WEBVTT - The Future of Art 0:00:00.160 --> 0:00:07.200 Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to 0:00:07.400 --> 0:00:14.600 Forward Thinking. Hey there, and welcome to Forward Thinking, the 0:00:14.760 --> 0:00:20.240 podcast that looks at the future and says order, design, composition, tone, form, 0:00:20.560 --> 0:00:24.960 symmetry balance. I'm Jonathan Strickland, I'm Lauren voc Obama, and 0:00:25.040 --> 0:00:28.720 I'm Joe McCormick. So in our last podcast we talked 0:00:28.760 --> 0:00:32.720 about three D printing and art, and I thought in 0:00:32.760 --> 0:00:36.080 this podcast we should back out a little bit and 0:00:36.159 --> 0:00:41.000 look more generally at the relationship between technology and art, 0:00:41.560 --> 0:00:45.800 because that's something that isn't always totally intuitive to people, 0:00:45.840 --> 0:00:48.120 and in fact, I think some people kind of don't 0:00:48.159 --> 0:00:51.080 like it, right they have this low tech view of 0:00:51.120 --> 0:00:53.800 what art should be. Oh sure, In fact, I think 0:00:53.800 --> 0:00:57.560 we could probably posit that angry Joe might say that 0:00:57.760 --> 0:00:59.840 technology shouldn't be involved in art at all, but it 0:01:00.000 --> 0:01:02.280 should be the way that it has always been, that 0:01:02.400 --> 0:01:05.480 it should never be produced any differently, right, sure, well, 0:01:05.640 --> 0:01:08.480 Lauren's talking about the angry Joe from the last podcast, 0:01:08.480 --> 0:01:11.119 the guy who wants things to be how they've always been. Right. 0:01:11.440 --> 0:01:15.399 There would resist anything beyond say, painting and sculpture. That 0:01:15.560 --> 0:01:18.520 is art, that is all art is, and only if 0:01:18.560 --> 0:01:21.520 it is done in the traditional way, whatever school of 0:01:21.600 --> 0:01:24.440 art you happen to follow, that is all that can 0:01:24.480 --> 0:01:27.240 be allowed into art with a capital A. Well, I 0:01:27.280 --> 0:01:30.760 want to tell y'all story please. Kind of interesting to 0:01:30.800 --> 0:01:33.039 me about an event in the history of art. Have 0:01:33.080 --> 0:01:36.960 you ever seen a painting called Nude descending a Staircase 0:01:37.080 --> 0:01:42.840 Number two by Duchamp? Okay, so it was Marcel Duchamp's painting, 0:01:42.840 --> 0:01:45.720 and it's how would you describe it? Um? I would 0:01:45.920 --> 0:01:48.760 describe it as being kind of this, uh, you know, 0:01:48.960 --> 0:01:51.240 it's if you don't know what the title of the 0:01:51.240 --> 0:01:53.800 painting is, you don't know what you're looking at. Yeah, 0:01:53.920 --> 0:01:56.440 I think. But once you know the title, if you're 0:01:56.480 --> 0:02:00.280 standing at the right distance, you can totally see what 0:02:00.360 --> 0:02:04.160 was trying to be captured, which is this idea of movement. Right, 0:02:04.200 --> 0:02:06.800 You've got these shapes and colors and lines that are 0:02:07.720 --> 0:02:12.560 they're evocative of someone walking across the frame. Yeah, it's 0:02:12.639 --> 0:02:16.320 it's vaguely earth toned throughout in varying shades, and then 0:02:16.320 --> 0:02:20.079 it's got these intersecting lines and strange shapes. It's it's 0:02:20.160 --> 0:02:24.480 very abstract. Um. But when you attached the title to it, Yeah, 0:02:24.560 --> 0:02:27.520 you can definitely see the blur of motion in it, right, 0:02:27.680 --> 0:02:32.200 something that looks like someone passing through the darkness. So 0:02:32.280 --> 0:02:36.080 that's got universal acclaim, right, No, actually it didn't. It 0:02:36.160 --> 0:02:40.840 was very divisive when it came out, so yeah, sorry, guys. 0:02:41.480 --> 0:02:44.320 In nineteen thirteen, there was an art show in New 0:02:44.440 --> 0:02:47.040 York called the Armory Show. And this is kind of 0:02:47.080 --> 0:02:51.280 a famous event in in Transatlantic art history because what 0:02:51.320 --> 0:02:53.720 was going on at the Armory Show is a lot 0:02:53.760 --> 0:02:56.800 of the European paintings were being showed off to an 0:02:56.800 --> 0:03:01.040 American audience, and so there were offering views about a 0:03:01.080 --> 0:03:03.119 lot of the different things at the show, but Nude 0:03:03.160 --> 0:03:06.280 Descending a Staircase Number two by Duchamp was one of 0:03:06.320 --> 0:03:12.519 the most divisive. It got some very negative reactions from people. 