Last Thoughts

At the beginning of the year, I came in with the notion of technology and art as being virtual reality. The idea of pseudo-communities, where technology can create places of illusion but connect people together even though that community doesn't exist in reality. I also thought of how technology disembodies oneself from the art such as an avatar or technology becoming a part of the body such as a cyborg.
My ideas changed though as we started to work on our projects. The quotes made me realize that art and technology is hard to define because it can cross and interconnect with so many meanings of art and meanings of technology that there was a blurring of those two words eventually. It also made me think of how my idea of art and technology wasn't structured or even defined but rather it was a bunch of thoughts that made me really believe that the analogy of information on the Internet can be referred to as a dump where it's hard to know who owns what or where it originally came from.
The second project made me think again of how art and technology has changed especially in the realm of video since we were using video clips. The dump image always was there somehow because I was thinking of the notion of newness where something new takes over and the old is left behind. The dump makes me think of that because the things that are left there are old and displaced and don't have value to that person. Video is changing constantly from videotape cassette to dvd to blue-ray and I thought again well how do media forms change which made me think of Spiderman and popular culture. Spiderman started off as a comic but it has become mass marketed. Spiderman also made me think of quality because when you compare the quality from the cartoon episodes from the original Spiderman isn't the same as watching the Spiderman movie especially with the special effects, clear and high definition picture quality, and better sounding audio.
This made me think again the notion of art and technology of always changing and even taking something that's an original or a classic but putting a new spin on it such as classic records such as Micheal Jackson, "Beat It" and doing a remix to it by alternating the audio track, but you know that it's Micheal Jackson, "Beat It" because there's that familiarity and iconic symbolism attached to it.
This is exactly how I thought of my third project of takign a popular hit song, "Day and Nite" by Kid Cudi and really trying to have fun and really how music as an art form can really use technology to make it innovative and yet make it something that was experimental and just somebody making it their own version. People would know it's that song because you can hear me singing to it and it has been played often on radios and tv. I think the chaos and loudness of the sounds that were in the background really painted the picture of walking through York and having that experience of hearing so many sounds at once but at the same time you're just listening and enjoying to your music in your own world. It was an interesting experience that to be apart of the environment but not in it at the same time yet it's something everyone does at York as they're walking to class and listening to music.
As of the last project, I really wanted to end my project with something that we started the year off and see how the text changed over time. I think the nature of this work was fun, you just need the time, but really it could really lead you to something unpredictable and entirely different from the initial piece and it's much more interesting to the person who's seeing the development. The works that were created by my friends were definitely showing how an idea of the Internet as a dump can be pictured so differently in that some did support that idea of the dump where as some didn't. Also it was fun to actually see somebody else create something and experiencing that appreciation and trying to find meaning in something that you started initially and becoming more involved in the work even though you're not creating it entirely.
So what is my meaning of art and technology, it isn't defined still but I think many artists use technology as an art form to show how technology functions in our society such as surveillance and sousveillance and to manipulate and emphasize how we experience sounds such as feeling disoriented when hearing your voice echoing back and difficult to keep track of your thoughts are some examples.