Pope.L - America's Friendliest Black Artist

 Just discovered Pope.L, ironically (but perhaps fittingly since death is a recurring theme in my work) through his obituary. I really like the way he uses humour to say difficult things without people instinctively rejecting them - a bit like I said before about using humour as a 'viral coating' to allow more serious messages to penetrate. For instance, he had a business card with "America's Friendliest Black Artist", which I think is brilliant - it's sort of just funny and satirical at one level... And then you start thinking about how it hits differently because it's "black artist", and how people of colour could feel obliged to be 'extra friendly' simply because of their skin colour.

Supporting this idea of using humour and whimsy to 'inject' difficult messages, Pope.L said:

“So you have this idea of pain and struggle sitting alongside the lightness. This language is a problem, but it’s also an interesting problem. How can I make these words approachable but not lose the sting of their character. It is a writing problem, and it is a performing problem.”

The idea of making words 'approachable' while not loosing the 'sting' is fascinating. I want to use humour to make difficult ideas 'approachable' or 'palatable' while not diluting them to the extent that they loose their meaning, or become pitiful. A lot of the advertising for charities seems to have fallen into this tar pit - soft strings music, mushy soft-focus imagery, and sad stories robbed of any risk of offending.

Pope.L also had things to say on my favourite 'topic d'jour' - meaning in art. I am VERY convinced that meaning is central to my personal definition of art, Pope.L said:

“Meaning is important, just because I value nothingness or incompleteness or absence does not mean I do not value meaning. It’s just that sometimes meaning, our use of it, can be used to obscure meaning or devalue it. And then there is the obvious [...] As a tool, meaning has its limits.”

I immediately agree with the obvious - meaning too painfully laid bare is not compelling, it's dull, not engaging (consider the thought experiment of placing next to the artwork a painfully detailed explanation of ever aspect of the image and what it means). Art needs to promise meaning, and it needs to honour that promise - I worry that a lot of modern art promises meaning but ultimately betrays the viewers trust by having been constructed with a focus on LOOKING meaningful, not BEING meaningful. I think what Pope.L is saying (and I'd love comments if I'm not 'getting it') is that meaning has to be applied mindful of it's limits - specifically that by mandating 'one meaning' too aggressively, you rob people of the chance to find and/or explore other possible meanings - by giving everything a meaning, you don't tempt people to explore further.

Finished "The Salt Path" by Raynor Winn

 Just finished reading The Salt Path by Raynor Winn, as recommended by Catherine from my course. I enjoyed it, although I found some of the themes difficult as Raynor's husband has a terminal diagnosis. It was nice to read about places I knew, and she covers some interesting ground around how they are treated, mostly for being homeless. I did find a nice quote:

"We lay in the tent at the edge of Lyme Regis, on a patch of grass between the lobster pots and the chalets, and let death in. And life came with it. The jagged, shattered, lost fragments of our lives slowly, mercurially drawn back together."

Again the acceptance of death not as an act of despair, but as an act of healing - of bringing together two colours - life and death - so each shines more vividly next to it's complement.

Interim Show Idea: "WishYooWer" Mental Health Postcards

 I've been thinking a lot about the interim show - everyone seems very nervous and keen, and that's making me nervous and keen. Jonathan suggested we use it as a place to experiment and play, so I've been messing about with a couple of ideas.

Given the space is public (and rather purely secured!) could I make a piece of art that advertises it's desire to stolen... And then work with the building security to capture it's theft, and turn THAT into a piece of 'meta-art' - effectively a comment on value in art.

However, the idea above seems a bit shallow - more of a stunt than something with real value - so I was evolving to think instead about art that is created to be given away - art as an act of kindness as one of my peers calls it. Around the same time, something a friend said made me think about the idea of postcards, but postcards that were 'honest' and open about mental health... Which made me think about creating art that was post cards, and giving them away, with the hope that people would share if/how they sent them, and I could therefore create a piece of art that was both the cards themselves, but also the story around who sent them, and to whom... I'm quite committed to this idea, and have produced a couple of designs now, e.g.:

I think I need to refine and focus the idea a bit - viz:

• Do I want them to be funny? How important is funny vs functional?
• Do I want them to be usable?
• Are they about disability or mental health or both?
• How important is the idea of "if mental health wasn't taboo" to the designs - it's a guiding theme, but does it conflict with the things above?

I also need to think carefully about how I distribute them - plan A was to get a postcard rack, and just leave them to get taken... But I like the idea of being there to talk about them, and the cheek of being part of the artwork... But how do I do that in a way that doesn't stop people taking the cards and/or feeling open to share?

Lastly I'm thinking about the name - I was very excited by "Wish you would hear", cos they are post cards, geddit... but that's pretty cheesy... So maybe "Wish you were hear".. "Wish you were"... I think probably something like "WishYooWer" and leave people to make the here/hear pun themselves...