0:03:12.720 --> 0:03:16.079 One critic said that it looked like, quote, an explosion 0:03:16.120 --> 0:03:21.200 in a shingle factory. Um. Teddy Roosevelt actually, like the 0:03:21.240 --> 0:03:25.919 former president, Teddy Roosevelt panned it. He compared the painting 0:03:26.040 --> 0:03:31.320 to a rug that he had hanging up in his bathroom. Unfavorably, Yeah, unfavorably. 0:03:31.360 --> 0:03:33.480 He said that the rug was a better piece of art, 0:03:33.720 --> 0:03:36.520 better representation of an as he called it, I think 0:03:36.560 --> 0:03:39.400 a nude man going down the stairs, going descending a 0:03:39.480 --> 0:03:41.920 ladder or something like that. He also talked about going 0:03:42.000 --> 0:03:44.440 up a ladder a clothed man going oh yeah, yeah, yeah, 0:03:44.480 --> 0:03:48.120 okay yeah. Um. So a lot of people were just like, 0:03:48.440 --> 0:03:50.160 what is this. I don't like it. I don't like 0:03:50.200 --> 0:03:52.200 the way it looks. It doesn't look like a nude 0:03:52.200 --> 0:03:56.960 descending a staircase. It's no good. Yeah. Um. Now it 0:03:57.080 --> 0:04:00.760 is widely considered a very important and meaningful work of 0:04:00.880 --> 0:04:06.520 art that's highly respected by a lot of people. What happened, Well, 0:04:06.560 --> 0:04:09.360 I mean, one thing is it has sort of faded 0:04:09.400 --> 0:04:11.640 to the background now and it's sort of part of 0:04:11.960 --> 0:04:14.640 it's the old school now, and there's plenty of new 0:04:14.760 --> 0:04:18.400 things for people to say that's not art, right. Sure, 0:04:18.440 --> 0:04:21.120 And also we can kind of see in a perspective 0:04:21.160 --> 0:04:24.360 of time where it fits. It's easier once we get 0:04:24.360 --> 0:04:27.480 a little bit removed from the current moment, I think. Sure. 0:04:27.480 --> 0:04:30.120 And it wasn't just that people were rejecting abstract art 0:04:30.160 --> 0:04:33.520 in general. They weren't necessarily like there were abstract art 0:04:33.640 --> 0:04:36.279 schools that didn't like this painting because it didn't fit 0:04:36.320 --> 0:04:39.800 what they thought that, you know, the school should be. Uh. 0:04:39.839 --> 0:04:43.239 But in any case, I wanted to talk about something 0:04:43.520 --> 0:04:46.160 that I found interesting about this painting, which is that 0:04:46.240 --> 0:04:49.600 it was actually inspired by something that came before it, 0:04:49.800 --> 0:04:54.520 not necessarily something artistic, but something technological. And what would 0:04:54.560 --> 0:04:59.120 that be the advent of early film chrono photography, Uh, 0:04:59.279 --> 0:05:02.919 the move pictures. So the early films people made, and 0:05:03.080 --> 0:05:07.080 like the decades that came before this, we're not narratives 0:05:07.200 --> 0:05:09.480 yet usually all right, there were just short little scenes 0:05:09.960 --> 0:05:13.120 like a horse running, or like a naked person coming 0:05:13.160 --> 0:05:16.640 down a flight of stairs. And still that Tuesday morning 0:05:16.640 --> 0:05:20.799 at my house, yess new Jonathan descending a staircase number 0:05:20.800 --> 0:05:25.679 two was not quite as big a hit as regular 0:05:25.800 --> 0:05:29.320 nude descending a staircase. But yeah, so what was going 0:05:29.360 --> 0:05:31.400 on in this painting was that Duchamp was trying to 0:05:31.520 --> 0:05:35.679 capture the motion that was available in this new form 0:05:35.720 --> 0:05:40.039 of art that you know, the technological form, the moving film, 0:05:40.160 --> 0:05:44.240 how the motion appeared on the screen. There could he 0:05:44.279 --> 0:05:46.680 put it in a frame And that's sort of what 0:05:46.760 --> 0:05:49.680 he did, kind of did. Yeah, and again once you 0:05:49.680 --> 0:05:54.080 you know, we being more familiar with film as a medium, 0:05:54.279 --> 0:05:57.160 can sort of see what he was trying to capture 0:05:57.200 --> 0:05:59.359 a little more easily, I think than the audience that 0:05:59.480 --> 0:06:02.320 saw it way back when. I think this is a 0:06:02.360 --> 0:06:06.240 great example of the positive relationship between technology and art 0:06:06.279 --> 0:06:08.599 and sort of a rebuke to those people who say, no, 0:06:09.400 --> 0:06:11.760 art is old school, it should be low tech. It's 0:06:11.839 --> 0:06:14.840 you know, chisel or paint brush, and and that's it there. 