Art or Entertainment

[elviswong]

Funny that visual people can get so caught up in language. The A-word is a shocker and you can free yourself by not using it any more.
If your doing something and you experience complete emersion in it, I mean you are not thinking about anything else at the same time ie; money, sex, bills etc. then you are as close to reaching your creative potential as you ever will.
Don't get me wrong I enjoyed reading the threads, my point is that you don't need to beat yourself over the head with your heavy dictionaries. People know if they are creating things from a true hearted perspective if you are not you are a lier not a faux-A-word-ist.

[murk]

Could VJing be considered a science? how about plain old work? Are these viable viewpoints of VJing?

[julez]

if u think of the actual process of vjing (not rigging and that stuff)as just plain old work u can never have the kind of inspiration that is required to attract anyone who knows nething about production.

[fALk]

oh rick you got me all wrong. I am not debunking one form or the other. I just tried to figure out if there is such a line to be drawn (so blurry as hell as I admitted in the first post). I do think the entertainment has its place but its not something moving us forward. This scene has produced great artists throughout and most have not been pure entertainers most had been pioneers and most struggled with money (walter ruttman f.e.). I do understand the artists need to do something for money, heck I am selling out myself to some company doing silly commercials for tv to survive that you can call anything but art. I too - because of time restrain - can not take any 50 Euro gig that is thrown at me as when I have a gig that goes all night I have 3 days that are totally unproductive as I am powered out (yes getting old or the such). But I do try to do the most I can to push myself forward with what I do. I am happy that I hear examples just like the ones you state but the reality looks pale (at least over here) where I have few new revolutionary stuff and mostly the same line flash art that I have seen over the last 5 years and its still popular but tells me nothing other then great for triping out. I would even argue that most of it can be programmed to look like it. Its just like the vector traced photos that are so popular in some reagions of the world right now. Anyway getting sidetracked again.

Topic is are you considering yourself doing art or entertainment when doing the real vj thing (I am not talking about installations, artgallieres etc). I would just like to hear from people what they feel more comfortable with (this has to do with my diplom which I am starting to write, produce at the moment) and I would like opinions sorry if the above sounded to biased (yes I am a bit) thats why I wanted to hear different opinions. Or if you feel that the distinction can not be made. Provocative it is ? yes....

[Lara]

Times are changing, culture is different, the media landscape is redefining itself all the time. People are working in new ways than before, in new industries. The stereotype of the poor, struggling artist genius is has become a cultural myth. The best modern artists today are excellent designers and excellent business people skilled at manipulating the media. Successful fine artists are rich. This was not always the case, just as artists did not always produce 'conceptual' works (perhaps what we mean when speaking about message?).

Art is a closed economy based on 'spiritual value'. Design (craft?) is a more open economy based on use value or 'functionality'. Of course the two will borrow from each other- as Paul says some art will use design techniques and vice versa.

[Lara]

Look at film as a good example of how the two fields come together: film functions as both 'art' and as an industrial product to be sold: design. Design techniques are used to create the film. The same I think is true within the animation industry. Animation also straddles these two fields, it is a technique which can be employed for a range of purposes. I think that the same is true of vjing (except the lines are even less unclear): that the context makes it what it is.

Being an artist is also a job, a profession. Artists use their work to make money too. Some designers create work for the love of creativity. I think it takes a lot more than the average filters in After Effects to make art, and it takes a hell of a lot more than that to make good design also.

Perhaps we should concentrate on becoming better visual communicators, whether we want to communicate is beauty, or have a conceptual agenda. I think that communicating true beauty is a worthy goal and has been aspired to for centuries. Perhaps a lot more difficult than throwing up some ripped war footage and calling it political.

[Amukidi]

"Perhaps we should concentrate on becoming better visual communicators, whether we want to communicate is beauty, or have a conceptual agenda. I think that communicating true beauty is a worthy goal and has been aspired to for centuries. Perhaps a lot more difficult than throwing up some ripped war footage and calling it political."

