Nathaniel’s Blog

After reading both articles I think I’m starting to see why something as mundane and as commonplace as GIFs (Or so I thought) are our first focus in Foundations to 4d, a medium that relishes in playing around with concepts of time and space, while also enjoying a more accepting role for new mediums and channels. The GIF perfectly reflects a rapidly changing cultural landscape, our largely diminished attention spans, and an embrace of meme-culture in both the extremes; the aloof other-worldliness of high fashion, to the disposable cheap macros that have become our cultural rosetta-stone for all internet communication. By their very nature GIFs capture a very select moment in time, a select feeling. Effective GIFs will endear for as long as there are people who resonate with the image, bad GIFs will be regulated to the forever-burning trashfires of failed internet momentum. If you consider each frame of a GIF to be a scene and the movement to the next, a cut. We should not waste another second turning our nose up at the creators who funnel their energies into what some might view as lesser art forms, or risk making hypocrites of ourselves for stodgy and archaic vestiges of bourgeois elitism. I think it’s interesting how the acceptance of GIFs in the larger cultural landscape as a medium feels so disconnected to the cutting edge of what artist and visionaries are doing now, and much like how the comic book enjoyed a representative transformation to “graphic novel.” I’d like to see something similar for this budding art form.

After reading this chapter a couple things jumped out at me from the text I’d like to explore further, the first being the idea that 4D art is unique as far as art forms goes because the time and effort of the audience member is as much a part of the art as the physical product itself, exemplified best by Robert Irwin’s “Garden for the Getty” in Los Angeles. This seems to shift the attention away from thinking of an art piece as a finished product, really pulling back the specifics to examine the broader implications of artistic elements we seemingly take for granted. And after reading about Andy Goldsworthy’s incredibly poignant, incredibly short-lived “Ice Pyramids in the Arctic Circle” a sculpture that couldn’t have lasted more than a few weeks at best, it had me really questioning if the whole escapade seemed worthwhile to me. I’m sure it was for Andy, that I don’t doubt, but my pragmatic leanings pull me towards this question. If there was no camera, no record of this impressive and beautiful artistry and this man’s vision, would his work have the same impact? Fully understanding that the point of the work IS the eventual destruction of the art by the elements, the entropy of all things, and the fleetingness of a moment. I wonder if the act of demonstrating that phenomena is still such a worthwhile feat without a single soul knowing? I also wonder if this value judgment shows more bias in my own views on art than it reflects a flaw in Andy’s.