This week we looked at the relationships between art, craft and research, paying particular attention to the difference between art and craft.
“Art is an expression of imagination, feelings and ideas in a visual form, with aesthetic and emotional value. It is an open-ended, unstructured form of work that cannot be reproduced. Craft is an activity involving skill and experience in the creation of objects that fulfil a particular purpose. It is a learned ability acquired through regular practice.” (Surbhi, 2016)
With these differences in mind we split into groups of 4-5 to brainstorm our ideas of art, craft and research. We place the three concepts into a Venn diagram to see where they interlinked. After discussion, we determined that art is the final expression of a craft learned through skill and refined by research. We applied our previous work from MEDA301 as an example and tried to place it within the diagram. We discussed how we combined our different crafts of video editing, sound editing and design with prior knowledge and research to create a work, that can be considered a form of art.
We then considered how our practice would fit within the diagram, our practice was marketing. We established that not all marketing fit into all three concepts but some social marketing and viral marketing campaigns fit into art, craft and research. An example that we discussed was Adobe’s creative day campaign, which highlighted adobes Photoshop tools using a Photoshop artists craft to create live images of those waiting at the bus stop.
This allowed us to bridge into discussion of how technology fits into the diagram. We discussed how the development of technology has allowed easier access to new information speeding up and broadening research. Technology can also be a craft in itself as it requires skill and knowledge to use the programs such as Photoshop and premiere to their full potential.
Futures writing
An excerpt from What Is the Future of Art? by Hans Ulrich Obrist
“I address the impossibility of predicting the future in Age of Earthquakes: A Guide to the Extreme Present, the book I wrote with Douglas Coupland and Shumon Basar. The internet is changing the structure of our brains and the structure of our planet in extraordinary ways, so quickly that we haven’t yet developed a proper vocabulary for it. Technological progress has accelerated to the point that the future is happening to us far faster than we could ever have anticipated. This new world is what we call “extreme present,” a time in which it feels impossible to maintain pace with the present, never mind to chart the future.”
The example chosen is an excerpt from an essay by Hans Ulrich Obrist titled What is the future of art? I selected this excerpt as it suggests two things about the future, that it is impossible to predict and that it is approaching quickly. These two things are attributed to the development of technology and the introduction of the internet. This technological progress is quickly changing the world around us and the essay suggests that the way to approach the future is to remain open to new ideas.
Research beginnings
For my final project, Binaisha and I have decided to team up and use our common knowledge of marketing and digital communications to establish a work based on the futures of our ever-changing language. This will predominantly be surrounding around the rise of the emoji language. For the theme of our work we will be looking at a variety of sources:
Will emoji become a new language?
Is emoji the language of the future?
Investigating the Potential for Miscommunication Using Emoji
What communicating only in emoji taught me about language in the digital age
From these sources, we had a few ideas we wish to experiment with translating popular and well-known short stories and songs into emoji format seeing if individuals can decipher the new-age language. We will experiment with the presentation of the piece, from still images to projection to an interactive work. All of these details will be figured out and refined once we start experimenting in the weeks to come.
Resources:
Surbhi, S. (2016). Difference Between Art and Craft (with Comparison Chart) – Key Differences. Key Differences. < http://keydifferences.com/difference-between-art-and-craft.html>
Through My Eyes! 
I really love these campaigns that companies like Adobe and dove do, they are a creative means to advertise and are very entertaining to watch it also ties in nicely with art craft and research, and provides a new and innovative way to advertise linking this idea to futures. I think you have really tied the idea of technology into our future. the excerpt about this relationship provides that academic evidence needed to drive a concept as big as ‘futures’. This idea of remaining open to new ideas is also interesting as we rely so much on our past to shape our future however the future is unknown and we do need to stay flexible with this ambiguous idea of what will happen next.
Good post and love the chart at the start! 🙂
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