Art is passion

Technique alone is never enough. You have to have passion. Technique alone is just an embroidered pot holder.
—Raymond Chandler

Programming and web development is often a cold silent world. We sit in front of ever larger screens, growing ever more quiet as we move all our conversations, all our lives even, on to a souless ‘cloud’ of information. It can be pretty bleak. The push towards this empty void is accelerated by some constant code mantras. Often progress means faster; it means raw numbers and a race towards small benchmarkable improvements. Its a society of technique, of sharpening blades and micro-optimizations. For me, at least, theres something missing. It’s what Raymond Chandler points to above. Passion here is the difference between Technique and Craft, between Hacking and Art.

Hacking is so 1998

I want to retire the word hacking.

I’m sick of it. It implies the completely wrong metality that I would aspire to. hacking conveys butchery, it suggests unproffesionalism. Most of all it suggests a ‘git it done’ attitude that is pretty opposite the idea of making art. Is code art? I’m not going to go in to the ‘what is art?’ circle – its a trap. The art is almost irrelevant, it is the act thats import. The act of creating.

I don’t want to be hacking – I want to be creating.

Art is balance

The more I think about it, life itself is really about balance – or at least the pursuit there of. Not to get all Geoge Lucas – but there are a lot of forces at work and in ourselves that drive what our lives – our art, our work – are about. Here, I believe that the artist, above all, is able to stradle the line between these powers and emotions.

As a programmer here are some of the tightropes you’ll have to walk:

• Pride vs Humility: Taking pride in your craft while being humble about its origins. We’re all just re-formulating old ideas.
• Winning vs Respect: The drive to win and be the best is productive until it means sacrificing knowledge you can gain from your competitora
• Shipping vs Perfection: This is also similar to Quality vs Speed. The need to get something out often is more important then the need to atain perfection in your work. Artists face this every day and the knowledge of self in this respect is often what create uniquness. Jackson Pollock once famously said, when asked about when he knew one of his iconic paintings was ‘finished’ – “how do you know when you’re finished making love?”. Artists rely on thier insticts, not their critics for “shipping”.

Striving

To be an artist is to make art. Where hacking is an act, art is a lifelong goal.

I’m not an artist, but I’d like to think I’m trying.

The Whitney Museum, one of the best and most renowned art museums in New York (and thus the world) is using Flickr to promote their Biennial Show. Regardless of the fact that the lovely woman in charge of this project happens to be my lovely girlfriend, this is an awesome use of Flickr as a tool. I’ve always firmly believed that Flickr’s strength lies not only in its community but by how it can be used as a leap pad for inspiration and exploration of mediums beyond just photography. It’s cool to see bigger institutions jump on the bandwagon and open up to the social web, and in turn the youngin’s.

See also:
The Facebook Biennial
The Whitney Biennial 2008
Friend & Stranger

Last night, my friend Matt Loux (via my cousin Abby), had a book signing for the release of his new graphic novel SIDESCROLLERS. Its his first book that he’s done top to bottom (writing and all the art), and its really impressive. Not only is the art catchy and continually interesting, but the story is really funny and well put together. Matt has a real eye for page layout, and pushing his characters and the human form to a cartoon limit. Check out these preview pages and if you like it pick it up from Oni Press or Amazon.

Also check out another great review it got within the blog-o-sphere.

This past weekend, Kat and I traveled to Philadelphia to visit two of our best friends, Tal Ben-Yaacov and Asuka Goto, both extremely talented sculptors. Tal has his first real post-college show of his sculpture at in West Philadelphia at The Saturn Club, and we were happily obligated to be there to help set up and attend the opening.

He is showing five large sculptures in total, three completed in the last couple of months. Tal’s work is a mix of found objects, mainly metal car parts and organic plaster and wooden shapes. The metal pieces are brightly painted while the plaster often remains its natural pale white color.

I am of course partial, but I love Tal’s work. The lines are so clean, yet even the most clearly engineered metal objects are given the quality of life within the context of his complete pieces. The bright colors of his metal work, at first estrange the objects from any natural or organic interpretation, but when combined with the seemingly fluid plaster objects are given life. They would walk – they would hum – if you gave them the right push.

In his plaster works especially there is a dialogue about process and creation. The works are initially cast in plastic bags or with wooden forms. Then after being formed with drills and chisels, are given up to nature, being organically disintegrated by water (a stream in fairmont park). The end effect is an evocation of the original shape, including the taught-ness of the form, however, eroded, recreated, and reformed in a way that could only be the work of the chaotic and random nature of a water.

In this way, Tal’s work speaks of its own genesis. It’s about the reformation, the refactoring, of disparate energies and objects.

I’m trying to help him put together a website, but in the meantime you can see more pictures of his show at my flickr stream. If you’re interested in purchasing or commissioning work from him, or just finding out more info – you can email him at tbenyaacov at gmail.