The treasure of art
By: Melissa Pelusi De León
Tags: Art, Meaning, Digital Art

By:Melissa Pelusi De León

5/6/2019

Art keeps treasures in it, but art is also a treasure, which we have learned to value and treasure. For a long time we have made art to tell a story, and no matter how much time passes, or how many new branches we find about art, it continues to fulfill that purpose.

Art can tell us a story of the future or of past times, of realities that do not exist or of our deepest dreams and secrets that we seek to understand. Without art, we had probably gone crazy, because with art we managed to express what we could never have imagined to explain with words. Art helps us to free our minds and whether or not you are an artist you are constantly using art to relax and release stress, and often we do it unconsciously, because unwittingly we are always thinking and doing art, in different ways, and that in some cases it is difficult to identify it, but art is embedded in our lives.

But I feel that lately art has become just a meaning to try to beat the nothing, and in this way has lost a little history, because a story is deeper than a meaning.

In a book called: NOTHING, by Janne Teller (Janne Teller. (2000) Nothing: Spain: Seix Barral) tells us about the difficult situation faced by young people today, and how their lives have become a repetition constant of a life cycle, where everyone seeks to be remembered. Here is where Pierre, who decides to give up this way of life, and how his classmates try to return the meaning to life, choosing common objects or everyday use that affect their lives, or that are always present in them .

These objects that use the book, in a certain way, become art, because later the young people sell their monument of meaning to a museum. And when selling it the mound loses its meaning and becomes art.

In a certain way I feel that art has become increasingly an enormous meaning with which we try to justify ourselves and with which we try to leave a mark on the earth to be remembered, but it does not tell us a story, it does not make us anymore question our existence because it is not talking about some remorse of the artist, but is talking about a desperate desire to mean something. As we see it in the piece La Fuente, by Duchamp, in witch the artist has admitted that this piece was originally made as a joke towards art, where he tried to prove that anything could be art, but critics took his piece very seriously and today is a piece for which many would pay a fortune to have.

(Image 2. La Fuente, Duchamp )

That’s why I feel that at this moment art is stuck, art seems to have become a constant repetition of the landscapes we already know, and if it is not, it is usually an object with meaning, but it lacks of history, or the repetition of an old work, painted again, or digitally modified.

Times are definitely changing, and one of the paths I like the most that seems to be taking art is in the digital field,which is where I find more hope for the art in the future, and this is because digital art still has many closed doors, which we have yet to discover.

Photography is one of these doors and has become an important face in the art world, just as in the era of digital art; people seem interested in capturing art in a new way, and photography helps a lot to keep a piece of our history; a sunset that we liked, the corners of the planet that we are not all able to visit, and even a family portrait, or old relatives that we do not see anymore.

Photography opens many doors, and when those photographs enter the network, and one is able to edit them, it is when the magic of the digital age comes into action, because one can modify the image as much as one wishes, or the colors of this one, or the textures it has, one can even make an image look like a photograph.

And it is also thanks to digital art, that the technology to animate has increased and has changed so much since its inception. At first the animation followed the classic art type, from the walls of the caves to the paper, the animation followed closely the art, and when more methods to create art existed, easier or more options have the animators to animate.

People have always been interested in recording the movement, because those actions are part of the story, and it is thanks to that eagerness to tell stories that the animation was born, because the animation meant that people could better visualize the stories you wanted to tell.

Nowadays the animation has advanced so much that we are able to relive people from the dead to come out again in the films we are creating, as in the case of Peter Cushing, in Star Wars: Rogue One , where the actor died in 1994 returned to leave in the film like Moff Tarkin. The actor came out as a soulless actor digitally retouched his image of actor Guy Henry. (As seen in the image.3)

(Image 3. Star Wars: Rogue One, Peter Cushing)

Thanks to this technology we are able to create human beings to participate in our crazy ideas, and make our stories. Whenever someone innovates something new in the world of animation, like when they found a new way to animate the hair in the movies, to make it look more real; or the advances that exist in the 3D animation that makes people look more real in video games or in animated movies, one starts to see the movie and feels that they are seeing actors, until you realize otherwise, your brain really believes that you are seeing real people; we are all impressed, even if it is an older style of animation, one is impressed if at the time of putting it into action it has a good development and is presented correctly .

The art of animating Stop-motion is a clear example of this, because this style of animation comes from 1902, with the short film Trip to the moon. But despite the technology that exists today, this type of animation is still used, some more modern examples are Isle of Dogs (2018) or Kubo and the two magic strings (2016) where the animators take advantage of new technologies to print the faces, or make the skeletons of the characters more resistant.

This type of animation found more materials with which they could improve the quality of the characters and make them have more fluid movements. Apart from the technology in the cameras and programs, to be able to receive the photos, or the machinery to sustain the characters has also implemented a lot over the years.

Definitely many things have changed and there are still many things that await us, and although it seems that art is stuck in these moments, I really hope that art can open its way again and that we do not lose the essence of what we want to achieve, but that we manage to adapt to the challenges that are being opened to us, and that we learn to adapt to the new materials and technologies that are placed in the way. That one should not feel intimidated by the things that the future can bring us, but that we know how to accept them with open arms to use them at our convenience.

For the future, only a digital age awaits us, which we will have to accept, because as with the old techniques, we can create something beautiful with new things. Because we are the future, we are going to have to learn to tell new stories, we are going to have to create new things; we have to face the boredom of the new generations and break it, because without art the world would be a boring place, and we do not want to enter an era of repetition, we have to innovate and accept that the future that awaits us is a difficult one , but we know that as long as we have a story to tell, everything will be worth it.

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