0:06:15.400 --> 0:06:17.840 I think that is wrong. I think that there is 0:06:17.880 --> 0:06:22.279 a positive feedback loop of inspiration between technology and art. 0:06:22.360 --> 0:06:25.040 They feed off of each other, they inspire each other, 0:06:25.560 --> 0:06:28.400 and that this is a great example that they make 0:06:28.400 --> 0:06:30.799 each other possible in certain ways. I mean, we should 0:06:30.839 --> 0:06:34.719 all also keep in mind that without materials science throughout 0:06:34.720 --> 0:06:37.159 the ages, we would certainly not have the colors of 0:06:37.200 --> 0:06:41.480 paints that we do today, oh totally. For for for example, chemistry, 0:06:41.600 --> 0:06:43.520 or by the time that we started getting into the 0:06:43.560 --> 0:06:48.200 actual manufacture of man made solvents or basses or fillers 0:06:48.320 --> 0:06:52.480 or additives or pigments, the creation of plastics hugely drove 0:06:52.680 --> 0:06:57.400 new directions in the painting artistic industry. And and also 0:06:57.520 --> 0:07:01.640 just pure mechanical or industrial mean of grinding and mixing. 0:07:01.680 --> 0:07:06.200 All of these components together lead to colors and types 0:07:06.240 --> 0:07:10.320 and affordability that we would not have gotten without those 0:07:10.480 --> 0:07:14.520 materials technologies. Um of course you also have some safety 0:07:14.560 --> 0:07:17.640 issues here, and they're related to this. Uh. Many paint 0:07:17.680 --> 0:07:21.240 pigments are and always have been made from ground metals 0:07:21.360 --> 0:07:23.880 or metallic salts. We just talked a little bit about 0:07:23.920 --> 0:07:28.560 that in a tex Stuff episode about fireworks. Actually. Um 0:07:28.600 --> 0:07:32.000 but uh, for example, lead used to be used to 0:07:32.040 --> 0:07:35.520 create white pigments until oh, I mean basically until everyone 0:07:35.560 --> 0:07:38.920 figured out how terrible of an idea lead is, um 0:07:39.200 --> 0:07:42.320 and and also began caring enough about their paint manufacturers 0:07:42.360 --> 0:07:46.600 to present alternatives like titanium dioxide or zinc oxide to 0:07:46.680 --> 0:07:49.400 create white paints. Yeah, that's a great point. Or what 0:07:49.480 --> 0:07:52.720 about something that I think is widely accepted in the 0:07:52.800 --> 0:07:55.640 art world today, which is just photography. Yes, I mean 0:07:56.240 --> 0:07:58.920 one time this was brand new technology and it wasn't 0:07:58.960 --> 0:08:01.160 widely accepted at all all when it when it first 0:08:01.440 --> 0:08:04.360 came about it and became more popular than just a 0:08:04.400 --> 0:08:09.800 couple of people experimenting with chemical process to transfer light 0:08:10.000 --> 0:08:13.680 onto a physical film, which is you know, that's the 0:08:13.680 --> 0:08:16.360 process of photography, right, Sure, but it was considered kind 0:08:16.360 --> 0:08:19.440 of too real to be artistic, right, Yeah, it was. 0:08:19.520 --> 0:08:22.000 It was considered that and the fact that it wasn't 0:08:22.240 --> 0:08:25.520 it was a mechanical and chemical process, not something that 0:08:25.600 --> 0:08:29.280 was hand crafted to create the image. So for anyone 0:08:29.280 --> 0:08:32.760 who has developed photos, you get your hands in that, 0:08:32.760 --> 0:08:35.800 that's true, but you you only move something from one 0:08:35.880 --> 0:08:38.840 chemical to another chemical until you're done. Uh. Now, the 0:08:38.880 --> 0:08:41.600 way that this all comes about is that you had 0:08:41.640 --> 0:08:45.480 this this drive during the Renaissance to create ever more 0:08:45.559 --> 0:08:49.480 realistic art so that you are representing what the human 0:08:49.559 --> 0:08:53.640 eye can see as faithfully as you possibly can. Uh. 0:08:53.720 --> 0:08:56.280 This was something that kind of consumed a lot of artists. 