Lara speaks the truth.......the above statement is so true and yet so often ignored.

[littlecatalyst]

it is very true that anger is easier to express than joy. and it is just as noble to express the beauty of exo\istence and if you got the chops for it, i cant wait to see the results.

at the same time it seems like political vjs get almost as bad a rap as the samplewhores. are all politically motivated vjs using WTC images. still?? cus i dont see that much of it, but i do get to see some dope personal/politcal stuff which has often little to do with wars or TV politics but of social and local things. like, here in quebec we have mojor language issues (we have language police, and you can get in a lot of trouble for havinf a sign in english) and i have seem some killer VJ work that had a social relevance dealing with these local hot political issues in funny insightful ways.... also hevay stuff re: homelessness, civic action, as well as eco tings that were not dry and lifeless...

while it may be easy to have anger up there, and way more dificult to express the sheer beauty of existence, there is also something to be said for artist who want to deal with more than just that expession. and just as it isn't the easiest to convey the beauty in a non cheesy way, it is equally difficult to express the social "political" stuff without seeming over the top or too negative. its not all war footage..

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A WORD OF WARNING: once you start bringing in film and animation i think we do have to get into the anklebiting hell of taxonomy, as especially by the time you get to animations the lines blur again and i do not think that you can be sitting on both sides of the fence. and i dont want to sound liek a snob here but im gonna anyway;

kitch while employing artistic tools and even references, is still kitch. it is neither carftsmanship nor art, it is something that uses from both, then processes it through the machine to sell at high volumes. for mass consumption. and i gotta side with old man Clamato Greenberg about this stuff: it aint for the art-history books.

if you look at the 1930's radios (craft) with amazing design and wood-work and then the late 40's plastic radios that became amazingly popular. they were cute and accesible (just like those baby-angel birthday cards) but you can not say that they are the works of crafsmanship nor are they art. same for painting saround the same time, Rockwell, Maxfield Parrish (the king of kitch) these guys had skills but more skills at promoting their product, than anything else

animations are like that. sure there are the ones that we talk about here fischinger, and the like; but the whole of animation is closer to a craft and even then, most is actually in the K-hole. in contemporary animation right now there are but a handful that do things without the care of a market or of a final product. sure there are classics in both animation and film that can be seen as amazing works of art (excluding art films, art videos installations...) . but they are exceptions. sadly. in general is it once more mass produced bunk, so srry i just dont think thas a great example...

i think it really boils down to intent and to your whole raison d'etre. its not a value thing i dont think anyone here is saying one is better than the other (and usually the craftpersons skills are a little more profficient. usually not always). but i have seen the beginnings of kitch vjing (some company i ran into a while ago-- not naming names-- wanted to hire a few vjs to do seasonal dvds. you know a christmas mix, a halloween mix, a valentines mix) the kitch will get here.... some one on this site will get a phat contract with some karaoke company.... we'll have that too, though right now i like that we are talking about this......

i wonderif a breakdown of aesthetic values over the past 10,000 years woudl be good for this debate???

[Anyone]

is it art or entertainment?

this question is obsolete...
the relevant question is rather:

is it interesting or not?

Ne1

[fALk]

Yeah there is already kitch here - a lot of it - if we redifine kitch into "new art techno line style" or dancing babes or the such - I think that boils to kitch very fast but again its probably a question of defenition.

And I wholeheartly agree with lara that to communicate beauty and good things in life - without the kitch that easely forms in ones head when thinking of said things is the a real hard goal to have. anger is communicated easily as this wants to get out. The smile most want to have for themself or don?t see this.

In any way I think the communication of things is the essence of our artotainment.

Who things that your own visuals are tellling the viewer something or have some form of communication with the viewer? What and how are they communicating? Can we define different styles by different communication skillz of our visuals rather then by their appearance.