One can’t help but ask if much art is left once a project folds itself so successfully into socialmedia culture.”
Art is not bound by the constraints of the internet, social media, the digital or physical world. Art, like time and space, is infinite and does not live on the same plane as us. There has always been art. There will always be art. Before the digital world, art was created in various mediums, mud, clay, rocks, hieroglyphics, written word, life imitated in theater, and so much more. Before the digital world, we constrained art to the physical world. It was the only world we understood at the time, so naturally it was the only place we though art could live. Then the digital world came. We saw it as a world of information and artists from the physical age came to play and brought art to a new world they never knew before. Just like physical art’s beginnings, new media art or digital art was rough and sometimes linear. As artists became familiar with the digital world, their art progressed and became a bit more advanced. The same happened as artists in the physical world evolved.
So what am I saying?
Art is forever. It can be applied in any new world (medium) we discover. We need to stop limiting art. Too often we hear people say “that isn’t art” because people are short-sighted. They can’t grasp the idea that anything created by someone who intends to make art is art, and that anything perceived by someone to be art is art.
Not sold?
Look at your chair. Nothing fancy, right? Probably not. You’ve seen a bunch of chairs like the one you’re sitting on now. There may even be bunch of similar chairs in the room you’re at, too. Whether you realize it or not, your chair is art. Your chair was not as mundane as it seems right now. At one point, your chair was revolutionary. There was no chair like it. It was unique from most chairs sold on the market. It’s design was new in thinking. It was art and it still is.