0:08:56.280 --> 0:08:59.400 They all wanted to be the best at the representation 0:08:59.559 --> 0:09:01.960 of what is real, and we got into detail and 0:09:02.080 --> 0:09:05.920 perspective and all kinds of very intricate little line work 0:09:05.960 --> 0:09:08.960 and stuff like making sure proportions are accurate at the 0:09:09.000 --> 0:09:11.720 distance that you are at and that you are really 0:09:11.760 --> 0:09:14.640 capturing something as it is and not just some sort 0:09:14.679 --> 0:09:18.959 of idealistic version of it. Well, photography, of course is 0:09:19.040 --> 0:09:22.720 kind of the the the ultimate approach to that, at 0:09:22.800 --> 0:09:25.480 least in a two dimensional format. And we talked plenty 0:09:25.520 --> 0:09:28.160 about three dimensional in our last episode, but in a 0:09:28.200 --> 0:09:31.360 two dimensional format, you know, capturing something by the light 0:09:31.559 --> 0:09:34.640 that is reflected off of the scene is about as 0:09:34.640 --> 0:09:38.280 close to what we the human Uh, the humans who 0:09:38.280 --> 0:09:40.679 are looking at it are going to get right. So 0:09:41.000 --> 0:09:43.720 in that sense, it very much appealed to people. In fact, 0:09:43.720 --> 0:09:49.080 it started to become once the process became affordable, it 0:09:49.160 --> 0:09:54.160 became something that would replace other means of creating illustrations, 0:09:54.240 --> 0:09:57.240 wood cuttings, that kind of stuff, because that's expensive and 0:09:57.320 --> 0:10:00.440 time consuming to produce. Whereas if you are able to 0:10:00.440 --> 0:10:02.960 take a photograph, even if it takes an hour or 0:10:03.000 --> 0:10:05.120 two hours for you to be able to take a photograph, 0:10:05.320 --> 0:10:08.160 that's still way faster than the artistic approach. So I 0:10:08.160 --> 0:10:11.600 can see how it would easily replace something like kind 0:10:11.600 --> 0:10:15.560 of the low rent portraiture you might get in or 0:10:15.720 --> 0:10:20.080 or even illustrations and say a publication. Sure, okay, but 0:10:20.400 --> 0:10:23.680 what about fine art? I mean, did it rival the 0:10:23.760 --> 0:10:26.440 kind of art that would be produced by a great painters? 0:10:26.520 --> 0:10:29.120 There there was a great resistance to it early on, 0:10:29.200 --> 0:10:32.080 and you had essentially three camps of thought. You had 0:10:32.080 --> 0:10:34.640 one that said it has no place in art whatsoever. 0:10:35.320 --> 0:10:38.520 You had people who said, um, it could be really 0:10:38.600 --> 0:10:41.319 useful for artists because the artists could actually use the 0:10:41.320 --> 0:10:44.319 photograph as a reference point when making their own art. 0:10:44.600 --> 0:10:46.839 So in other words, it's just a step between a 0:10:47.080 --> 0:10:50.240 tool for creating real art. Yeah. So, so instead of 0:10:50.240 --> 0:10:52.640 having to have the painters stand out in the field 0:10:52.640 --> 0:10:55.440 in order to get the field just right, you just 0:10:55.480 --> 0:10:57.600 send a photographer out there to take a portrait picture 0:10:57.640 --> 0:11:00.679 of the field, and then the portraiture art sty just 0:11:01.000 --> 0:11:03.600 or whatever the actually landscape I guess. Instead the landscape 0:11:03.679 --> 0:11:06.000 artist can just take a look at the picture as 0:11:06.040 --> 0:11:08.640 the reference point and make the painting that way. Uh. 0:11:08.679 --> 0:11:11.200 And then there was a third, very small group of 0:11:11.200 --> 0:11:14.400 people who said, you know, I I think photographs could 0:11:14.400 --> 0:11:17.400 be art all on their own. Um. And they were. 0:11:17.440 --> 0:11:21.080 They were shouted down pretty much early early on. It 0:11:21.120 --> 0:11:23.720 didn't take too long for people to really start making 0:11:23.720 --> 0:11:28.560 a serious push for