"the eye," creativity and education

Somewhere in my personal "academic archive" I have a letter Gary Monroe left for me in my final portfolio for a b&w photography class I took when I was just starting off as a photographer. In many ways it was the standard "teacher letter" full of positives and a couple of suggestions but at the end I remember it said that I had "the eye."

At the time I thought this was a Gary phrase but as I continued through school I heard it used by others and eventually found myself using the term for some of my own students. A quick search on Google didn't produce much on this, but the basic idea behind "the eye" is one who possesses an innate sense of aesthetics - Someone who is able to see a good composition almost instinctively.

"The eye" is often described something you have or don't have. Usually the comment would come up in a conversation such as:

"Jimmy is such a sloppy printer. Look at all those developer stains."

"Yeah, but he's got the eye."

"The eye" is separate from technical proficiency. Mechanical mastery is a separate occurrence from having "the eye." It seems that most are resigned in the belief that this wasn't something that could be taught. Or could it?

In an hour's time I will start a new semester of a digital photography and imaging course entitled The Digital Image in Art. In revising my course materials I started to think more and more of this issue of "the eye" and whether or not I could "teach" this ability to my students. Is "the eye" really just the process of thinking creatively? Or is it an observational tool?

In either case these are both learned skills. We can teach students how to think creatively. We can teach students how to observe differently. Technical proficiency is a valuable skill. It should be a significant part of education, but the real value of education is to impart that which seems intangible. I think we can learn "the eye." I think the eye is a measurement of both creative and observational skill.

Greetings from Columbus!

I’m here for THATcamp – the Humanities and Technology camp’s Columbus “unconference.” It starts tomorrow and I’m really looking forward to it. It’s kind of odd to be here in Ohio though; I grew up in Westerville, a suburb of Columbus, and even though we moved away when I was a kid over 20 yrs ago, being here is stirring up memories.

As I said earlier, I’m here to talk about “Social Media, Creativity and Promotion.” So among other things, in preparation I’ve been reading The Cult of the Amateur by Andrew Keene. In this book Keene argues that social media and the democitization it represents is “destroying our economy, our culture and our values.” I’m trying to keep an open mind but it’s been difficult going. While I have not yet managed to finish the book I've already began to take issue with his position which claims that cultural gatekeepers are being replaced by mob rule.

The most prevelant cultural gatekeeper for the arts has historically been the gallery. While many of these are not for profit there are a large number of galleries which select work based on satisfying the art buyers market. In these situations potential profit is as important as artistic merit. I don’t intend to knock those who do, but for me making artwork has never been about salability. In fact I think it’s kind of odd to produce something that is supposed to be centered in the realm of culture but is then measured as successful by how much money it can bring. Across all creative fields there is often the issue of perceived quality being directly linked to market value. How often does this perception influence the “gatekeepers?”

Music, writing, art – all of these have depended on cultural gatekeepers in the past to merit distribution into the public realm. But social media, and web 2.0, give artists, musicians and writers the ability to create and disseminate their own works. Does this mean our culture suffers? I don’t think so. Not one bit. I personally applaud alternatives to a system of cultural peer review that can be even in part concerned with the bottom line. We should embrace any solutions which help avoid questions of bias or loss of objectivity. On the internet everyone is equal. Therefore attention can come from merit, not anticipated profit. I’m sorry Andrew Keene, I can’t agree with you.

Social Media, Creativity and Promotion in Columbus

Hello everyone,

Sorry for being so blog neglectful, it gets difficult to manage everything during the holidays with finals and students and traveling and family members etc...

But I am, for the most part, back into the swing of things. In less than two weeks I'll be heading to Columbus, OH for THATcamp - otherwise known as The Humanities and Technology Camp.

I just posted on the THATcamp blog the question I hope to discuss which is that of social media, creativity and promotion. Here's what I posted:

Traditional studio art education clearly defines artistic success. Creative efforts are considered validated by achieving gallery representation, receiving critical review and exhibiting artwork in traditional venues such as brick and mortar museums and galleries. But how relevant are these goals for most artists today?

These elusive goals have been challenged fundamentally by social media and the Internet. I wish to discuss how social media can be used by artists to promote and distribute their work as well as the converse shift in power this represents. Social media can provide an alternative to these traditional goals, but can it also replace them? How will we define artistic success is the 21st century?

So what are your takes on this? How does social media weigh-in with regards to traditional quality control? Does social media negate the "gatekeepers" of success?

What is digital imaging?

One of the big questions I face on a regular basis is if chemistry photography is "dead" now that we have digital photography. My short answer is that they still make stuff out of the earth, don't they? If ceramics has existed and survived for centuries despite the development of newer technologies, surely photography's roughly 150 year run could last a little bit longer?

But this leads me to another question. Is digital photography simply the newest technology of photography, or is it actually a new medium?

In many ways the advent of digital imaging mirrors that of chemistry photography. Photography as we know it was invented in the 1830's when Louis Daguerre developed the ability to produce a lasting image from light sensitive materials in a relatively short period of time (minutes instead of hours as Niepce had done in the 1820's).

The invention of photography forever changed the way we looked at the recording of images and likenesses. In 1800 if you wanted your portrait, you had it painted or rendered in some way by hand. But by 1850 if you wanted a portrait, you had a choice. And this choice changed not only our relationship to photography, but also to painting. Painting had been the means by which we recorded the world around us, now painting was "liberated" from the task of simply recording reality.

This is not to say that this was a conscious choice at the time, but if you look at painting styles between 1850 and 1950 you will see a definite progression away from faithful recording to interpretive and expressive image making. In other words, photography created a choice for painting to be about something else besides "recording."

But early photography also had a problem. A problem of taxonomy. What was photography? What was its role? Photography was not really seen by most as a fine art in the 19th century. Those who attempted this usually did so by mimicking an existing medium, painting, to give it credibility. Ironically, it was the characteristics that made photography unique - the sharpness, the ability to accurately record - that kept the medium from being embraced as something "creative."

It wasn't until the Soviet Avant Garde movement of the early 20th century that photography was appreciated for it's unique aesthetic and technical abilities. The optical lens can see and record space with a different depth and film exposure can treat light in a unique way. Only then, some argue, did photography come into it's own as a medium.

What then is unique to digital imaging? Are we treating this medium to the standards of another? I argue that we have culled digital imaging to mimic photography. Digital images are comprised of pixels and yet we shun images that are "pixely." Is digital imaging following in the path of chemistry photography? First emulating another medium and slowly coming into its own?

Digital imaging is fundamentally different than chemistry photography because the capture method has changed. Throughout what Martin Lister would call the "short history of photography" the technology has changed but the capture process has always remained the same. That is to say that it was always a chemical process utilizing light sensitive silver. But digital imaging is an electronic process in which light waves are converted to binary data (this is a super-simplified explanation of course). Right now the goal with digital images is to emulate film photography but it doesn't have to be so. As the design group Eboy says, "Pixels are beautiful."

image credit: mnsc

Prague!

Hello everyone, I'm back from my trip to Prague and Knoxville. While Knoxville was beautiful I didn't really take that many photos, but I did take quite a few in Prague. Here's a bit of what I saw:

Hope you enjoy them!