First, I must confess that I am probably about 5 years behind the curve when it comes to modern technology. Oh, I’m on Facebook, I send e-mails, but I avoid using Skype because that’s just too complicated for me. I have never owned an I-pod. I don’t Tweet. So, if I say anything in
Picture Yourself in a Boat on a River....
tonight’s blog that betrays an unbelievable lack of tech knowledge, feel free to correct me in the comments.
One of my Facebook friends, named Tequila Mockingbird, which I think is a pretty cool name, posted these photos, which he or she (as I said, it’s a Facebook friend, I don’t know this person in real life and the name, creative as it is, is non gender-specific) took with their i-phone and then altered it with different apps. (actually, I guess they reposted. The original artist is Paul Picasso, probably a fake name, too.)
Now, up to this point, I haven’t been a real big fan of altered art as an art form. I hate Blingees, and Photoshop is downright dishonest. But I saw these and I suddenly realized something-the i-phone (or the app) is like an externalized LSD. Allow me to elaborate:
Take an existing image, and alter it in a dozen different ways. It’s largely what acid did (Does? Don’t know, haven’t done any for years and you never hear about it any more.) It derailed the normal thought processes which go from point A to point B to point C. Acid made you go from point A to point A with flowers, to point A dancing in a circle, to point A standing on it’s head. You got fixated on tiny things, and saw the universe therein.
This is the same thing. An image, altered, then altered a different way. There are billions of different ways of looking at the universe. Maybe it’s not art, because it doesn’t really require much creativity on the part of a human being, but is that part of the definition? If art is defined as a different view, a way we have never seen something before, then this is great art.
If billions of people, with billions of apps, alter billions of photos, that creates a databank of alternative images which are becoming the basis of the internet mind. It is beautiful. It is ugly. It is frightening. It is inspiring. It is kind of cool.
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