Essay

How have recent advances in computer technology affected story telling/narrative with in artwork?

For my essay I will be looking at how narrative artists back in 1960’s and 1970’s used to use there own hand skills to make stories where as now artists use computer technology to make visual stories. I want to compare artists from 20 years ago and artist now that use computers to create narrative projects. I will be looking at how artist managed to produce graphic design without using all the computers and technology that is used today.

Before when they used to create things like book covers and posters it used take a lot longer to produce and it would be time consuming, this could be hard for the designer and make sure they have the time.

When designers didn’t have computers and technology they used to use there own artistic skills and do more practical work. The tools they used to use were pens, pencils, letterset, and screen-printing, typesetting machines and lots more. When creating images the tools they used where charcoal and crushed fruit to add some colour to their images. For photography and photo based designs in the old times they used to film cameras which was hard to use because before you actually took the picture it would be black so you could only see the outcome of the image when it was actually processed. This would also be time consuming because if the picture did not come out the way you wanted it to then you would have throw it and have to do the whole process again where as now in the modern technology there are digital cameras so you can see what you actually taking a picture of and if you do not like the image then you can delete it straight away and take another one, this saves a lot of time. Also another thing you can do is taking action shots so it takes loads of pictures in one shot so you can choose the favourite and keep that one.

Storytelling is the way of showing of events in words, and images, often by improvisation or embellishment.

Stories or narratives have been shared in every culture as a means of entertainment, education, cultural preservation, and instilling moral values.

Technology gives people today, or at least those who can operate them, a new and different way of telling their stories and experiences to others. However, these same toys are making it harder for traditional storytellers who rely purely on the magic of their words to have the same impact they once had. From the 21st century there was Adobe Photoshop, InDesign, Flash, Illustrator and Dreamweaver which allowed the artist and designers have more control over their work so they can edit their images and make them better so they looked more professional. It also allowed them to change the way their image looks so it looked more realistic and changed the reality of it. I have researched a few artists that relate to my question and have used Photoshop a way of presenting storytelling. Some of them use the simple ways of editing their photo and some use a lot of it to actually change the original image to something else.

Oscar Parasiego is a Spanish multi-disciplinary visual artist currently based in Birmingham. He graduated with an Honours Degree from the MA Fine Art Photography at the prestigious School of Photography EFTI in Madrid (2008). He has delivered several art projects over the last 10 years working in different countries and collaborating with very diverse communities. His practice explores the untruthfulness of photography and the inability of photography to capture the complexity of human self-reflection. Some of the themes explore identity, communication, emigration, death and relationships. His artworks evoke surrealist aesthetics creating powerful and playful images, always in need of the observer to complete the journey. He is currently interested in pushing photography’s boundaries and exploring the untruthfulness of photography with virtual and invisible technologies. His aim is to re-think photography in an innovative way, no longer as a 2D or frozen time instant but something else. I chose to look at Oscar Parasiengo’s artwork because I found it interesting how he doesn’t show the images of the people but instead uses parts of the background on top of the layer. His work doesn’t have a constant theme but the photos taken are usually just like a everyday basis so in a house, in the street, cafe and in a garden. The way his work looks it makes the people look like they are invisible so it could have a meaning.

Oscar has used computer technology in his artwork because he has used photoshop to crop out the people and place it with the background images. This could have been done handmade but probably would have been time consuming because he would probably cut out the people out then use another image and place it underneath the cut out image but it wouldn’t be perfect and not look professional enough whereas on photoshop you can edit the image.

Fabienne Rivory is a French artist who is making artwork that blends paint and photography since 2007.

Labokoff is a project born in 2007, when I began exploring interactions between photography and painting, the real world and imagination, memories and reality. Her images are built around photographs that are picked out of my personal collection: landscapes, nature, silhouettes. These are individual memories but, through the choice of the photos, the way they are processed, and the minimalism of the resulting pictures, they become more universally evocative and can remind anyone of a memory, any place, and an emotion.

Painting is made of gouache or inks that are then digitally combined with photos, it shifts the

images in to a dreamy register, brings vibrancy and add the strength of colours and shapes to raw photographs which creates a more poetic and subjective vision. These are dreamed images trying to recreate a momentary emotion that anyone can feel in front of nature’s beauty, a particular architectural shape, a landscape passing by or the silhouette of a beloved one. I chose to look at Fabienne Rivory work because she uses variety of different media in her work. I like way he has combined handmade artwork and computer technology together. He has used a camera to take the images of landscapes and then used watercolour ink to add some colour because the pictures are edited on photoshop to black and white. I like the way she combines bold bright colours and old black and white photographs. She uses limited range of colour and balances her compositions effectively. I like the way he hasn’t got too much going on in the image but it still has a meaning to it. The use of black and white photo usually links to history so in this case like memories.

Maryland-based conceptual photographer Bairon Rivera defies gravity in his fascinating photo series titled Levitation, which features people jumping, falling, and floating in mid-air. At times bright and cheery, at times eerie and moody, the photos are always stunning and intriguing. Rivera’s photos take on a surreal tone as it captures acts that are simply impossible in this world: riding a bicycle through the air without the wheels ever touching the ground, steadily walking up the side of a tree, floating precariously above a stream of water. Levitation isn’t just limited to people, either; in one photo, rocks hover around a subject who is suspended upside-down in mid-air. Looking at the spectacular photos, the viewer can’t help but wonder about the alternate reality that Rivera has created, a world in which people and objects cannot be contained on the ground. I chose to look at the work of Rivera’s because I wanted to study photo manipulation. I feel that it would help me with designing and look at how this artist shows ways of storytelling. I like the way his images look so realistic and makes the impossible look real like the people floating in the air without any strings attached to them whereas in reality that would be impossible. Rivera used a

wide variety of different techniques in his work combining images together. He obviously first takes the pictures of the people in the position he wants them to be then on photoshop he crops out them out and places them onto another completely different image. He then edits them to make the lightings and colours so it blends in well with the image. He then uses different effects to edit the image and make it look more professional and realistic. I realised that he likes the outdoor more and the nature when choosing the background images. Although the outdoor is more natural and has nothing with technology the artwork overall is linked to using technology because the people floating in the air is not done by nature.

Overall I think that the computer technology has affected and made an impact on the society. However this has also helped us dicover newer artists and designers and new ways of discovering how to use different technolgy methods to help create sotry telling. Popular websites with artists work are like tumblr and pinterst and flickr which is again found by using the internet. Before you would only find rare amount of artist with talents and not everyone was capacable of doing the same things they used to produce where as now there are tutorials given on Youtube and in schools to help people produce art work using computer technoloy and more people can produce good quality work. It has helped people do the impossible possible in imagery like photo manipulation, such as changing the scale and size of something and the positioning of an object or someone. Designers cna use more of their imagination and try different ways of telling a story in a picture or clip.