proclaiming that art, that that photographs 0:11:28.600 --> 0:11:33.240 can actually be considered art. Um. For example, there was 0:11:33.840 --> 0:11:38.480 Louis Figuier who said, back in eighteen fifty nine, until now, 0:11:38.559 --> 0:11:40.800 the artist has had the brush, the pencil, and the bureau, 0:11:40.800 --> 0:11:43.839 and now, in an addition, he has the photographic lens. 0:11:43.960 --> 0:11:46.560 The lens is an instrument like the pencil and die brush, 0:11:46.760 --> 0:11:49.960 and photography is a process like engraving and drawing. For 0:11:50.040 --> 0:11:53.920 what makes an artist is not the process, but the 0:11:53.960 --> 0:11:57.960 feeling which I think sums up kind of my philosophy, 0:11:58.040 --> 0:12:02.120 the idea that if someone is using uh any kind 0:12:02.160 --> 0:12:06.880 of particular process to express some sort of thought or emotion, 0:12:07.440 --> 0:12:10.120 that is more what I think of as art than 0:12:10.320 --> 0:12:13.920 whatever the actual process was. Well, yeah, I don't even 0:12:14.120 --> 0:12:16.920 know exactly which one he meant in the original quote, 0:12:16.920 --> 0:12:19.120 But there's another way of looking that at that, which 0:12:19.200 --> 0:12:22.000 is that it's about the feeling it creates in the 0:12:22.040 --> 0:12:25.400 audience or the viewer more than how it was created. 0:12:25.880 --> 0:12:28.640 Although there was some argument at the time that since 0:12:28.679 --> 0:12:31.360 it was a mechanical process that it was almost like 0:12:31.400 --> 0:12:34.120 if a like if a textile mill was creating a 0:12:34.240 --> 0:12:38.000 very beautiful weaving that was still somehow cold and mechanical 0:12:38.000 --> 0:12:40.800 in nature because it was created by a machine and 0:12:40.840 --> 0:12:43.680 not a person. Right. It was it was manufactured as 0:12:43.679 --> 0:12:46.480 opposed to create it artistically. And I would put in 0:12:46.559 --> 0:12:49.040 at this point that, um, one of my angry Lauren 0:12:49.120 --> 0:12:54.080 moments was when the switchover from film to digital photography occurred, 0:12:54.120 --> 0:12:56.080 and I was like, well, a digital photograph is never 0:12:56.240 --> 0:12:59.720 going to look as warm and beautiful as a film 0:12:59.720 --> 0:13:02.959 photo aograph because it's just it's missing that quality. Oh 0:13:03.080 --> 0:13:05.160 you know, I was actually with you there. I I 0:13:05.200 --> 0:13:08.280 have a soft spot for film. I like film. I 0:13:08.360 --> 0:13:12.160 like film in films too. So in other words, yeah, 0:13:12.480 --> 0:13:15.679 and we see this, like even from just a consumer perspective, 0:13:16.120 --> 0:13:19.959 we see consumers who might resist a digital movie as 0:13:19.960 --> 0:13:23.720 opposed to a movie that was shot and projected on film. 0:13:23.760 --> 0:13:26.200 Although you're really going to have to struggle to find 0:13:26.520 --> 0:13:29.640 real film projectors of this day though I do it. 0:13:29.679 --> 0:13:32.040 I mean, like, like we all in this room, you know, 0:13:32.160 --> 0:13:35.120 having been born into a time when Stanley Kubrick or 0:13:35.160 --> 0:13:37.640 Ansel Adams or any of the other kind of visionaries 0:13:37.720 --> 0:13:41.320 of filming mediums have have already been doing work. George Lucas. 0:13:41.440 --> 0:13:46.120 We of course, we all accept this as being art 0:13:46.200 --> 0:13:49.240 and perhaps I mean most definitely even fine art. But 0:13:49.280 --> 0:13:52.040 I can I can see where previous generations would have 0:13:52.040 --> 0:13:55.240 been resistant to it. Yeah, so we accept photography now. 0:13:55.520 --> 0:13:59.640 But what's the next thing, I mean, what's going on now? 0:13:59.840 --> 0:14:03.840 We we talked in another podcast about three D printing 0:14:03.840 --> 0:14:06.320 in the art world, but I think we should talk 0:14:06.400 --> 0:14:11.160 more about this world we're creating where art, science, technology 0:14:11.200 --> 0:14:16.200 and design are very much merging. There the lines between 0:14:16.240 --> 0:14:18.679 them are blurring in a lot of instances, and I 0:14:18.720 --> 0:14:21.400 think this is actually a really cool thing. I don't 0:14:21.440 --> 0:14:24.280 think it's art being deluded. I mean, obviously there's still 0:14:24.320 --> 0:14:27.160 people who make sculptures and paintings in a traditional way. 0:14:27.200 --> 0:14:31.520 Today I really like the way that technology and art 0:14:31.600 --> 0:14:36.120 and science and design are becoming this strange other category 0:14:36.440 --> 0:14:39.440 of creation. I don't even know what you call it, 0:14:39.720 --> 0:14:42.320 but well, I mean they're there. I think of it 0:14:42.360 --> 0:14:46.280 in some ways that you can think of you know, art, design, technology, science, 0:14:46.640 --> 0:14:48.240 you can think of that all of these things are 0:14:48.320 --> 0:14:52.600 part of what is humanity, right, These are all aspects 0:14:52.600 --> 0:14:55.600 of humanity, and there's overlap in different categories. There's some 0:14:56.160 --> 0:14:59.400 art that overlaps with technology or science, components of a 0:14:59.480 --> 0:15:02.080 larger call chair. Yeah, so you can't. I mean, I 0:15:02.080 --> 0:15:06.080 wouldn't say that any one piece was necessarily uh an 0:15:06.120 --> 0:15:10.600 example of pure art or pure technology. There are always 0:15:10.600 --> 0:15:13.360 going to be some other elements of these other parts 0:15:13.400 --> 0:15:15.760 of what it is to be human that spill over 0:15:15.840 --> 0:15:19.240 into that. You see that at some really big events 0:15:19.280 --> 0:15:22.440 like the Burning Man Festival or maker fares, where you 0:15:22.520 --> 0:15:25.240 have these examples of things. Some of them are practical, 0:15:25.360 --> 0:15:26.920 some of them are not practical, Some of them are 0:15:26.960 --> 0:15:29.320 meant for entertainments. Some of them are meant for performance, 0:15:29.600 --> 0:15:31.240 some of them are just meant to make you think 0:15:31.360 --> 0:15:34.960 or feel something. And you might look at any two 0:15:35.360 --> 0:15:38.920 exhibits or or examples of stuff that people have created 0:15:38.920 --> 0:15:41.920 at one of these events and have very different reactions. 0:15:42.000 --> 0:15:44.640 And one you might have just a purely intellectual reaction 0:15:44.680 --> 0:15:46.960 of that is really interesting and I wonder how they 0:15:47.000 --> 0:15:49.680 did it. Another one might affect you emotionally, And they're 0:15:49.720 --> 0:15:52.640 going to fall on different scales for each person about 0:15:52.640 --> 0:15:55.960 whether or not it feels like it's art or maybe 0:15:56.000 --> 0:16:01.280 just art informed the creation of that piece. But I 0:16:01.320 --> 0:16:03.560 think that to say one is art and one is 0:16:03.600 --> 0:16:07.440 not art in some sort of weird um you know, 0:16:09.040 --> 0:16:13.680 subjective definition is not terribly helpful. Well yeah, I mean 0:16:13.680 --> 0:16:17.240 there's there's very little about art that is absolutely objective. 0:16:17.400 --> 0:16:21.480 So this also reminds me of a particular byproduct of 0:16:21.520 --> 0:16:25.360 technology that can be a form of art. Some artists 0:16:25.360 --> 0:16:29.400 create these very beautiful stones, stones kind of in quotation marks. 0:16:29.400 --> 0:16:32.960 They're called Fordite or Detroit agget and there I know, 0:16:33.160 --> 0:16:37.480 right like Texas gold. Um, they're they're they're they're created 0:16:37.520 --> 0:16:40.840 from from layers upon layers of automotive paint that have 0:16:40.920 --> 0:16:44.280 been reclaimed from factories. It also reminds me of I 0:16:44.360 --> 0:16:47.800 used to have here at the office a little piece 0:16:48.560 --> 0:16:52.640 of um what looked like obsidian glass, and it was 0:16:52.720 --> 0:16:59.000 actually a piece of of waste from a plasma waste converter. 