“The Look of the Future”

Target is an ok brand and for the price shopping there is fine. But when they sponsor art like they do, it generally is the tepid kind (like the altoids collection)

This work looks like broadcast graphics (design) or the stuff on the subway ads for weekend getaways to the Bahamas. Im not one to separate design and art but this is tame and “abstract” only in the sense that it is geometric. WHere’os the beef?

Can you hear me now?

Target is an ok brand and for the price shopping there is fine. But when they sponsor art like they do, it generally is the tepid kind (like the altoids collection)

This work looks like broadcast graphics (design) or the stuff on the subway ads for weekend getaways to the Bahamas. Im not one to separate design and art but this is tame and “abstract” only in the sense that it is geometric. WHere’os the beef?

Can you hear me now?

I’m confused. What does abstraction have to do with the separation between art and design?

while i agree that street art is being capitalized on a lot by various companies, but this isnt really for them to make a buck i dont think. if i understand right, its for their free nights at various museums, im from minneapolis and they sponsor every thursday night here at the walker so that people can see art and not have to pay the $8 or whatever.

“What does abstraction have to do with the separation between art and design?”

Thats a good question, for sure. I don’t have the answer.

I’d say it like this though:

Does abstraction separate art from design?

What I meant was that good design can be art, and that this particular abstract design does not read as art to me (meaningfull/resonant). It seems empty and alienates me, when I know thats probably not the intent.

Its just not an abstraction to me, despite the geometric design.

ALso, for the sake of argument, lets discuss art AS entertainment.

I think art is a FORM of entertainment, defined broadly as that which keeps one from boredom. These kinds of distinctions are based on taste in my mind.

And saying “you are confused” comes acrossin cyberspace as snarky. Is that your intent? Just curious.

And saying “you are confused” comes acrossin cyberspace as snarky. Is that your intent? Just curious.

I totally didn’t mean that to sound snarky. You’ll have to bear with me as I figure out how comment moderation. I just didn’t know what you meant. In any case, I agree. The work is horrible.

Saying “I am confused” is not rude in cyberspace or anywhere else. I didn’t understand the first comment either.

That work looks like “digital abstraction” of the type you see at depthcore.com and similar sites. It’s somewhere between club graphics made in Illustrator, tagger art and cubist/futurist style art. It’s potentially a new flavor of abstraction and might evolve into something if it gets enough serious criticism. Not saying there aren’t kitschy aspects to it. In this image I’m amused by the attempt to jazz up the painting with some floating 3D forms, a la Judy Pfaff. But I can’t really tell what I’m looking at materialwise from the jpeg.

It’s a still from an animated video, which you can view here. I suspect you may change your mind about the potential for this work once you view the movie – I think it’s going take an awful lot to turn that into something more than it already is.

I don’t dislike it as much as you might think.
I do some pretty convoluted digital abstraction myself–a cruder, lower fi, more material, more reflexive version of this, so I like seeing what other people are doing, even if it’s simulated, commercial “fake abstraction.”
I haven’t read the Spear but I’d like to “remix” this to get it away from the advertising veneer and standard hipness so I could think about those patterns. How much is computer convention? How much tagger convention? What’s new? Any nuggets? I think there are a few.
I didn’t find the brushing at the start very convincing but it was kind of nice seeing the Illustrator stuff materializing quickly at the end in response to the tagger’s “gestures.” The Judy Pfaff part is ridiculous–kind of like art in a bad sci fi movie.
Overall it’s bogus but I want to stay open to “digital Keith Haring” if it can be done at all.

i’m one to separate art from design and entertainment. i think we can say that historically art has been distinct from entertainment (how far back can we consider an entertainment industry?) big topic, but i’d throw my hat in by suggesting a major difference between the two is an emphasis on consumption that constitutes the entertainment industry. true, the art world at the moment seems all about consumption. but i think it’s only to us now in this situation that art seems like entertainment. for my part, i’d say we can only hope that “consumer interest in the field could be a reversible trend.”… and beware of the things that keep us from boredom.

also, i’m glad to hear that there will be fewer ‘fresh links!’. too many of those seem like an impoverished form of content, like i’m hanging around watching someone else surf the web.

i’m one to separate art from design and entertainment. i think we can say that historically art has been distinct from entertainment (how far back can we consider an entertainment industry?) big topic, but i’d throw my hat in by suggesting a major difference between the two is an emphasis on consumption that constitutes the entertainment industry. true, the art world at the moment seems all about consumption. but i think it’s only to us now in this situation that art seems like entertainment. for my part, i’d say we can only hope that “consumer interest in the field could be a reversible trend.”… and beware of the things that keep us from boredom.

also, i’m glad to hear that there will be fewer ‘fresh links!’. too many of those seem like an impoverished form of content, like i’m hanging around watching someone else surf the web.

Tom: Ultimately, that track probably allows you to get the most out of the work that’s there, though for my money, I’d much rather see Target put money into the artist themselves, rather than settling with the crumbs they give us. I’m not thrilled with what’s there, but you have a point that there maybe more there than I had credited. It’s pretty hard to see though, when you end up watching an artist make fake painting gestures to formulize a process. Personally, I enjoy the moving typography at the beginning of the commercial the best, and second some of the abstraction on the cubes. Also, I think Target could commission an artist to do something that didn’t involve their logo. I know it sounds like an outrageous thought, but I think it’s possible to sponsor art without a Target logo, and still make the endeavor useful.

