3 ms·

These sure are some images made by someone who just got DPaint 2 and is struggling with drawing with a mouse.

bluescrn 6y ago
Is the ‘art world’ completely unaware of what games artists and the demo scene were doing in that era and with those same tools?
- bitwize 6y ago
  If they are aware of it, they probably don't consider it significant. The art world favors social critique and social impact over mere demonstration of technical prowess. At least since Bob Ross democratized landscape painting and put it within easy reach, it's not a significant artistic achievement to merely be good at painting landscapes. One must challenge the audience's preconceived notions and explore the relationship between land, space, society, race, class, and gender in order to be a successful landscape painter. For this reason, the demoscene matters less than a footnote in the realm of high art, especially when compared with a masterpiece like Bolognini's Sealed Computers. (An art installation that consisted of several AT-class computers, all wired up and powered, running programs that display randomly-generated lines -- except the display ports are all sealed with wax, meaning that no one ever actually sees what they are displaying.)
  - fractallyte 6y ago
    A bitmap brush dragged over the screen, with Instagram-style caption: https://www.suzannetreister.net/Ampages/Amiga41.html https://www.suzannetreister.net/Ampages/Amiga41.html Art + technical prowess + the art values you mention: http://amiga.lychesis.net/artist/JimSachs/JimSachs_AmigaLagoon.html http://amiga.lychesis.net/artist/JimSachs/JimSachs_AmigaLago... If the ‚art world‘ is unaware of the latter, then it what does it tell us about their artistic credentials?
    - egypturnash 6y ago
      The Sachs image is from 1t least 1993, as it's done in Brilliance, which was released then. It's also in 256 colors, versus Treister's images from 1995 done when the maximum number of colors was 32. Unless you had a paint program capable of Hold And Modify mode, which DPaint was not at the time. (And Extra Half-Brite did not exist until the A2000 and A500 came out in 1987.) So let's have a more equal comparison: here's an image from Defender of the Crown (1986). http://amiga.lychesis.net/artist/JimSachs/DefenderOfTheCrown_Normans.html http://amiga.lychesis.net/artist/JimSachs/DefenderOfTheCrown... And here's an image from Avril Harrison in 1985, which might have been one of the demo images that shipped with DPaint - I know several of her works were on the disc: http://amiga.lychesis.net/year/1985/AH_Waif.html http://amiga.lychesis.net/year/1985/AH_Waif.html And of course how about Harrison's 1985 image of Tutankhamun's death mask, which was both on the disc and on the cover of the box? http://amiga.lychesis.net/year/1985/AH_KingTut.html http://amiga.lychesis.net/year/1985/AH_KingTut.html
      - fractallyte 6y ago
        Treister's images are dated 1991-1992!
        egypturnash 6y ago
        Ah, yes, they are. I misread the dates somewhere. My bad.
    - bitwize 6y ago
      The problem with "Amiga Lagoon" is that it's too twee -- it's kitsch. Like all kitsch it attempts to score points by appealing to our unconscious reaction to "pretty" things, as well as simplistic emotions like nostalgia or sentimentality. What's the theme or concept being explored here? That the Amiga's media fidelity is such that it can serve as a window onto another, paradisical world? There, I just solved the puzzle. You don't really need to think when observing this piece. It's all right there, spelled out for you. By contrast, Suzanne Treister's work raises more questions than it does answers. Looking at them makes you feel a certain way, and you have to sit down and puzzle out why it makes you feel that way -- and even then, answers may not be forthcoming. The piece exists in a limbo of different possible interpretations; exploring these, and finding contradictions between them, adds depth to the work and the audience's appreciation of it.
  - watwut 6y ago
