The Leonardo Syndrome (#edcmooc)
Channel: David Wallace Barr
Date: 2013-02-25

This little 'film' deals with human creativity, one of the apparently indelible aspects of humanity, and with the intimate relationship between technology and the visual arts.

The Leonardo of the title refers, of course, to Leonardo Da Vinci, perhaps one of the most creative humans of recorded history. For me, Leonardo personifies the human drive to create. We are all born with a creative spirit, a capacity most often seen expressed in childhood. Sadly, for most of us the creative urge has been largely turned off by the time we reach maturity. 

Among other things, the film acknowledges how recent advances in technology have created today's digital culture. One massive change attributable to the new reality of infinite digital sharing can be seen in museums, our official repositories of culture and of human creativity. Almost all museums now, even those that have been most repressive in the past and most defensive of reproduction rights (that were never theirs to begin with) today allow photography in their galleries. The products of human creativity through the ages have now become available as the "shoulders of giants" upon which contemporary visual artists may stand in their efforts to achieve new heights of creative output. It is perhaps not simply a happy accident that these new resources become unchained at the same time as digital technology has put a legion of new creative tools at our disposal.

Not the least of the beneficiaries of advances in technology is the educational system. Teachers would do well to get used to the fact that students are bringing an art studio, a dark-room and a movie studio into school every day in their pockets. They will use these new tools no matter what we do. But knowledgeable teachers can help guide student creativity along innovative pathways.

The activities of schoolchildren are featured in the film to make the point. But at the same time, it is the playfulness of children in an educational setting that points the way to how adults too can be free to re-discover their creativity in contemporary digital culture. Technology has given us the ability to play like children with the visual arts.

In addition to what we can see on any trip to a busy museum today, these trends suggest a siesmic shift for the role and significance of the visual arts in our society. As creativity becomes democratized and sharing the results of visual creativity a way of life, we may anticipate dramatic changes in store for the current art 'establishment.' The academy, the art museums, the curators, the art critics, the art dealers, and their cronies, the art collectors - all are beginning to experience already an inexorable weakening of the iron grip they have maintained on public taste and the definition of "what is art." 

With any luck, we are witnessing the dawn of an age where the visual arts are returned at last into the hands of every human, back where they lay at the dawn of human existence.

= = = =

This video was completed and submitted as a digital artefact in partial fulfillment of the requirements for completion of the 'E-learning and Digital Cultures MOOC (EDCMOOC)' offered by the University of Edinburgh. Instructor/Leaders for this MOOC have been Jeremy Knox, Siân Bayne, Hamish Macleod, Jen Ross and Christine Sinclair.

Gallery photographs taken at The Royal Ontario Museum.

3D models modified from those contributed to the Sketchup 3D Warehouse by Lars Zimmerman and Nix Tigris

PC software packages used include:
BBFlashback
DrawPlus X4
Anime Studio
Irfanview
MoviePlus X6
Photoshop Elements 10
Sketchup
Magix Movie Studio Pro
Band-in-a-Box
Audacity

Apps used include:
Decim8
PhotoStudio
Filterstorm
Photosynth
Etchings
Glaze
Autopainter I, II, III
Sketchbook
Paper Camera
ToonPAINT
Pic Collage
Loopseque
SoundPrism
SoundEffects

All software trade names are the registered trademarks of their respective creators/distributors.

[No museum objects were vandalized in the making of this film!]