Tom: Ultimately, that track probably allows you to get the most out of the work that’s there, though for my money, I’d much rather see Target put money into the artist themselves, rather than settling with the crumbs they give us. I’m not thrilled with what’s there, but you have a point that there maybe more there than I had credited. It’s pretty hard to see though, when you end up watching an artist make fake painting gestures to formulize a process. Personally, I enjoy the moving typography at the beginning of the commercial the best, and second some of the abstraction on the cubes. Also, I think Target could commission an artist to do something that didn’t involve their logo. I know it sounds like an outrageous thought, but I think it’s possible to sponsor art without a Target logo, and still make the endeavor useful.

Hi David:) As you know I don’t always advocate a separation between the two – I like to see more people engaging with art, I just don’t think it has to mean a compromise in what fine art looks like. I think one of the few ways an artist can be radical these days is to make things that can’t be consumed.

As for the Fresh Links, I don’t know that there are going to be fewer of them necessarily, but they definitely will be managed differently. Certainly, you’re not the only person who’s not interested in what I happen to be looking at during the day, so within a months time there will be separate RSS feed, and better content management system for these links, so they aren’t quite so intrusive. I’m actually writing the same amount I was before though, so it’s not like these links come at the expense of what I might be writing, but rather document a different aspect of what I do.

Saying “I am confused” is not rude in cyberspace or anywhere else. I didn’t understand the first comment either.

I asked for my own reasons. Yeah it wasn’t clear – I thought putting abstract in quotes would turn it into artspeak with all connotations and denotations. It didn’t and it doesn’t.
But there is a difference between “I don’t understand” and “I am confused” it’s a nuanced contextual dealio.

Anyways (that’s another possible snark word, different from the more formal “in any case”) its all about nuance in tonality. This work doen’t have the right nuance for a number of reasons.

But lets look at your Gif animations Tom. Lots of folks have been making gif animations for a long time. Yours are starting to get interesting. They aren’t “convoluted” in the sense that the process is pretty simple to a tech dork. You may go through a convoluted process, but the idea of taking an image down to bitmap dithering is not new, in fact “old hat”. From reading your blog I detect no sense of a Corey Arcangel’s charming “anybody could do this” sort of off the cuff attitude (you said convoluted). In fact, the charm of this sort fo lof-fi work is arrived at by the sense that it is off the cuff – no matter how hard it was to arrive at.

In the same way this work comes across as contrived, overworked and commercial. The video just makes it worse.

Finally, art is entertainment, interactive, therapeutic, moral or otherwise. I don’t care what people say.

Keep the fresh links coming, I really enjoy them.

also snarkiness is not a synonym for rude, in my book.

also snarkiness is not a synonym for rude, in my book.

I wasn’t talking about my GIF animations when I said “convoluted.”

ok, the WAR IS ON. ON!!!!

ok, the WAR IS ON. ON!!!!

Zipthwung: Are you intentionally being antagonistic, because these kinds of comments are not welcome here. Again, your comments make very little sense. You have to do some work if you want people to engage with you.

oh yeah, im snarky. But c’mon, whats the deal?
Defining terms allways helps:

Broadly abstraction refers to taking an idea or feeling and breaking it apart in some way (trasnsposition, superimposition, fragmentation, inversion, mirroring,, substitution) – at some point it becomes something else – something totally abstract. It has its own logic apart from its real world counterpart – it is pure, pure pure.

I said:

“this is tame and “abstract” only in the sense that it is geometric.”

In that sense I’m saying the intitial feeling (excitement? Joy? Mystery?) is tame (meaning tepid, attenuated and without real feeling) and the geometry ( a white cube reference to gallery/interior space?)is a lame idea on par with Coke drinking polar bears but not as interesting as the geico caveman commercials.

That the work is geometric, i argue, does not make it “abstract” in the sense that abstraction embodies or “expresses” some meaning.

If one weere to come up with a definition of the difference between art and design one might say design is is EMPTY of meaning (PURE design).

I dont see any other way to logicly separate art and design.

And its a false distinction to boot.

oh yeah, im snarky. But c’mon, whats the deal?
Defining terms allways helps:

Broadly abstraction refers to taking an idea or feeling and breaking it apart in some way (trasnsposition, superimposition, fragmentation, inversion, mirroring,, substitution) – at some point it becomes something else – something totally abstract. It has its own logic apart from its real world counterpart – it is pure, pure pure.

I said:

“this is tame and “abstract” only in the sense that it is geometric.”

In that sense I’m saying the intitial feeling (excitement? Joy? Mystery?) is tame (meaning tepid, attenuated and without real feeling) and the geometry ( a white cube reference to gallery/interior space?)is a lame idea on par with Coke drinking polar bears but not as interesting as the geico caveman commercials.

That the work is geometric, i argue, does not make it “abstract” in the sense that abstraction embodies or “expresses” some meaning.

If one weere to come up with a definition of the difference between art and design one might say design is is EMPTY of meaning (PURE design).

I dont see any other way to logicly separate art and design.

And its a false distinction to boot.