    My impression from modern art galleries I went into was not "social critique". Very little of that was in social critique category. The realism is not the achievement anymore, because people can do drawings that look like photos.
    - bitwize 6y ago
      > My impression from modern art galleries I went into was not "social critique". Very little of that was in social critique category. It's almost never quite so direct as that. Rather, the job of an art piece, especially in conceptual art, is to take some aspect of the way audiences typically view a work -- or any object -- and challenge it. Turn it on its ear somehow. Because there's nothing universal about what we find beautiful, what we find happy or sad, how we respond to color or light or space, etc... all these things are indoctrinated in us by the consumerist society that surrounds and pervades us. The purpose of contemporary art is to challenge that, to offer an alternative. To counter the desires and judgements that have been ingrained into us since childhood by capitalism. As such, art isn't really art unless it's anti-kitsch, because kitsch affirms consumerism. Being "anti-kitsch" in this way is like being "anti-racist": inasmuch as you fail to adequately oppose kitsch you are kitsch. Damien Hirst's The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living was art because Hirst offered a novel challenge to how we view life and death, or living and dead things. Having done so, however, any subsequent pickled animals would not be novel. They would be kitsch -- trite reproductions, shallow copies of what Hirst had accomplished.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
egonschiele 6y ago
I'll bite... your bio says you draw. Do you really think this work took no skill, or is this an attempt at sarcasm?
- egypturnash 6y ago
  This does not look substantially different from the stuff I was making when it was 1985 and I had a brand new copy of Deluxe Paint on my Amiga. Actually wait no I think I was actually trying to think about making something pleasant to look at instead of randomly spotting around the default colors with the airbrush. This is idle doodling, at best. Experiments with the tool being sold for a ludicrously high price, because she was in the gallery system and there were a bunch of rich idiots who might be willing to pay that. Looking around her site she does appear to have some actual skills at composition, palettes, and painting, but they are not on display here in the least.
  - egonschiele 6y ago
    Interesting. I'd say picking the right colors, textures and shapes to make a group of people feel nostalgic about video games that don't exist, that takes real skill. It sounds like this art didn't do anything for you. But it did for others. This[1] didn't do anything for me either. But I sure as hell wouldn't be selfish enough to say it's not art. [1] http://egypt.urnash.com/rita/chapter/01/ http://egypt.urnash.com/rita/chapter/01/
    - fractallyte 6y ago
      So, while individual pieces are fairly simplistic (and even amateurish, to a technical artist), taken as a whole they create a context and evoke a mood -> impressionism! Is that a way to understand it?
      - egonschiele 6y ago
        Yeah, that's one way to understand it (though I wouldn't call this impressionism). At the most human level, I'd say if someone connects with it, it's art. I did connect with these pieces so was bummed to see someone insulting them -- and an artist, no less. For example, I loved these: https://www.suzannetreister.net/Ampages/Amiga47.html https://www.suzannetreister.net/Ampages/Amiga47.html https://www.suzannetreister.net/Ampages/Amiga36.html https://www.suzannetreister.net/Ampages/Amiga36.html https://www.suzannetreister.net/Ampages/Amiga46.html https://www.suzannetreister.net/Ampages/Amiga46.html But it's hard to say why ... and that's where I can start to ask why and start engaging with the work.
Ekaros 6y ago
Get the same feeling. And many of them even don't feel like game art or even something that games would look like. There is no purpose with many elements. Just some elements pasted or moved as a brush.

