The Velocity of Information
This is a mash-up image comprised of a quote from the conceptual sculptor (not the NYT author) Thomas Friedman and an old Peanuts Treasury Cover.
All I did was white out the dialogue to make the point.
Digitalart.org, Spawn of Satan?
– Jerry Benedict, illustrator
Digitalart.org is dead. Halleluiah.
Maybe it’s poor form to dance on the grave of the recently deceased, but digitalart.org was a particularly faithless steward in the world of online digital art galleries; its demise is worth celebrating. A case study in ulterior motives, the site’s passing should be cheered with two “huzzahs” – one each for the disingenuous couple that served as its head arbiters.
Although the shutdown is categorized as a “retirement,” I do hope it remains in a state of permanently self-imposed stasis until, or unless, its managers reconsider their priorities. If the road to hell is paved with good intentions then these two have proven master bricklayers.
If the road to hell is paved with good intentions these people are master bricklayers.
One of the earliest, and largest, digital art galleries on the web, Digitalart.org snared its primed-for-SEO URL as the web entered the new millennium and played host to a widely varying array of computer illustration until October 2011. Notable for its broad range in quality, the site seemed, at first blush, designed to promote not only the artists but also the medium itself.
It was actually, at heart, about something else altogether.
Most gallery sites utilize a submission process whereby an artist’s work can be deemed worthy of presentation. Making that determination is usually driven by considerations regarding quality or simple appropriateness. In contrast to competitors like deviantart.com, cgsociety.org and GFXartist.com - whose guidelines are detailed and easily understood – digitalart.org maintained a vague and mysterious decision-making process. This wasn’t an accident. The managers of digitalart.org were basically sneaks. I doubt they feel that way of course. But, as I hope to illustrate, they were really as dishonest with themselves as everyone else.
Observable benchmarks, like creative interpretation and technical expertise, are usually judge and jury go-to factors when deciding who makes the cut. Not at digitalart.org, which showcased a wide range of talent (from rank amateur to master technician). One viewing of their site quickly dispensed with any reasonable assumptions about adherence to such metrics. Subsequently, presenting one’s art to digitialart.org often resulted in little more than a vigorous head scratching as an artist’s own patently obvious successes would be rejected – inexplicably – for lesser works. That’s if you were accepted at all.
While submission was open to everyone, the criteria for what represented suitable work became increasingly inscrutable, as the site seemed to both increase in size and shrink in caliber, eventually losing prominence to other comparable sites.
…management hid these intentions in plain sight, operating a surreptitious venture for their own private salvation…
I would come to understand that digitalart.org operated in an exploitive manner, using digital illustration (although it could have been any medium really) as a form of religious means testing. Management hid these intentions in plain sight, operating a surreptitious venture for its own private salvation. Meanwhile its applicants were– unwittingly – put through self-righteous evangelical purity-tests with the specious misnomer of “quality assurance”.
Sorry. Getting ahead of myself. Let’s continue…
Analysis of The Anatomy Lesson of Dr Tulp
A pdf presentation. My thoughts on the seminal Rembrandt painting.
elaboration
Random Quote
The computer can’t tell you the emotional story. It can give you the exact mathematical design, but what’s missing is the eyebrows.
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