| Everywhere - Right Now by Max Eternity |
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Emerging Technology, Art and Anthropology Scholarship has changed. Indeed, with the new technologies on demand the whole world Coordinator for the Digital Foundation Curriculum at the Cleveland Institute of Art, said, "Fully realizing the enabling potential of digital technology requires fluidity of thinking. It requires the ability to consider the potential relationships between elements rather than subdivide them into increasingly arbitrary categories." Ligon is the author of Digital Art Revolution . He’s also an artist, scholar and filmmaker,
Yet, for however radical this new scholarly vision that Ligon espouses is, he and many conflicting responses. However, one thing that seems universally understood is that access to opportunity equals empowerment, achievement and ultimately wealth. Which is to say that whether one is seeking to read a book, plan an exhibition, research an archaeological site or correspond socially with academic colleagues, those without continuous access to broadband at work and at home, are considerably less likely to enjoy the benefits of their labors, because they are not able to stay in the loop in real time. Cutting-edge thinkers, a decade ago, coined a term for this. It’s called the digital divide. And here’s what venerated elder Nelson Mandela had to say on the subject a few years ago: "In the twenty-first century, the capacity to communicate will almost certainly be a key human right. Eliminating the distinction between the information-rich and information-poor is also critical to eliminating economic and other inequalities between North and South, and to improve the life of all humanity." This is a new paradigm shift for quality of life concerns, informing of a broad spectrum of wealth potentialities, whether collective or individual. And though there are no pie-in-the-sky, ready made solutions, there are those making headway through entrepreneurship, rising up to the challenge of demonstrating new symbiotic relationships between the old and the new, like Stephen Burns , an African-American artist and author who teaches at the University of California in San Diego. When South Africa abolished its political apartheid, Burns was one of an international group of artists invited to participate in the Johannesburg Biennial. He created a digital print called “African Fury” for the show. An abstract work of art with splatterings of color bursting through a blue-black background, the piece seems both wild and highly-disciplined. In the work, Burns captures the anguish of a people, their trials and tribulations—their eventual liberation. The juxtaposition of shape and color, creates tension and angst, while the continual coolness of the black surround stabilizes divergent elements with calmness, wisdom and relaxation. At a different point in history, this print would likely have been rendered as a color carbon print or lithograph. However, for Burns, logic stood to reason that a radical revolution in contemporary, anthropological survey of that galvanizing moment in world history, the fall of Apartheid, dictated a need for a visual art medium that was equally as radical, fresh and powerful.
Burns’ painting on a virtual pallet, then rendering a physical, digital print made
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