How do I deal with identity crisis as a programmer/artist

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milespeyt..

How do I deal with identity crisis as a programmer/artist

in General Discussion • Other • 2 years ago

Lately when people ask me 'what I do', I find it hard to answer. I make what you guys would probably call generative art, which is what I spend most of my free time doing. However, I've had no formal training as an artist, and as a result try to stay away from mentioning the word art in fear that what I make falls more under the category of strange nonsense. But enough of that, the real question is where do I go to improve my theory/technical skills as an artist online? It's easy enough for me to find books or tutorials on programming, or even design, and it seems like those two fields have migrated rather successfully to the Internet, but I'm absolutely stumped as far as finding any good entry point for the art world, whatever that is, goes. In a way, I'm more interested in theory or broader concepts, but really anything would be helpful. I hope that makes sense, I guess I figure that I'm not the only one who struggles in this way, which was the motivation for the post.

Thanks so much

Replies(3)

Greger

Re: How do I deal with identity crisis as a programmer/artist

2 years ago

Ask yourself some questions:

Why do you make art?

What is wrong with strange nonsense?

What do you actually want to achieve?

What inspires you to make art? And why?

What do you consider art?

And, why do you consider what you make art?

amnon.owed

Re: How do I deal with identity crisis as a programmer/artist

2 years ago

As an autodidact-in-constant-development I can definitely relate to your post.

I think a good starting point is the book Art of the Digital Age by Bruce Wands.

You can also find many essays on Art, Technology, Science & Culture here.

The main issue remains unsolved though. I recently saw a presentation where this type of knowledge was referred to as 'hard knowledge'. In the sense that 99% of online materials will teach you technique ('easy knowledge'). Which buttons to press. But that they will not teach you things like concept development, art theory and storytelling. HOW versus WHY.

Although the above issue to a certain extent also applies to design, animation and other arts, I think there might also be a more fundamental difference between these arts and programming given their historical development. The mainstream goal of design has always been communication. The mainstream goal of animation has always been storytelling. So traditionally questions of WHY are a natural part of the process of making an animation or designing a poster. When it comes to mainstream programming, I think the question of WHY has in most cases been limited to functionality. Exceptions are of course those examples found in the book mentioned earlier and places like MIT's Aesthetics and Computation Group.

If people have online resources and/or specific books that are relevant, I'd like to hear them as well. In fact, I think it would be a good subject (call it concept development or whatever) to pay some attention to in the Processing wiki. Because currently there is none, while it should be an integral part of meaningful creative coding, should it not?

Still I see several possible routes of artistic development that are worth exploring (which I try/hope to do myself as well):

Just do it. Work on a project and approach it artistically. Ask questions like the ones gregersn posted.
Inspiration. Look at the works of others and be inspired by them. Don't ask yourself how they did it, but why they did it.
Move into other arts to get your hard knowledge there. Because the good thing about hard knowledge is that it is almost entirely technique-independent.

Dribbler

Re: How do I deal with identity crisis as a programmer/artist

2 years ago

What exactly do you mean by, " good entry point for the art world"? What is "the art world"? I'd say that you're already in it, and that you made me think. So there.

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