An excerpt from another attempt.
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The role of media in history is important and yet it is continually developing. Despite its continuous progress, its ‘history’ deserves to be written about. The technological revolution is a fascinating trend, and the artists’ incorporation and employment of these new media reflect their curiosity and excitement towards the changes. Interestingly, this particular time in history marks the ‘collaboration’ between aesthetics and sciences. The use of the media, take for example the camera, enables the artist to see things in a different view, to play with physics or the engineering of the subject or the theme. Futurists have foreseen and promoted the role of technology in art. There was also a term ‘technological artist’, which was first used to describe pioneering Russian film director Sergei Eisenstein. As quoted “…claiming that he merely applied what he learned in mathematics and engineering to the making of his films.” Films were especially popular, and eventually dominated the world. Media art makes an interesting kind of avant-garde art.
The range of art pieces during this period in modern times is so diverse, from the wacky to the weird, to the wild and to the minimal. There is a play of themes and materials, and the constant exploration of an explosion of imagination and creativity. This progress is not limited to the visual arts, but to other disciplines as well – including dance and music. A particular favorite composer of mine is John Cage. His experiments on composition are brilliant and truly influential. His collaborations with Merce Cunningham are quite an important part of the history of modern dance and music. They are among the pioneers of chance and minimalist experiments, which continue to be explored and utilized up to this point in time.
In relation to the Philippine contemporary scene, there is the obvious presence of our art pieces influenced by or related to Media art. The Western theories and explorations of art have influenced us largely, and so are how we think or view art. Yet ironically, there are few discourses on the topic of our own Philippine art history and the rise (and fall) of Modern and Contemporary Art and artists. I have listened to some debates as to how the contemporary art should be classified or not classified; to whom the arts are for; the audience these sort of arts should target; and even as to how to critique certain pieces ‘properly’. Though these debates do happen, not all art students or enthusiasts participate or take interest in philosophizing or theorizing our own modern or contemporary art.
In my own opinion, despite the problems on how to approach the history and the development of modern art, it is nevertheless something that people should appreciate. One problem in the Philippine art scene is that the art does not receive that much support from the government. Oftentimes, there is a stereotype that art courses and careers do not offer that much money or security compared to other jobs related to the hard sciences. Art subjects in school are usually taken less seriously, thus resulting to both ignorant teachers and students. In other countries, there are art historians who strive to write about and criticize and analyze endlessly on this particular movement. Unlike in the Philippines, there are by far, a few artists who take on the matter of writing about Philippine modern or contemporary art.
“There should be a kind of writing that is at once attentive to the fine grain of history and responsive to the different and often contentious accounts of modernism as a whole.” It is one thing to be an artist and to ‘create’ art pieces; it is also an entirely different thing to be devoted to writing about the nature and history of our own art. Given the fast pace of turn of the century, art continues to involve the changing natures of the social, political, economic and philosophical realities of the world. True enough, art today is anything but simple.
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