I have been trying to use digital technology to be artistically creative, but the flood of new things is overwhelming right now. Electronic media do not set “natural limits,” and at present they are pushing in the opposite direction. If digital artists do not set their own limits, they will not succeed in being creative—in actually making a work that is finished. They will be caught in the vortex of an endless video game.
That is one reason why I like to post my work online (even if I’m not satisfied with it). It’s one way of giving finality to a project. Perhaps I should start aiming for a “print,” ultimately. Even open a shop to share my work concretely. There’s no substitute for three dimensionality—something you can hold in your hand.
It should be noted that all this is a current weird extension of the perennial struggle of the artist in any medium. Piles of unfinished canvases, sheets and recordings of unfinished or half-finished music, fragments of poems—there’s nothing new about any of that. What’s new (and an added stress for the nervous system) is the additional “layer of mediation” that electronic technology opens up, which apparently increases power and versatility but also increases “distance” from the created object(s). Even the clutter of your not-entirely-discarded efforts can be “stored” in the digital cloud.
This is marketed as making creativity “easier.” It certainly facilitates banality, frustration, self-deception, vanity, and wasting time. But it cannot substitute for attention, focus, patience, intense effort, or discipline. To create a work of beauty—an analogous expression of Beauty (however humble)—is never easy.
