A note I put on a class discussion board, that I am posting here for the benefit of those not in my class. Because I know you are oh-so-interested...
Talk about breaking down the boundaries between visual and digital space. Now I can finally view the great works of Da Vinci, in detail, while I'm sitting at home in my underwear eating chocolate ice cream. The link I've posted here shows how, "thanks to yet another happy by-product of the Internet age, Leonardo Da Vinci's "The Last Supper" is available as a special digital image that lets you get (virtually) closer to its surface than you ever could in real life." (Real life in this instance being a church in Milan where reservations sell out months in advance.)
http://www.haltadefinizione.com/en/
The detail here is incredible. I wonder how this trend towards rendering will break down the boundaries between face-to-face images and those virtual ones; will we begin to devalue the real in favor of the virtual? Mitchell claims that pictures want to be looked at, and nothing at all. I think that some pictures, namely, ones hanging in an art gallery famous around the world, want to be looked at in person or not at all. We claim a badge of honor when we have seen The Last Supper "in real life," and then we take a picture with our Kodak digital camera to prove that we were there. Well how does this new rendering shape our beliefs about art? I propose that trends such as this will continue to de-idologize "high" art and make it more accessible to the "common" man (or woman). Yet will this change the art world? Will we no longer revere certain pieces because they have moved from the unattainable to the everyday? Can Da Vinci ever really be "everyday"?
No comments:
Post a Comment