This week we looked at the relationship between art and craft, trying to distinguish what separates the two concepts but also what ties them together.
“Art is often described as unstructured and open ended. It has no limitations of expression, just like in painting. Craft, on the other hand, is structured, which means that it has a certain form that is visible” (Difference Between, 2017).
My understanding of art and craft comes from my knowledge that craft is a skill learned and developed, whereas art is an expression of thought and emotion. When they come together I see art as the final presentation of what has been made and craft as the process of how it’s been made, linking to the research behind the craft that may have been used to further the skill and knowledge.
“Art is a result of a person’s innate talents whereas skill in craft can be acquired with experience” (Difference Between, 2017).
With this in mind, we were split into groups of 4-5 and asked to create a venn diagram, using craft, research, and art together and seeing where they interlinked. Using examples from last semesters MEDA 301 final project, we highlighted how our project fit into the venn diagram of craft, research, and art.
We established that our piece used research as a starting point to our project and its direction. Then using our combined skills (craft) we put these together to create a piece which we presented as art. Our art could have been made stronger if our process of research into our craft and the techniques had been further explored and experimented with.
After looking at work we had created we looked into our practices, ours being marketing. We established that not all marketing using all 3 concepts, however, marketing relating to social marketing and viral marketing could hit the trifecta of research, craft, and art. Banksy is a great example of how research and craft have come together to create art with an expression of political issues as well as encompassing marketing into the process.
Sony Playstation Marketing Campaign
We also looked into the Adobe creative day which used the new Adobe photoshopping tools to create live art.
This bridge into technologies being used lead us to incorporate technology into our venn diagrams. Creating an understanding of all four concepts. We quickly established that though research can be used to understand and help gain and develop a skill (craft), technology can be seen as a craft itself. The craft of how you use the technology. We also established that at a very basic level technology can be art as it is often used to present artworks.
The relationship between art, craft, research, and technology may be easier to find than trying to separate each element.
The beginnings of an experiment
For my final project, Briana and I have decided to team up and use our common knowledge of marketing and digital communications to establish a work based on the futures of our ever-changing language. This will predominantly be surrounding around the rise of the emoji language.
For the theme of our work we will be looking at a variety of sources:
Will emoji become a new language?
Is emoji the language of the future?
Investigating the Potential for Miscommunication Using Emoji
A Linguist Explains Emoji and What Language Death Actually Looks Like
From these sources we have established a few ideas, which we wish to experiment with, each using emoji translation to popular and well-known short stories, to see who can decipher the new-age translation. From this, we will experiment with the way in which we can present the piece from photographs of the stories side-by-side to show the progression of language or through a video and projection to showcase a conversation.
All of these details will be figured out and refined once we start experimenting in the weeks to come. For now, we will find stories and translate them into the emoji language.
Futures Excerpt
A quotation from Daniel Pink:
“The future belongs to a different kind of person with a different kind of mind: artist, inventors, storytellers-creative and holistic ‘right-brain’ thinkers whose abilities mark the fault line between who gets ahead and who doesn’t”
I selected this quote by Daniel Pink, as it spoke to me in an unexpected way. It looks deeply into the notion that to have a future you as an individual must accept the changes around you to move forward to the future, otherwise you will never have a future. The quotation closely links to my own vision of futures being a concept that is closely wrapped in the way in which technology is advancing. Without accepting technology for how it can help us in life we ultimately end up rejecting our future entirely.
Reference:
Difference Between, 2017, Difference Between Art and Craft, viewed 25 July 2017, <http://www.differencebetween.net/miscellaneous/difference-between-art-and-craft/#ixzz4nomeVDit>
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