Accepted for WYF aka No Place exhibition

 I was worried I'd offended the curator, but it looks like I have been accepted to be part of the WYF exhibition in Peckham and Online in January! I'll be showing "Waiting Place".

Finished "Lucky Kunst" by Gregor Muir - art as spectacle

 Have been struggling to make time for art (Christmas... Hospitals... Blah) but managed to read "Lucky Kunst" by Gregor Muir - an autobiography about the rise and fall of Young British Art. Overall I found it a bit of a slow read, and it make the artists seem like a pretty unlikable bunch... It taught me a bit more art context, which is good, but it also helped me to see how 'performance art' (in the broadest sense) is something I can leverage - I want to explore how the artist (or personas there-of) can be part of the artwork, and more broadly, how the spectacle around the artwork can be part of the artwork - the artwork is the physical object, but it's the star of a story that is built around it.

Reading the book has also made me feel more committed than ever to making art that is accessible - by which I mean the meaning is explained and shared clearly, not hidden away, but nevertheless presented in a way that is compelling...  Again, I am draw to the idea of creating art that carries meaning on different levels, and can be accessed and enjoyed on different levels.

The Joy of Xmas and popularist art

 Working on a silly, but hopefully fun idea I was suddenly hit by... When I was a kid, everyone was talking about "The Joy of Sex", I guess because it was breaking new ground in making sex something that people could talk about, and think about, without being considered perverts. Given the time of year, I was also thinking about "The Joy of Christmas"... And the two sort of collided in my brain! I'm close to reproducing the icon book cover, with some festive changes:

I felt a bit guilty, I guess because it seems sort of silly and 'popularist', but actually:

• It's been fun to really study the font and placement of the original
• It's been useful to explore my different tools and how to deploy them together
• It's an excuse to play with Generative AI again, and refine how to direct it towards the places I want it to go...
• It's a way to explore humour, and how I use it in my work
• The more I reflect, the more it can carry a more serious message under the 'silly' one (about our more unhealthy attitudes to Christmas and to sex)

And is being 'popularist' really so bad? Does art have to be obscure and inaccessible to be 'worthy'? The more I study, the more I feel angry about the way that art world seems to lock people out - there seems to be a lot of emperor's new clothes - the harder I look, the more sure I am that the emperor is often stark bollock naked. In want my art to mean something to people, I want my art to be seen by lots of people. I want them to be able to consume it on whatever level they wish. I admire things that can hide subtle messages under more accessible ones... Like a virus hiding it's true nature behind a coating so it can slip unnoticed inside. I want to make art that can make some people laugh, while making others cry, or ideally, both at the same time!

Thoughts on "aura" in digital art, value, and NFTs (gasp) prompted by The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction

A central concept in "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" is that of 'aura'. Benjamin doesn't really define 'aura' directly, but wikipedia sums it up as:

The aura of a work of art derives from authenticity (uniqueness) and locale (physical and cultural); Benjamin explains that "even the most perfect reproduction of a work of art is lacking in one element: Its presence in time and space, its unique existence at the place where it happens to be" located.

My understanding (taken from my notes) is aligned:

Aura is implicitly the specific circumstances and history of the object/performance/artwork - i.e. the 'now' of the viewers experience of the artwork and all the 'now's of that artwork that lead up to it from its creation to the viewer's encounter with it

E.g. a film actor's performance looses it's aura because the audience are not able to view it directly - they loose the special connection between the actor/theatre/moment and them

Mechanically reproduced things therefore loose their aura, by definition, which seems a tiny bit unfair since he's basically defining the 'special' thing as being 'the thing that mechanically reproduced things don't have'! However, I do agree that he has a point, that by ceasing to be the work of art, every copy is basically diminished. As noted previously, I think every work of digital art is effectively a copy - there can be 'original' copy as all copies are ephemeral.

This leads me to some questions, and tentative opinions:

• To what extent is aura really important? Does it trump meaning? Is it important to meaning: I suspect the answer is 'it depends'... Aura is important to value - people will pay for the work of art, at least more than for a copy. However, aura perhaps only important to meaning if there is a physical object involved, the digital artwork must be created knowing it will never be an original object, and never have provenance. 
• Is aura a sentimental emotional attachment to the object itself? I think it could be actually - but that doesn't mean it's not important! Sentiment is key to art, as I understand it.
• To what extent is the aura about the object itself and to what extent is it about the experience of seeing it? I suspect it's both - although the object is perhaps just a container for the experiences and encounters it has had.
• To what extent is Benjamin filtering his definition of the artwork through his own prejudice and assumptions? I.e. the editing process that occurs in cinema is arguably as much a part of the artwork as the performance of the actors. There is definitely something 'missing' from a purely digital work but that is made up for perhaps in other ways, which might also drive more engagement, more meaning, more value. There is definitely a feeling for me that Benjamin's views are somewhat rooted in their time - old art is 'good', new art is 'bad'. Old art is precious, new art is popularist and low quality.

