8 Clicks from Nowhere Productions

Tag: digital explorations

Chapter List

  • Digital Analog

    Flip-flopping between digital art and physical media—and often the fuzzy spots in between—is a dichotomy of form that is something quite unique to the modern world. 

    As the fidelity of our digital tools improve many (if not most) art forms have found analogs in the digital realm: words, photography, design, sound, and sculpture to name but a few. 

    I consider myself an artist, and one who has (more recently as my access to powerful computer tech has increased) often started in the digital realm before investing in the physical tools to try my hand at the so-called real version of it.

    Why buy expensive paints when I have an app on the device I already own?

    Why purchase a space-consuming musical instrument when I can noddle on my laptop with some free software?

    But I also wonder: how has being a digital-first artist affected me? What is the effect on my approach because I have not needed to overcome that initial struggle incurred by the costs and barriers of physical media? Does the creative approach from using technology suffer because the media is more forgiving, erasable, redo-able? Is the technology a crutch or a learning tool?

    I can’t redo my approach, and honestly there are forms I would never have tried without first attempting with the safety net provided by digital modes. But what was the effect of that on my skill and my mind?

  • Costume Party

    Does everyone need to brand themselves? 

    A personal brand goes well beyond a clever URL and a logo made up of your initials. 

    In an online world we are presented with this ideas of an avatar, a kind of costume that we don when we share our work, our thoughts, or our best selves in digital spaces.

    Since we are (obviously) unable to be online in the physical, tangible way that is the organic stuff of reality and a million years of social evolution, what we then present online is necessarily a construct. After all, we cannot know the subtleties of our own personalities like the ticks and quirks we give off when sitting across from a real person, so all of it is fabricated as some kind of manicured self image if we like that idea or not.

    Embracing this idea, leaning into it, is the notion of personal brand: shaping that avatar to fulfill a purpose, and perhaps to be more than—or at least a more refined and controlled version of—our real world selves.

    The notion this implies is that we are all somehow emotionally mature enough to construct these online characters in a way that presents us in a positive and beneficial way. 

    What this implies is skill and nuance. 

    What this notion misses is that not all masks well made.

    To brand oneself, one puts on a mask and becomes someone or something else, which can be useful and necessary, but can be a difficult illusion to maintain. 

    This doesn’t make it impossible or ill-advised, but rather perhaps something that is done with care and purpose and not just because it seems to be a fad.