Re: [-empyre-] experience Vs commerce

["Damien Everett" <damien.everett@rmit.edu.au>]

Hey whats this about the "novelty" or "trendiness" of the artist / programmer? Am I coming back into fashion? ;p 

>Some would argue that one also becomes more invested in a given
technique/medium, and then becomes more constrained by the agendas that it...

A master artist is one that has mastered the medium... understanding and actualising its full potential technically and aesthetically... knowing your tools/instruments and applying them within the choosen form of expression. 

A great blues guitarist may not know anything about theory other than "this chord feels right" or "this phrase/lick expresses my longing for that chick over there...", and has a very different understanding of the "musical programming language" than a contempory composer. 

A blues guitarist can be constrained in the stylistic medium, tho it offers all the expressive potential they need, the composer can inhabit this or other stylistic mediums, and even invent new ones. Their mastery of the medium is quite different yet equally valid.

When I went to study jazz theory / technique / performance formally at an academic institution I think I actually became a worse player for a couple of years, in that I got caught up in the theoretical/technical framework instead of pure expression / performance. This knowledge was distilled and integrated into a conceptual framework and became second nature, and has opened up untold worlds of possibility I didnt realise could exist.

As I see it, in good net art the technology is largely transparent in that it does not get in the way of the intent of the work (unless the intent is about the technology).


> exactly, its the hook. but not being a scholar of it, i can't really say
> just how complex cage et.al. actually are, and lets not forget every
> artist carries at least one pound of bullshit.
Why not create a virtual world full of it? or Canned and stored in a pyramid climing to the moon?

> good point, although an art career perhaps is a game, art itself isn't,
> and if two opponents have equal skill level, the one with more queens
> *will* win the game.
hmmm just to be pedantic, no not neccesarily, it also depends on the strategic positioning of the pieces... those xtra queens might not be able to stop immediate checkmate ;) As long as you have the required pieces in the appropriate places at the right moment... thats all you need, tho having backups help!
cheers,
Damien