Art, Moral Improvement and Midjourney

Some people believe that art can inspire people to be their better selves.  Can art result in moral improvement?

 

Using Midjourney at the lower levels of subscription is like using a party line (for those of you who know what that is).  Everyone in your Discord group can see your work and you can see what they are doing.

 

I had nothing to do with the following image.  The theme it represents is an old one, still I thought it was entertaining and well executed.  I was impressed that this technology can produce an image that looks like this right out of the box.

Marvel and Body Armor for Women

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You may not be aware that the issue of body armor for women and how you deal with those women of various breast sizes is a somewhat controversial or at least ongoing topic.  The history of this goes way back and includes rumors from the greeks about how the Amazons in the 5th century BC dealt with the issue.  

 

On a more directly sexist note, the dubious choices made by fantasy illustrators whose heroines have somewhat preposterous bosoms and even more preposterous bodice / body armor has long been noted by teenage boys in the 1920s through to the present day.

 

Marvel has entered into this fashion dialog by proposing a sensible yet imposing solution for the TVA operatives (Time Variance Authority) who enforce the laws and repress deviance from the "Sacred Timeline".  This is from the first episode of Loki (2021). 

 

Remember for body armor to be reasonable, it has to be comfortable enough to wear for a long time, certainly all day.  Yikes, that must be annoying.

 

This is the Marvel proposal.  It doesnt look all that comfortable but at least it is not overtly decorative.  It looks functional. 

 

 

 Here are two examples of body armor from concept sketches found on the Internet.

                                        

 

I am not sure that either of the two above are practical and look more like parade armor to me, e.g. the armor used in presentations, not battle.

I will spare you some of the more egregious, often bikini-inspired, concepts in this area.

The Fabulous Imagery of the Anima Sola

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Rarely does a phrase result in so much evocative imagery as the term Anima Sola. Well known to those of a Roman Catholic bent, the Anima Sola refers to the lonely soul who suffers in Purgatory as the sins of mortal existence are expunged so that they can ascend to heaven. Those of us who did not grow up in a Roman Catholic home or neighborhood are perhaps not so aware of the significance of the term and its associated imagery even though we have probably seen some of the images without knowing what we were looking at.

In reviewing the Anima Sola and related concepts as part of research in belief systems about hell and punishment for sin, a topic of great personal interest to me, I came across a number of wonderful variations on this theme, and wanted to decorate my blog with them.

As always with images taken from the Internet, provenance and ownership are fluid. I have listed below what I believe are the sources for the images exhibited here. And there are many more fabulous interpretations of this concept available at those links.

A reader of this blog, esteemed pioneer of computer animation, Julian Gomez, has asked why these portraits all seem to represent women.  I have wondered this myself, and I will have to do more research. You can see our dialogue in the comments section.

I suspect that a more thorough understanding of the ideas behind the images will be necessary to really understand what is going on here.

This is one of my favorites.  Notice the hacksaw to cut through the chains.  No passive suffering here!

http://royal-farr.livejournal.com/132436.html

http://www.enchanted-visions.net/anima-sola.html

http://marialionzaguaicapuronegrofelipe.blogspot.com/2014/06/oracion-del-anima-sola-para-peticiones.html

https://www.pinterest.com/theofrastus/anima-sola/

http://magdalenelaundrytestimony.org/stigmata/4520426924

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00CICM9P2/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1

Jim Shaw at the New Museum

        This world is mine, in time. You best of all of us, Gabriel, should understand ambition.

                                                                              Lucifer/Satan from Constantine (2005)

I am happy to report that an alumnus of degraf/Wahrman (dWi), Jim Shaw, is having a retrospective of his work exhibited at the New Museum in New York (see link below).

I have not one, not two, but at least five friends from the early days of computer animation who are recognized as successful contemporary fine artists to varying degrees. But all of the others are involved in the digital arts in one way or another.  Jim is the only one I know who has achieved his success through what we might call "old media", you know, painting and drawing, with no computers involved.

Of course there were many “artists” who helped found computer animation in the 1970s and 1980s and “art” is one of those culturally laden terms that mean different things to different communities.  Hollywood is particularly fond of giving its own meaning to the term "artist" as is discussed in this post:   What is Meant When it is Said Hollywood Needs Artists    Other types of artists in this world might include production designers, fashion designers, commercial art directors, graphic designers, visual effects supervisors, and so forth.

But we are not talking about that kind of artist, as difficult and competitive as some of those fields are. What we are talking about here is the varsity squad, an artist of the sense of museums, collectors, galleries in NY and London and notices in certain elite magazines.  This is what we might call the :"real" world of fine art.

What you may not be aware of is that this is the dream of so many artists, or at least of people who went to art school, and it is far from easy to achieve. Of 100 talented people who attend art school, how many become recognized artists? Of the people who attend film school, how many become noted directors of film?

But the really disturbing thing is not just that my friend, Jim Shaw, is successful at pretty much exactly what he wanted to achieve back when I knew him in 1980, the really disturbing thing is that he is to have a retrospective one person show.  Retrospective?  I just exchanged email with Jim and he is as always creating new pieces right and left.  Perhaps I am giving too much emphasis  to one meaning of the term "retrospective".

