Monday, April 18, 2011

creativity, influence, ownership, and art in the digital age



What is digital media? Technically, digital media is a bunch of broken signals or separate pieces of data (digits) that are brought together to look continuous. According to Lev Manovich, the Digital Age all started when the histories of mechanically produced images and mechanical devices that perform numerical processing intersected. These images and numbers were brought together and industrialized/mechanized, thus creating the computer. In relation to other times in history, the Digital Age can be seen as industrializing mental labor, compared with the Industrial Revolution in which new technology freed humans of manual/physical labor.


I think this information about digital media is all very interesting in relation to creativity, influence, ownership, and art in this day and age. Sometimes it seems as though technology interferes with our creativity. With so many resources available on the web it's hard to not be influenced by other people's works. It is also very easy to mimic these available works, thus opposing ownership. It's hard to know what works are original and what are just interpretations influenced from another person's work. The Digital Age has definitely made it mentally easier to achieve things, which makes me wonder: How has the culture/definition art changed in this new age?

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