The Digital DIvide

I found this article to be rather interesting with respect to what seems in my eyes to be a rather understated concept that I feel has penetrated a lot of various art forms today. What caught my eye that Bishop touched upon was this idea of art relying now much more heavily on a selective process of picking elements from previously made art, rather than time being invested to make your own new art.

To me this selective process is the very backbone of modern art. Various examples seem to fit into how this is true not just in your conventional sense of art but quite frankly this "sampling" is the basis of most digital art today. My current definition of digital art includes musical pieces as well as film. In today's music industry countless instrumentals are created solely by taking a previous piece and chopping it up and rearranging the sounds to form something new but still musically pleasant.

Artists such as J.Cole and Kanye West made a name off of sampling old soul records but the buck doesn't stop with music. Filmmakers have consistently borrowed various ideas, or even occasionally re-made former films in there own artistic way and by smartly using some iconic characters that would put people back in the seats to view a new take in a heartbeat.

Conventional art, in the sense, sculpture, drawing etc. also draws heavily from inspiration of other artists and previous works to bolster a certain direction for many. Seeing how greatly a good selection can impact the outcome of artists message it makes me without a doubt believe that selection is as much of a tool in today's modern art world as a paintbrush.

Bishop hopes to highlight how the digital world doesn't seem to be as appreciated when it comes to art because people have this preconceived notion of what are is. Yet the the digital aspect is prevalent in many new modern pieces of art. This mental "divide" is what I believe is preventing artists from truly getting with the modern times and doing more and more innovative things with there pieces and embracing the fact that selection of previous work plays in creating art for a different age. A digital age.