There is much more I could say about Jim Shaw, but I will just mention a few of them here. First, he never secretly aspired to be a commercial art director, or a visual effects supervisor, or anything else but what he did. Second, as long as I have known him, from when I believe he was an assistant art director at Robert Abel & Associates, he was producing his own work every day. Publishing his own books of his artwork. Putting on a Thrift Store Art exhibition. Third, and finally, we hired him at deGraf/Wahrman as an art director for various reasons, but the most important one to me was that it would help him make a living while he was building his career as a fine artist.

I haven't talked to him for about 20 years but I recently exchanged email with him courtesy of John Nelson (I had had trouble tracking Jim down).   Not only is he doing well, but he has a life, apparently, and has been married for over 20 years.  Amazing.

Information about his show in New York is at

http://www.newmuseum.org/exhibitions/view/jim-shaw-the-end-is-here

His public statement from the Thrift Store Art exhibit is here:

http://globalwahrman.blogspot.com/2013/01/statement-from-thrift-store-art.html

A More Personal and Analog Approach to Computer Art

Those of us who worked to create a new art form(s) with computers have been gratified by some of the progress in the creation of computer generated art. But we must also acknowledge that the process of exploration has been uneven, with some areas going from triumph to triumph, and others lying neglected and underappreciated. Sure, it is easy to be enthusiastic about vast expense paid to create impossibly stupid movies with computers which are sequels to impossibly stupid movies that make a half a billion dollars.   Indeed, how could we not celebrate them as clearly they are the very highest form of art that our society could aspire to. And this is shown in the most sincere way we prove these things: by success at generating commerce. Without commerce, some would say, there is no real art.

It is easy to celebrate a film and a director who publically dismisses as irrelevant the technologists and artists who made his lead character of his film, in this case a tiger. A director who laughs at them in their misery and impoverishment. It is the fate of these so-called digital artists to suffer as they are worthless scum and anyone can be hired off the street and be trained to do their job. In fact governments spend hundreds of millions of dollars to impoverish and destroy their places of employment so that they may have the glamour of computer animation facilities in their own country. That is only natural and correct. (1)

Since we must acknowledge that doing computer animation as it was traditionally performed is a failure in this country, with a few exceptions, it is time I think to reexamine our roots and look at other forms of expression with computers. For example, a friend of mine, Tom Brigham, sent me an interesting youtube video of an unknown artist (unknown to me) doing an art experiment by applying the power of a neon sign transformer to a former LCD television. Thus the artist experiments with the interface between the analog represented by the voltage from the transformer, with the digital, as represented by the cracked LCD display, in unexpected and creative ways.

All potential practitioners of this process are reminded to be very careful with those high voltage logic probes.

Although the final work is not a success, the process demonstrated by the artist clearly has potential and I hope that many will also experiment with creating new art in this way. Of course, I hope they are very careful with the power transformers, and avoid death by electrocution, which would be unpleasant.

LCD TV vs Neon Sign Transformer

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e4VypcXwHLg

Ed Systems on Youtube

http://www.youtube.com/user/Aussie50/featured

________________________________________

1. Examples of such countries include Canada, the UK, Taiwan, the People's Republic of China and New Zealand.

modified 12/5/2013

What is Meant When It Is Said "Hollywood Needs Artists"

Many years ago in New York, a dear friend of mine who was head of NY SIGGRAPH called me up and announced "<Unnamed Studio> needs artists! <Unnamed Studio> needs artists!".

I laughed at her endearing naivete.

"Yes," I said, "Sure, absolutely, <Unnamed Studio> needs artists. No doubt. But what you mean by the word 'artist' and what they mean are completely different."

"Huh?" she said, completely baffled by my cynical response.

"When you say 'artist', you mean something along the lines of 'a person with a strong personal vision and an even stronger ego who works for years or decades to establish a unique or at least a personal style associated with their name, exhibits generally through galleries, establishes themselves within certain very specific contemporary art communities and strives within the very narrow bounds of whatever we currently call Contemporary Art, for grants, recognition and to become collectable. They cultivate their Art in America mentions, and other even more important critical venues whose name I do not even know."

"But when <Unnamed Studio> says they need 'artists', they mean something along the lines of 'a person who has been highly trained with certain specific technical skills associated with the visual arts who are able to use those specific skills under the direction of a hierarchy of other management and in peaceful coexistence with their fellow biped mammals, doing that exact same task, at a certain level of productivity in order to achieve on time and on schedule a very complicated entertainment-related consumer product. They are not expected nor are they likely to contribute any personal vision to the project, that vision is provided at another level and their input is generally not desired or tolerated. They will have no ownership of the project either creative or financial beyond very limited contracturally specified rights, generally of using material for a demo reel. They are the classic disenfranchised labor described by Marx and Engels and, when the project is over, the providers of capital expect them to attend a wrap party and go away.'"

The term "artist" is one of those terms, like "freedom" or "happy", that is layered with meaning that is culturally determined.  Not every culture, or industry, redefines all terms but when they do redefine a term, they do so with complete sincerity and, generally speaking, do so while being completely unaware that they are doing so.  It is important for a visitor or observer from outside to realize this and be sensitive to the issues.  So therefore, be aware, in the entertainment industry, the role of the artist is to manufacture consumer products in order to maximize shareholder value.

Also be aware that the term "artist" is often used as an insult, meaning self indulgent and difficult, as in "he/she is a real artist, if you know what I mean".

Art In America
http://www.artinamericamagazine.com/

revised 1/2/2015