Auriea L: aesthetics

ElegantMedia

I am going to have to give my opinion on Aesthetics during the okno Public 01 symposium BeautyInTheAGeOfDigitalArt.
Here i will make a few notes not to forget. What do I find beautiful and why?

"Have you not heard of that madman who lit a lantern in the bright morning hours, ran to the market-place, and cried incessantly: 'I am looking for God! I am looking for God!'
"As many of those who did not believe in God were standing together there, he excited considerable laughter. Have you lost him, then? said one. Did he lose his way like a child? said another. Or is he hiding? Is he afraid of us? Has he gone on a voyage? or emigrated? Thus they shouted and laughed. The madman sprang into their midst and pierced them with his glances.
"'Where has God gone?' he cried. 'I shall tell you. We have killed him - you and I. We are his murderers. But how have we done this? How were we able to drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon? What did we do when we unchained the earth from its sun? Whither is it moving now? Whither are we moving now? Away from all suns? Are we not perpetually falling? Backward, sidewards, forward, in all directions? Is there any up or down left? Are we not straying as through an infinite nothing? Do we not feel the breath of empty space? Has it not become colder? Is it not more and more night coming on all the time? Must not lanterns be lit in the morning? Do we not hear anything yet of the noise of the gravediggers who are burying God? Do we not smell anything yet of God's decomposition? Gods too decompose. God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we, murderers of all murderers, console ourselves? That which was the holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet possessed has bled to death under our knives. Who will wipe this blood off us? With what water could we purify ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we need to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we not ourselves become gods simply to be worthy of it? There has never been a greater deed; and whosoever shall be born after us - for the sake of this deed he shall be part of a higher history than all history hitherto.'
"Here the madman fell silent and again regarded his listeners; and they too were silent and stared at him in astonishment. At last he threw his lantern to the ground, and it broke and went out. 'I have come too early,' he said then; 'my time has not come yet. The tremendous event is still on its way, still travelling - it has not yet reached the ears of men. Lightning and thunder require time, the light of the stars requires time, deeds require time even after they are done, before they can be seen and heard. This deed is still more distant from them than the distant stars - and yet they have done it themselves.'

Beauty as a solution to a problem
- the key of course is to take it seriously and do it well. “draw and waste no time”
  - Design (Bernini cast as a designer1)
  - Society (beauty and imagination as the sugar that takes away the acid of daily life)
Baroque sincerity but also the Baroque desire to “arrive at a sculpture which should be at once spectacle and magic.”
Figurative sculpture/as it relates to computer 3d sculpture
- not the photorealistic stuff the beauty of the medium itself
  - looking at wireframes for structure
Boticelli drawings of paradise
- I guess ii find beauty in the traditional because it allows me a space to dream.
  It feels real. Much of the artwork of my contemporaries is centered on making popular culture
  I have no desire to make pop culture as such.
So what do I want to do?
- A meaningful art
  - Symbolists
    but does this mean that the only beauty to be seen is in hindsight? perhaps?
    I should talk about 3d as i relates to THESE images ----->
    she called my work “feminine” i guess it is, though i’m not sure. maybe it is. maybe that is irrelevant.
i dare to defend antiquity at the same time as championing future technologies. i feel that this is important. society is cyclical.
` by using themes which are instantly recognizable. revolution is created one person at a time and it starts in their heart.
interactive work as a creating a jewel as creating a temple
` perhaps there is a parallel there. a place which houses the spirit. you go in one way and come out another. the aesthetic look of something is just to seduce whereas the interaction is what makes the meaning stick.
` tranformative spaces
` the importance of design, but not some generic design, one which comes from love and speaks to love.
fairy tales
` there are many ways to encode stories.
` in some ways it is looking backward, definitly looking inward at things that we all share.
` hmmm, it’s not so much fairy tales as such. what is it? like when i was looking at the book of botticelli drawings... something like, quiet.
` fun . stories are ways for people to be entertained while they learn something about themselves.
` the church, a forest, outer space, your bedroom; these are not meaningless spaces
to transport someones imaginations there is the job of myth and tales to face one with life to force one to contemplate death.
some would say the place of art today is to not make a big deal of itself, to focus on the small things. i say the opposite. we are not the individuals we think we are aesthetics can speak to large groups but what they say and making sure it says something beautiful is the job of the artist.
need to think a bit more about the negation of text and the desire to make myself clear, in my work if nowhere else.
collaboration
` working with another person for me is compromise. but i have always worked with other people. design is always about collaboration between myself and whoever i am collaborating with on the design, between myslef and a client, between myself and the intended audience.

` after awhile it became a question of would i still know what i was doing if i stop thinking about myself for a second.

` i think that art should be about the big things
the spectacle
the theater
the fireworks the fountains
→ example, the SUN @ the Tate

` what kind of work can be made for people wanting to enhance their lives because that is something that art can do. comfort you for a moment to think that okay everything is not that bad. maybe its a type of psychotherapy i’m doing. peaceful things, things to remind you that you are just a little part of a big big universe of love and pain.

Footnotes:

1. His works, as Bialostocki has pointed out, should be regarded not as the expression of a consistent aesthetic system but as a long series of brilliant solutions to specific problems or requirements.