Linkages exist and are emerging among the three most vital
artmaking media of today, artforms invented or vibrantly renewed
in the past twenty years. It is upon these richly evolving media
that an art curriculum could be based.
Comics use pictures and words together in a narrative multiple
of potentially cinematic scope; the independent comic (absorbing
mainstream traditions) is the Blakean poetic printmaking for our
age.
The Community Mural at its best returns painting to architecture,
methodically pairing painting skills in a variety of contemporary
and classical styles with organizational/managerial skills in
a local political context.
Computer Media extends to include digital imaging, adaptation
of painting skills to new pressure-sensitive input devices and
software, computer-human interface design, digital video and sound
editing, performance support--the skills of desktop multimedia
as well as electronic augmentation of all the arts.
By using these three content-driven media as core visual art disciplines,
a range of narrative & formal art issues are encountered upon
which the student can sharpen and measure skills. There are shared
aesthetic issues of the reductive simplicity of graphic form for
maximum communicative value. There are shared technical issues
of publication and democratic accessibility, of output upon paper
or in electronic forms that remain upon the computer via CD-ROM
or online cyberspace.
There are shared social issues in all three media around the creation
of environments, communities which may be a physical neighborhood
embodied in a mural or cyberspaces like Bulletin Boards or collaborative
groupware. Also evident are shared historical influences, like
that of photography, cinema, opera & conceptual art (as environment,
performance and document) upon these media. As art educators we
must organize the skills & knowlege needed to master diverse
impacts and demands.
Thriving outside of the traditional art market structure, "The
Three C's" have been considered marginal to the conventional
art world yet are the visual culture of great numbers of people
globally. I believe these three media, with artists' and educators'
aesthetics and ethics driving them, will continue to develop--through
hybrids of CD-ROM publishing, hypermedia literature, virtual realities
and online environments--to create a shared electronic kultursphere
of meaningful artwork for all.
Related imagery and writings:
