DIY: The Militant Embrace of Technology
Marcin Ramocki has an interesting opening point, “[People] lose what Marx believed to be the most fundamental human need: the access to the fruits of their own labor.” He says this because in his first paragraph he says that people are now taking hardware or software that they can find on the internet to either manipulate their own works or electronic devices and call it art. He asks two questions about the, “growing phenomenon of artists involved in active critique of the technosphere,” and they are; “why do we feel compelled to mess with electronic devices and call it art? And the second; is what we do still a continuation of Modernist principles or an all together different thing; and if so what kind of thing is it?” It is an interesting point. Can a photo edited with Photoshop really be part of the Modernist principals? I am a fine arts major with an emphasis in photography. I have been taught many forms of how to produce a photo, from a silver gelatin print to a cyanotype and even a print from Photoshop, and in my opinion a picture that you developed and printed in a dark room yourself is more of an art form than taking a picture on a digital and placing it on the computer to manipulate. The reason why is because when you take a 35 mm photo or even an 8×10 and develop it in the dark room, what ever you captured in on the film it what you get. You can darken areas or lighten them but you can not make someone look skinnier, or clear up their acne, or even go to the extremes of making it hot pink. When you create a work and then place it on the internet it can be taken and used without your knowledge and it can then be manipulated beyond recognition which brings us back to Ramocki’s point of us losing access to the fruits of our labor. He goes on to explain that if we work for a major company, lets say building parts for a car, ever part we build ourselves goes on to be used and we never see that part again we do not get to profit from that one part, only a little if we are lucky.
So when did art become that way? Well, if you think about it, it started years and years and years ago. When ever the first work of art was sold and then resold to make an even bigger profit. Work these days that you see being sold for unholy amounts go to the previous owner, there is not percentage off the top that goes to the artists family.
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