Photoshop | The Direction of Intention

Stumble Forward [on KS Friday]

Posted on October 7, 2022 by davidrobinsoncreative

I stared at the print in our Airbnb. It made me smile. A happy sloth sitting for a portrait. My children’s book-story-imagination ran amok with the possibilities. This sloth might be pals with Pooh.

The image is by Simon Te Tai. He’s a photographer and manipulates his images using other technologies. He alters the personality. He sometimes adds human characteristics.

I’m paying attention to the uproar in the art community over text-to-image software, like Dall-e. Type a simple phrase into the generator and it will produce an image. “It’s the end!” frightened artists cry!

It’s curious to me. A camera is a technology that, when first introduced, produced the same cry from artists. “It’s the end.” And then artists worked with it. The world would not have a Van Gogh or a Matisse without the camera. The camera freed artists from the necessities of realism. It opened paths to other vibrant explorations.

I remember the first time I saw Photoshop. “The end of truth as we know it,” I thought. A photograph was no longer proof that something happened. It was a shock. Disorienting. Now, I sit next to Kerri everyday as she manipulates our cartoons, produces our blog-boxes, and tweaks photos. It is common, everyday. Liberating.

There isn’t an art form that hasn’t been fundamentally altered by technology. Amplification of sound made it possible for us to attend a concert in a stadium of people. The swirling lights, the moving images playing behind Elton John were sophisticated and an integral part of the experience.

Our language is being altered by technology. The text. The tweet. The emoji. The pendulum is swinging back toward the image, the symbol, and away from the written word. Pictographs on screens rather than chipped into the walls of pyramids.

It’s a push-me-pull-you, this dance we do with technology. Something is rendered obsolete while something gained is not-quite-understood. Change is like that, especially the rapid changes introduced by technology. We stumble forward like a drunken sailor, never quite knowing where we’re going because we understand ourselves by where we’ve been.

Kerri’s albums are available on iTunes & streaming on Pandora

read Kerri’s blogpost about THE SLOTH

Filed under: Art, Creativity, Emergence, KS Friday | Tagged: art and technology, artistry, Bridge on AS IT IS, camera, composer, Dall-e, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, image, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, musician, Photoshop, Simon Te Tai, story, studio melange, symbol, technology, the melange, two artists | 1 Comment »

Collaborate & Hear Blue [on DR Thursday]

Posted on July 19, 2018 by davidrobinsoncreative

blue, blue, this world is blue

Kerri took a photo of a blue ball, the initial under painting for the next piece in my Earth Interrupted series. And then, giggling, she disappeared up the stairs. I knew the blue ball met its fate in Photoshop because her giggle became a full scale cackle. I call it “the design cackle.” I only hear it when she is reordering the visual world, when she drops out of the known reality (a shared space) and plays gleefully in designland (an internal space).

Later, when she reemerged, my distant-traveler wife, flipped her screen around. Instead of showing me an image, as I’d expected, she’d cued a song, Love Is Blue. “Have you ever heard this?” she asked, “The blue ball reminded me of this song.” As we listened. She told me the news of the day makes her blue. I learned which notes were blue. Finally, she opened the image for me to see. “I call it, “blue, blue, this world is blue. What do you think?”

It was a full blown experience in synesthesia, tasting words, seeing sounds.

Last week our neighbor, John, a terrific artist, asked if Kerri and I ever collaborate or discuss our work. I smiled, my answer as much a surprise to me today as it was the day after Kerri and I met. “Every day,” I said. Every day.

The latest morsel. Ours. Beautiful, bold, and primary.

read Kerri’s blog post about BLUE, BLUE, THIS WORLD IS BLUE

www.kerrianddavid.com

blue, blue, this world is blue ©️ david robinson & kerri sherwood

Filed under: Art, Creativity, DR Thursday, Uncategorized | Tagged: blue, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, earth interrupted, Kerri Sherwood, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, Love is blue, Photoshop, society6.com/davidrobinson, studio melange, synesthesia, the melange | Leave a comment »

Let It Catch You [on Flawed Cartoon Wednesday]

Posted on July 4, 2018 by davidrobinsoncreative

Pinochio BIGcopy copy 2

Although I wish I could claim otherwise, I drew this before our most-current age of Truthiness (thank you, Stephen Colbert).

All those years ago when I first saw a photographer alter a photograph with Photoshop, I wondered what in the absence of photographic proof would become the baseline for truth? I’ve lived long enough to have my answer.

Now, on this July 4th, amidst the collapse of civil dialogue, the dearth of shared values, I wonder in the absence of any baseline for truth, how long before truth circles around and catches up to us? Of this I am sure: Photoshop will be of no use.

[Doesn’t it just make you think of Yeats? The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.]