Using Computers to Create Art

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Pages:248
ISBN:0-7734-5655-4
978-0-7734-5655-6
Price:$179.95 + shipping
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As artists increasingly integrate digital procedures into their art making processes, they are confronted with the need to transform older practices, often working through challenging phases of translation. This study examines the ways in which six artists whose practices are based primarily on hand making methods are exchanging hands-on engagement using traditional materials with digital manipulation programs. Three key themes focusing on researching the electronic library, computerized image production and the physicality of art making are extracted from the artists’ interviews. These themes in conjunction with theoretical discourses addressing issues of time and place, cyborgology and art education, illuminate the terms of resistance, incorporation and innovation that characterize the interchanges between hand and computer procedures for producing images.

Reviews

“ ... Dr. Bowen’s work, initially autobiographical because of her artistic struggle to understand how incorporating the computer has altered her art making by hand, examines the dialectic and gaps resulting from the often dichotomizing effects of the computer, the mouse, the Internet, and differing software applications on a particular group of artists as they merge computers with their traditional modes of art making such as drawing and painting. She does so through clear elaboration of the theoretical spaces she enters and crosses, and particularly though micro case studies of six practicing artists at differing stages of computer incorporation. Central to the project are the six case studies employing qualitative field face-to-face interviews and ethnographic observation to bring forward the artists’ voices ...” – (from the Foreword) Professor Mary Leigh Morbey, York University

“ ... The text speaks eloquently to the artists’ senses of varying degrees of unease, surprise, satisfaction and pleasure ... All, however, might be described as traditional artists in the sense that they enjoy the physicality provided by brush and canvas or comparable materials. At the same time the artists have contemporary sensibilities insofar as they realize the computer’s potential to be just another studio tool ... much of the text is devoted to just what these differences are and how they manifest themselves in the psyche of the artist.” – Professor Boyd White, McGill University

“ ... [this work] presents an important contribution to art educational research. It is an engaging and well-written text that offers a useful philosophical background for further inquiries into cyborg-pedagogies and epistemologies of art making in the digital age.” – Professor Vladimir Spicanovic, Ontario College of Art and Design

Table of Contents

Foreword by Mary Leigh Morbey
Acknowledgements
Introduction
1. Disruptions and Displacements
2. Rethinking Art Making Practices
3. Micro Case Studies of Six Visual Artists
4. The Exploration
5. Excavating Places and Spaces of Art Making
6. The Emergence of the Hybrid Cyborg Artist
7. Implications for Artists and Art Educators
References
Appendix A: Interview Questions
Appendix B: E-mail Survey Questions
Index

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