0:16:59.400 --> 0:17:02.760 Oh wow, because their plasma waste converters can create two 0:17:02.760 --> 0:17:05.439 different types of waste. One of them is a gas 0:17:05.480 --> 0:17:08.840 which can be used to create sin gas, which you 0:17:08.880 --> 0:17:11.159 can then use as a fuel. And the other is 0:17:11.240 --> 0:17:16.400 this this uh, non organic molten mass that when it cools, 0:17:16.440 --> 0:17:20.160 looks like volcanic rock. And I could easily imagine using 0:17:20.200 --> 0:17:23.320 that to create an artistic uh you know, expression of 0:17:23.400 --> 0:17:25.879 some sort some kind of sculpture or whatever. If you 0:17:25.920 --> 0:17:28.200 wanted to, you could actually use that, and that would 0:17:28.200 --> 0:17:32.640 be an interesting artistic expression. To say. Ultimately, the material 0:17:32.720 --> 0:17:36.639 that I used to create this came from a landfill, 0:17:37.119 --> 0:17:40.560 Like literally, the landfill provided the raw material that I 0:17:40.640 --> 0:17:43.639 used to make this sculpture. And it doesn't it doesn't 0:17:43.680 --> 0:17:46.760 look necessarily like that. And of course there are artists 0:17:46.760 --> 0:17:48.840 who use Yeah, I mean that's a there's a grand 0:17:48.880 --> 0:17:53.040 tradition of using reclaimed objects to to make into pieces 0:17:53.080 --> 0:17:57.280 of art. Sure, I want to talk about something that Jonathan, 0:17:57.359 --> 0:17:59.440 I think you actually have written a good deal about 0:17:59.560 --> 0:18:02.840 the path, which is a really interesting project. In my mind, 0:18:02.880 --> 0:18:05.800 it's called the Avatar Machine. This is a fun one. 0:18:05.840 --> 0:18:10.440 So the Avatar Machine was this project that the goal 0:18:10.480 --> 0:18:13.280 of the project was to find out what it would 0:18:13.280 --> 0:18:17.440 be like to view yourself from the third person perspective, 0:18:17.520 --> 0:18:21.119 as if you were playing a h an MMO like 0:18:21.200 --> 0:18:25.360 World of Warcraft, but you were the character and everything 0:18:25.400 --> 0:18:28.680 you did was translated in real time to the view 0:18:28.720 --> 0:18:30.520 you had, but you had to have a view of 0:18:30.600 --> 0:18:34.880 yourself as a third person character. Now, typically in those MMOs, 0:18:34.920 --> 0:18:37.679 your view is a third person view where you're behind 0:18:37.760 --> 0:18:41.679 and slightly above the character. So it's like you're about, 0:18:42.200 --> 0:18:44.600 you know, two or three feet over the character's head 0:18:44.760 --> 0:18:46.520 and behind the character, so that you get a good 0:18:46.600 --> 0:18:48.720 view of what is in front of and a little 0:18:48.760 --> 0:18:51.560 bit to either side of that character. So how do 0:18:51.600 --> 0:18:55.359 you manage that if you wanted to make a you know, 0:18:55.440 --> 0:18:58.240 a real life version. Well, if you're Mark Owens, what 0:18:58.359 --> 0:19:01.040 you do is you build a harn and the harness 0:19:01.119 --> 0:19:05.320 holds a camera that is mounted about two ft above 0:19:05.359 --> 0:19:09.760 and behind the person who's wearing the suit, and then 0:19:10.240 --> 0:19:13.240 the feed from the camera goes directly into a monitor 0:19:13.680 --> 0:19:16.200 that's inside a helmet, and when you wear the helmet, 0:19:16.240 --> 0:19:18.960 your vision is blocked except for what is on the monitor, 0:19:19.040 --> 0:19:21.200 so you can only see the view from the monitor. 0:19:21.240 --> 0:19:24.119 You can't see the world around you otherwise. So with 0:19:24.200 --> 0:19:26.880 a live video feed coming from the camera, you see 0:19:26.880 --> 0:19:29.879 yourself from the third person. You see as if your 0:19:29.960 --> 0:19:33.000 view is hovering above and behind yourself. And then you 0:19:33.040 --> 0:19:37.960 try and wander around and this artistic uh experiment, you 0:19:38.040 --> 0:19:40.440 might say, yeah, it's see it's hard to know even 0:19:40.440 --> 0:19:44.399 what to call it. It was it was definitely uh. 0:19:44.480 --> 0:19:48.120 You know. Mark Owens is pretty well known for experimenting 0:19:48.119 --> 0:19:51.040 with different kinds of technology and art, but this particular one, 0:19:51.080 --> 0:19:54.840 he was exploring how people behave when they are viewing 0:19:54.840 --> 0:19:59.160 themselves from the third person. Do their sense of ethics change? 