Is the ‘art world’ completely unaware of what games artists and the demo scene were doing in that era and with those same tools?

bitwize 6y ago
If they are aware of it, they probably don't consider it significant. The art world favors social critique and social impact over mere demonstration of technical prowess. At least since Bob Ross democratized landscape painting and put it within easy reach, it's not a significant artistic achievement to merely be good at painting landscapes. One must challenge the audience's preconceived notions and explore the relationship between land, space, society, race, class, and gender in order to be a successful landscape painter. For this reason, the demoscene matters less than a footnote in the realm of high art, especially when compared with a masterpiece like Bolognini's Sealed Computers. (An art installation that consisted of several AT-class computers, all wired up and powered, running programs that display randomly-generated lines -- except the display ports are all sealed with wax, meaning that no one ever actually sees what they are displaying.)
- fractallyte 6y ago
  A bitmap brush dragged over the screen, with Instagram-style caption: https://www.suzannetreister.net/Ampages/Amiga41.html https://www.suzannetreister.net/Ampages/Amiga41.html Art + technical prowess + the art values you mention: http://amiga.lychesis.net/artist/JimSachs/JimSachs_AmigaLagoon.html http://amiga.lychesis.net/artist/JimSachs/JimSachs_AmigaLago... If the ‚art world‘ is unaware of the latter, then it what does it tell us about their artistic credentials?
  - egypturnash 6y ago
    The Sachs image is from 1t least 1993, as it's done in Brilliance, which was released then. It's also in 256 colors, versus Treister's images from 1995 done when the maximum number of colors was 32. Unless you had a paint program capable of Hold And Modify mode, which DPaint was not at the time. (And Extra Half-Brite did not exist until the A2000 and A500 came out in 1987.) So let's have a more equal comparison: here's an image from Defender of the Crown (1986). http://amiga.lychesis.net/artist/JimSachs/DefenderOfTheCrown_Normans.html http://amiga.lychesis.net/artist/JimSachs/DefenderOfTheCrown... And here's an image from Avril Harrison in 1985, which might have been one of the demo images that shipped with DPaint - I know several of her works were on the disc: http://amiga.lychesis.net/year/1985/AH_Waif.html http://amiga.lychesis.net/year/1985/AH_Waif.html And of course how about Harrison's 1985 image of Tutankhamun's death mask, which was both on the disc and on the cover of the box? http://amiga.lychesis.net/year/1985/AH_KingTut.html http://amiga.lychesis.net/year/1985/AH_KingTut.html
    - fractallyte 6y ago
      Treister's images are dated 1991-1992!
      - egypturnash 6y ago
        Ah, yes, they are. I misread the dates somewhere. My bad.
  - bitwize 6y ago
    The problem with "Amiga Lagoon" is that it's too twee -- it's kitsch. Like all kitsch it attempts to score points by appealing to our unconscious reaction to "pretty" things, as well as simplistic emotions like nostalgia or sentimentality. What's the theme or concept being explored here? That the Amiga's media fidelity is such that it can serve as a window onto another, paradisical world? There, I just solved the puzzle. You don't really need to think when observing this piece. It's all right there, spelled out for you. By contrast, Suzanne Treister's work raises more questions than it does answers. Looking at them makes you feel a certain way, and you have to sit down and puzzle out why it makes you feel that way -- and even then, answers may not be forthcoming. The piece exists in a limbo of different possible interpretations; exploring these, and finding contradictions between them, adds depth to the work and the audience's appreciation of it.
- watwut 6y ago
  My impression from modern art galleries I went into was not "social critique". Very little of that was in social critique category. The realism is not the achievement anymore, because people can do drawings that look like photos.
  - bitwize 6y ago
    > My impression from modern art galleries I went into was not "social critique". Very little of that was in social critique category. It's almost never quite so direct as that. Rather, the job of an art piece, especially in conceptual art, is to take some aspect of the way audiences typically view a work -- or any object -- and challenge it. Turn it on its ear somehow. Because there's nothing universal about what we find beautiful, what we find happy or sad, how we respond to color or light or space, etc... all these things are indoctrinated in us by the consumerist society that surrounds and pervades us. The purpose of contemporary art is to challenge that, to offer an alternative. To counter the desires and judgements that have been ingrained into us since childhood by capitalism. As such, art isn't really art unless it's anti-kitsch, because kitsch affirms consumerism. Being "anti-kitsch" in this way is like being "anti-racist": inasmuch as you fail to adequately oppose kitsch you are kitsch. Damien Hirst's The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living was art because Hirst offered a novel challenge to how we view life and death, or living and dead things. Having done so, however, any subsequent pickled animals would not be novel. They would be kitsch -- trite reproductions, shallow copies of what Hirst had accomplished.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

egonschiele 6y ago

I'll bite... your bio says you draw. Do you really think this work took no skill, or is this an attempt at sarcasm?

egypturnash 6y ago
This does not look substantially different from the stuff I was making when it was 1985 and I had a brand new copy of Deluxe Paint on my Amiga. Actually wait no I think I was actually trying to think about making something pleasant to look at instead of randomly spotting around the default colors with the airbrush. This is idle doodling, at best. Experiments with the tool being sold for a ludicrously high price, because she was in the gallery system and there were a bunch of rich idiots who might be willing to pay that. Looking around her site she does appear to have some actual skills at composition, palettes, and painting, but they are not on display here in the least.
- egonschiele 6y ago
  Interesting. I'd say picking the right colors, textures and shapes to make a group of people feel nostalgic about video games that don't exist, that takes real skill. It sounds like this art didn't do anything for you. But it did for others. This[1] didn't do anything for me either. But I sure as hell wouldn't be selfish enough to say it's not art. [1] http://egypt.urnash.com/rita/chapter/01/ http://egypt.urnash.com/rita/chapter/01/
  - fractallyte 6y ago
    So, while individual pieces are fairly simplistic (and even amateurish, to a technical artist), taken as a whole they create a context and evoke a mood -> impressionism! Is that a way to understand it?
    - egonschiele 6y ago
      Yeah, that's one way to understand it (though I wouldn't call this impressionism). At the most human level, I'd say if someone connects with it, it's art. I did connect with these pieces so was bummed to see someone insulting them -- and an artist, no less. For example, I loved these: https://www.suzannetreister.net/Ampages/Amiga47.html https://www.suzannetreister.net/Ampages/Amiga47.html https://www.suzannetreister.net/Ampages/Amiga36.html https://www.suzannetreister.net/Ampages/Amiga36.html https://www.suzannetreister.net/Ampages/Amiga46.html https://www.suzannetreister.net/Ampages/Amiga46.html But it's hard to say why ... and that's where I can start to ask why and start engaging with the work.

Ekaros 6y ago

Get the same feeling. And many of them even don't feel like game art or even something that games would look like. There is no purpose with many elements. Just some elements pasted or moved as a brush.