming, creatively void but decent paying gigs before I catch up with him.
The potential would be that they wouldn’t get mired in patent laws and theoretically would be able to innovate faster, better, stronger, smarter, etc. The reality is they spend a lot of time arguing over which reinvented wheels to put on the buggy while the horse dies of starvation.
efficient evil or incompetent good…hmmm
this is really strange; right before I left that last comment I almost quoted this thing that Mark Cuban said the other day to a software guy looking for advice.
Indeed. Microsoft owns the patent to the double click, if I recall correctly. Everyone double clicking in non-microsoft software is infringing on their property rights.