0:19:59.600 --> 0:20:02.439 Do they do they feel still? Do they still feel 0:20:02.440 --> 0:20:06.479 as connected to their actions? Have responsibility for your behavior? Right? 0:20:06.480 --> 0:20:09.679 If you walked up to, say, a small child, and 0:20:09.720 --> 0:20:13.800 pushed over the small child, uh, wearing this avatar machine, 0:20:13.840 --> 0:20:19.840 would you actually feel like you know, well, from experience, 0:20:19.960 --> 0:20:22.600 I'm just saying from what i've the videos I view, 0:20:22.680 --> 0:20:24.480 not that I saw a video of Marco once pushing 0:20:24.520 --> 0:20:26.560 over a small child. But that's just what Jonathan would 0:20:26.600 --> 0:20:28.560 do if you were away. He specifically said that it 0:20:28.600 --> 0:20:31.679 kind of creates a sense of detachment. And also, he 0:20:31.720 --> 0:20:34.320 said the other thing was that because the the the 0:20:34.400 --> 0:20:37.920 costume he made, because he didn't just do a simple, 0:20:38.040 --> 0:20:40.720 you know, boring helmet and a harness. He made a 0:20:40.800 --> 0:20:43.960 full costume for this thing. And the costume included, uh, 0:20:44.000 --> 0:20:46.399 these these spikes on the helmet that looks like a 0:20:46.480 --> 0:20:50.119 spiky hair, and the costume included like these kind of 0:20:50.160 --> 0:20:52.480 big shoulder pads and stuff, so that made you look 0:20:52.520 --> 0:20:54.800 like a big, old, brawny character from World of Warcraft. 0:20:55.119 --> 0:20:57.760 He said that people who would wear it would invariably 0:20:57.800 --> 0:21:01.160 start swinging their arms wide and kind of adding swagger 0:21:01.240 --> 0:21:04.399 to their their walks, so that they're essentially adopting the 0:21:04.520 --> 0:21:06.760 kind of walk you would see in one of these games. 0:21:06.800 --> 0:21:11.920 It's like they became, uh, a different different entity than 0:21:12.040 --> 0:21:14.840 that they would if they were just walking around as themselves. 0:21:15.440 --> 0:21:17.159 If I put that on, what I tried to do 0:21:17.320 --> 0:21:19.879 is like keep glitching until I'm a hundred feet in 0:21:19.920 --> 0:21:23.359 the air and I'm stuck there right or you like 0:21:23.520 --> 0:21:26.000 you take take one wrong step on a on a 0:21:26.040 --> 0:21:30.480 staircase and suddenly fly five feet straight up in the sky. Yeah, 0:21:30.520 --> 0:21:32.680 that that fortunately did not happen. If you want to 0:21:32.720 --> 0:21:34.600 see what this looks like, there's a video of it 0:21:34.680 --> 0:21:38.280 on the on the moment side actually eas even modern arts, 0:21:38.280 --> 0:21:41.560 So if you just google like MoMA avatar machine, you 0:21:41.600 --> 0:21:44.239 can find this video. Yeah, it's pretty cool. But the 0:21:44.240 --> 0:21:46.399 thing that I was really interested in in the video 0:21:47.240 --> 0:21:50.000 it was it was actually kind of weird to talk about, 0:21:50.080 --> 0:21:53.520 but it was this idea of devices that were designed 0:21:53.640 --> 0:21:57.720 to harm themselves, the suicide machines. I found these things 0:21:58.160 --> 0:22:04.240 very strangely sad and beautiful. Actually they're very dynamic, but 0:22:04.400 --> 0:22:07.080 very upsetting. Yeah, so I don't know what to call them. Again, 0:22:07.200 --> 0:22:11.120 it's obviously a work of art. It's their machines. They're 0:22:11.160 --> 0:22:16.080 working machines with motors um and what the machines do 0:22:16.480 --> 0:22:20.840 is kill themselves. So there is it's referred to as 0:22:21.040 --> 0:22:24.040 sort of a kind of industrial art. I'm not sure 0:22:24.080 --> 0:22:26.840 I'm pronouncing this right, but I think it's tious. Riker 0:22:27.520 --> 0:22:31.439 and this artist created these machines. So there's one of 0:22:31.480 --> 0:22:34.520 them that has an arm that is operated by a 0:22:34.560 --> 0:22:37.560 motor and The arm is attached to five saw blades 0:22:38.040 --> 0:22:40.560 which slowly worked back and forth on the outside of 0:22:40.560 --> 0:22:44.199 the gearbox, working their way down into the gearbox that 0:22:44.280 --> 0:22:47.000 eventually would end up sawing into itself to the point 0:22:47.000 --> 0:22:51.080