Inside Art, Media and Materiality

This week's blog post is in response to the Hayles reading Material Metaphors as well as Manovich's article Avant-Garde as Software.

In regards to the readings themselves, I found that as a whole they supplemented each other better than they did this afternoon's lecture in class (which itself felt like a bit of a retread of the lectures early on about authorship in certain spots).

The Manovich reading had some relation to our class discussion, but overall it felt a little too vague in spots. Manovich is a great writer and he explained his concepts in regards to software and media very thoroughly, but he should've spent a little more time on the art history lesson he tried to introduce at the beginning. He should've better explained how that tied into his article.

The Hayles reading was substantially better due to its relative brevity and scope. Hayles did seem to branch out too much in the middle and try to introduce several new points of discussion at once, but he tired it all back together nicely at the end by defining his concept of "materiality".

I leave you with my final takeaway from Monday's very interesting and engaging class lecture on the creation of art. Everyone has their own different idea of what constitutes art. Art can be both in the eye of the beholder and in the intent of the creator. The creator can create something they believe to be a work of art which could be panned by some and praised by others. The beholder can in return trash something or hail it as a great work of art.

Most works of art are usually trying to express some message or point of view on life. A creator of some work could have their intended message either widely misinterpreted or completely ignored by the general public. It is up to the beholder to gleam the creators intent or see an alternate form of expression.

That's all for now. Next week, will be my last blog post for this class. I will be blogging in response to the science fiction novel Neuromancer which I plan to start reading Wednesday morning at work. See you then!