Tony DCG wrote: I guess the deeper question is if the art (the object) is essentially the same does the fact that it is a hologram change anything? Is it the fact that it is a hologram that would turn would be patrons off?
You've raised some extrememly interesting points here. How do people react to the world around them? How do people judge the artefacts and the events that surround them? Is it possible to determine an absolute sense of evaluation/judgement, or must all judgement, all evaluation, be relative? Relative to what? At the end of the day, we judge everything around us from two perspectives: the rational and the aesthetic; and almost all of us tend to judge from the aesthetic perspective: we tend to say, "I think it's going to rain", and not, "The temperature is 12% lower than average and humidity is 20% hugher than average, which implies that 0.4 inches of rain will fall in the next 2 hours and last 20 minutes". Thus, we judge almost everything from an "artistic" viewpoint - we "like" this, we "dislike" that. Yet, the irony is that we seem to judge that which is labelled as "art" from an objective perspective. Many's the time I've heard criticisms of art - be they painting or cinema - from this technical, objective point of view. Critics talk of "lighting", "camera angle", "bold brush strokes" (Can you have cowardly brush strokes?). Thus we're lead to the obvious question, "What is art?" Is it an overall and vague sentiment based purely (well, almost purely) on our experiences and emotional make-up, or is it a social bonding with people of similar tastes, or is it a precise set of evaluation criteria (cinema angles, brush strokes etc). Or, is it just snobbery? It's a particular interest of mine; however, having frequently brought these points out and received almost no response, I tend not to dwell too much on them. Artists go from being angry, to being sullen, to being completely silent when you try and bring these points up.
However, since you last posted on TED talks, I was intending to answer some of those questions, mainly because the TED talks brought outr the very points I've frequently mentioned. This also brings up what I call the "expert syndrome". If I asked, "What is Art?' artists react in the ways I've mentioned above. If David Hockney announces a lecture called "What is Art" and charges 50 dollars entry, there are some artists who would be drawn to the lecture like flies to..well, you get the point.
So:
Tony DCG wrote:Bevis is a sculptor and Butthead is a holographer. Bevis carves out a magnificent piece, a nice butt naked lady stretching her hands to the heavens with the look of bliss and joy. It has artist quality and is displayed a gallery. It is well received and sells for $10,000, Bevis is happy.
Flash back and at a slightly different frequency to the parallel universe, Butthead also sculpts the exact same piece. However, he decides the piece would have more meaning if it were done as a hologram hoping that the new medium would offer some added value.
Any predictions as to what happens?
Bevis gets $10,000 because he's a well-known artist and so people will buy pretty much anything from Bevis because he's a well known artist. These people don't care that it's a butt naked lady, all they care about is that it's a Bevis piece. Would you buy a painting from me of a lighthouse for $10,000? Would you buy it if you knew it was by Kincaide?. Butthead's hologram would be seen by "art holographers" as a cheap rip-off. An "idea" by a hobbyist on the same scale as circuit boards, skulls and chess pieces. This same hologram would be seen by the public as cheap kitsch. Now, if you said that the very same hologram was "an original Benton piece" or "famous old/dead holographer" piece made before 1980, then the same "art" holographers would slobber all over it and offer $100. They would then post it in every concievable place and crow over it. The public at large, never having heard of "famous old/dead holographer", would still think it was kitsch. Has any hologram ever fetched more than a few hundred dollars on the strength of the holographers name alone? (Note the latter; I don't mean "art" pieces commisioned by well-known artists as holograms - they tend to sell because of the artists name, not because they''re holograms per se.)
What if "famous old/dead" holographer made it and someone else made the same hologram - forged it, in other words. It shouldn't matter, right? But, in your TED talks, you quote:
Tony DCG wrote: [Our] response to forgeries is a huge puzzle. You might think that the pleasure you get from a painting depends on its color and its shape and its pattern, what it looks like. And if that’s right, then it shouldn’t matter whether it’s an original or a forgery, shouldn’t matter at all who created it. But the mind doesn’t work that way.
So, what we want is the value we apportion to the "famous/dead" holographer, not to the piece itself. If you do not value this holographer, then it's still kitsch! Again, in a quote of your TED talks:
Tony DCG wrote:Many sociologists like Veblen and Wolfe would argue that the reason why we take origins so seriously is because we’re snobs, because we’re focused on status...our response is conditioned on our beliefs
Our snobbishness wants us to crow that we have a "Benton", or a "Rudy Berkhout" because we're in the holographic world. The "art" value of the hologram rests purely and squarely on our belief system. But, because we're in the holographic world, there are precious few people we can crow to!
By the way, as a disclaimer of sorts, I did buy a Kincaid for $10,000. However, I had never heard of Kincaid! A guest asked if the painting was a Kincaid and I asked "Who?" Joy confirmed it was a Kincaid and I think the guest was more surprised that I'd never heard of Kincaid than the fact we had one!
I didn't sell all that much. I didn't have expectation so I was not happy nor sad about it. I knew going in that there were many many better holograms than mine were attempted to be sold and had mixed results. Friends were nice about it consoling that the economy was down and the Art and Wines are more crafts than art (and a lot of beer). I am sure if I deep fried my holograms they would have sold much better. Nice folks who do this sort of thing all the time said that in these events, you have 8 seconds to grab their attention, then they move on. So with the limited lighting and outdoor setting it was difficult to bring people inside the booth. But again I was not and am not bummer about it. To me it was a goal. Make 50+ holograms (and lighting systems) and get a booth set up.