Harvard referencing plan!!!!!!!!!

I think in my Context of Practice essays (woo) I will attempt to argue that digital art has the potential to be as emotive and legitimate as art created with traditional methods, such as pen and paper. To drive this argument I will look at various sources and collect differing opinions to drive my point of view.

Source uno:
Greene, R. (2004) Internet Art, London: Thames and Hudson

Greene talks about how "a related criticism is sometimes aimed at the works' creators: that internet and softwarre artists, often self-identified as programmers, are not 'real' artists. This critique can be taken as a symptom of the changing modes of art and the evolving expectations of what artists should be, what skills or trades they should possess, and what their critical concerns should be." [page 13]

"For those who do not support it, net art is often thought to lack the craft and direct impact of work in painting and sculpture by privileging commercial tools, veering too close to graphic design, or exploiting cheap, "whizz bang" programming tricks (to which authentic, meaningful art should naturally be opposed). Furthermore, net practices such as software art do not align with existing gallery, museum and discursive systems, and these institutions often want to differentiate themselves from commercial fields."

It seems obvious that more high-brow art critics, then, seem to agree that digital art does not have a place amongst the more traditional crafts, despite the fact that art is in a constant state of evolution. It is interesting to note Greene's commentary on "what artists should be", as there is so often a classism within finer arts that create a set of rules and regulations for something that is often emotive and almost primal.

Additionally, digital art harks back to more traditional Dada art, which was intentionally strange, silly and nonsensical. "Many net artists feel a strong connection to the work of French artist Marcel Duchamp [who created the moustachified Mona Lisa below] and to the participants of Dada (the international arts movement that began in Zurich in 1916 as a reaction to World War I and to a traditional art public), all of whom helped to shift art practices away from traditonal forms of pictorial representation. Dada firmly embraced the random as a means of expression."