I was reflecting that there is definitely a part of the artwork 'missing' by not having a way to attach the 'story' of the artwork to it - every digital copy is cleanly minted, robbed of the dust and scratches of a real object with a real life. NFTs are trumped as a way to add this history back, and actually a lot of the culture of NFTs now makes more sense to me! It's about creating a single instance of the digital artwork, and creating a chain of custody from the artist to the initial buyer, to the subsequent buyers, and NFT artists will work hard to create an 'event' around the minting, which the buyer then becomes part of. So do NFTs solve the 'problem' of aura? They partly solve the problem of value, but:

• Does an NFT actually capture anything other than the idea of a chain of custody? You can prove that I own an NFT of an artwork, but I don't actually own the artwork itself, which can continue to be copied, and those copies are only inferior to people who care about the NFT
• NFTs don't necessarily improve the meaning of an image - although it would be fun to find a way so they did - so the chain of custody became part of the meaning of the artwork itself! E.g. finding a series of owners that themselves are relevant to the artwork e.g. an artwork about the survivors of a traumatic event could be 'owned' in turn by the survivors of that event!
• NFTs are yet another way to create artificial scarcity, which seems morally dubious... Deliberately preventing people from owning an artwork

There's definitely some interesting noodling to be done around using the chain of custody as part of the artwork itself - creating an event that creates a unique artwork by virtue of the people/things/places involved... Not sure what that would look like yet...

Study statement - logos and pathos

 I've been noodling in the back of my mind how to settle the double study statement, and I was struck today that I often speak informally about my "logical side" and my "emotional side", the former being broadly grounded in my tech and science, the latter being broadly grounded in my artistic side, post-bereavement. For example, logical Tom doesn't believe in bad luck, but emotional Tom always salutes magpies. Both are me, and but there is a slight duality there, even in the moment. Nothing mental health related though (I hope!). In general, I seem to be 'playing' a lot with the idea of multiplicity, like the idea that there have been 3 Toms (so far). 

So to lean into this, I think my study statement should be a joint project between Logical Tom and Emotional Tom. To make it a bit more fun, I'll assert they are different individuals, and maybe see how far I can play with that before I get shutdown, and generally push some boundaries ;) The Greeks talked about logos (logical arguments), and pathos (emotional arguments), so I think I'll have Tomgos Grey and Taythos Grey! Each can work with the other, firmly asserting that it's a joint project, and that they intend to submit a single body of work against two (logically identical) study statements.

Taythos Grey (aka Tom) will collaborate with Tomgos Grey, on:

Fucking Inappropriate: Expressing the Socially Unsay-able with Humour and Compassion, using open source technology

Tomgos Grey (aka Tom) will collaborate with Taythos Grey, on:

Exploring Human and Expressive Mark-Making with Open Technology to express the socially un-sayable

Let's hope they don't fall out!

Started "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" by Walter Benjamin

 If I'm honest, I didn't realise it was an essay, so I am already fairly well into it ;) Been on my 'to read' list for a while, but when Jonathan mentioned it, I thought I'd bump it up! VERY dense prose, but some interesting ideas already:

"Even if the circumstances into which the product of technological reproduction of the work of art may be introduced in no way impair the continued existence of the work otherwise, its here and now will in any case be devalued. And if that by no means applies to the work of art alone but also, mutatis mutandis , to a landscape (for instance) that in a film slides past the viewer, as a result of that process a supremely sensitive core in the art object is affected that no natural object possesses in the same degree of vulnerability. That is its genuineness."

How to think about that for digital art? How to value something that only exists as pixel values and can be perfectly copied more-or-less infinitely? Is there really any 'original' in digital art? Is the copy on my hard-drive the 'original'? Or is the copy on Instagram's servers? I would argue there is no original, just copies.

The value of the original according to Benjamin lies in it's history, but the copy on the hard-drive hasn't been 'touched' by me any more than the copy on Instagram's servers. I could sign it as an NFT, and create a chain of custody, but does that really change the nature of the copy? Does that one copy become special? The reason I think NFTs are a con is because I don't think it does - the fact that you own the NFT only matters to other NFT enthusiasts, in my view at least.

I could make a bunch of prints, and say that they are the originals... But already the plural is troubling, although not insurmountable, and I could sign them, but again, are they special? Maybe? The fact that the copies on Insta are too low-res to print is interesting... Do I need to destroy the original files to keep them special? Do I have to promise not to print more? Artificial scarcity seems wrong too, and reminds me too much of the wealthy collectors who would buy hundreds of copies of valuable plates only to deliberately destroy all but a couple :(