Drawing

I can’t tell you how much enjoyment I have found in drawing lately. I must have finished about 100 drawings with pencil on white paper in the last couple of months. Like playing the guitar, there is a physical element to drawing that I like. It FEELS good. Especially after spending weeks mixing music on a fully automated mixing console, which is of course computer based… and fosters linear working: i.e. first program the mutes, then program the EQs, then create a stationary mix, then program the fader moves etc…
A couple of years ago I set up a computer to do art projects. I loaded software like Fractal Painter, Illustrator and Photoshop and thought I would create a lot…and – I didn’t use it very much. I didn’t enjoy staring at a monitor for that many hours… and, I can’t take it outside like I can my sketchbook and pencil…

Bar Codes

Idea:
Create bar-code paintings from poems, novels, and train-schedules. When showing these black and white paintings, lend people bar-code readers to decrypt them. The scale of the paintings could range from very small, 1′ by 2′, to very large. Could be an interesting project for Subway Station Murals? Would a bar-code reader work on large scale bar-codes? Or would it have to be modified? Look into computer programs that transfer words into bar-code. A projector attached to the computer would make it easier to paint the bar-code.

More Computers

During a walk with my dogs yesterday afternoon I had a new thought regarding computers. What if the singular vision of computers, the linear white male mind frame, the universal use of a binary language combined with most computer users using the English language in some form… is a way to bring all of the cultures of this World together.
What if it is an opportunity to make us all relate? I mean, I would love to see what kind of textures an African would bring to the computer, what sort of emotion a Tango dancer could add, what sort of intricate design an Arab might create – instead of these beige or grey or black boxes and all their alike looking software…
But maybe I need to see this as the first step, where we all learn the language before we can get really creative with it.
I tried composing on computers and didn’t like it. I felt detached, intellectual. Maybe I went about it the wrong way or maybe I could have overcome the feeling. I just didn’t like the way it felt. I love playing guitar, and I mean not just the sounds, but also the way it FEELS. So that’s still the way I write – on the guitar…hey, I can do it outside, I can do it without needing batteries or an electric plug – anytime, anywhere…

Computers

A thought has been rolling around in my mind for a couple of weeks now:
Are computers a new form of colonialism?
We are forcing the World to think like a 25-35 year old white male, aren’t we?
There are others programming software and designing hardware, but from what I understand the majority of people are as described above… and if you want to excel today you have to learn to think like them. Is this why computers are textureless, boring, black or grey boxes? Is this why working on the computer forces linear thinking?