thoughts thunk

This is getting really dangerous, everyone I talk to, every book I read, I can loop into my expanding world of the ways reproductive media shape how we view art. My museum studies professor, Paul Bolin, and I had a great conversation this morning about it, but in an attempt to pin down my thoughts and focus, he gave me a warning that this will keep expanding on me endlessly if I don’t simply set some issues to the side for now.

Other valuable comments on his part included: the tension in digital media and art being a sense of faithful, accurate reproduction (colors are perhaps closer than ever, compared to older media) and innovation (manipulatable, ephemeral). Also, he pointed out that the manipulatable aspects of digital happen in two ways: the purposeful (the exciting innovation part) and accidental (when the accuracy is compromised by mistake).

We also took a look at the new 6th edition of Janson’s History of Art, complete with cd-rom of over 1000 images. A new feature is a glossary of terms: each entry has a pronounciation audio file that reads the term in an appropiate voice, i.e. “chiarascurro” is a female Italian voice, “rune tablet” a male British/Irish voice. Things like “composition” are in an American male voice. So the vocabulary of art history is explicitly divided into national or regional language identities.