If Leonardo da Vinci really lived by a “code” as Dan Brown’s best-seller suggests, I think it would have been this: seek the science in art and the art in science. With that philosophy, old Leo would feel right at home in Gavilan Community College’s digital media studio.
The studio is a computer lab run at Gavilan’s Gilroy campus by instructor Bob Beede. Technologically speaking, it’s one of the most advanced college-based digital media labs around, thanks to being so near Silicon Valley. And artistically speaking, it’s one of the best places locally to let loose some creative juices.
For three weeks in July, I spent time in the studio learning how to make music in the digital realm. My goal was to create a “soundtrack” for a DVD-based photo collection I’d made of South Valley scenery.
On my first day in the studio, I knew absolutely zilch about creating music on a computer. Beede suggested that Apple Computer’s Garageband was the software system I should use.
Playing around with Garageband, I tinkered out little tunes that sounded very amateurish. But as I learned the intricacies of the product, my creativity blossomed.
Not that I ever approached Mozart, mind you. But over the three weeks, I saw a sharp gain in quality in the little ditties I composed. Some melodies I cranked out amazed me by their musical complexity.
That’s the joy of creativity – it leads to delightful surprises. And in our digital age, computers are giving many people the tools to express their artistic creativity in new and exciting ways. Not just with music either. In Gavilan’s digital media studio, student digital artists worked on short video clips, computer animation, photography projects, and three-dimensional computer “sculptures” created with modeling software.
At times, watching my fellow students, I thought about how similar we seemed to the great Italian Renaissance artists – like da Vinci – who also started in studios. Of course, their studios weren’t anything like Gavilan’s – with the latest and greatest computer contraptions. But the Renaissance maestros were using the latest and greatest in technology for their time, too – such as the concept of linear perspective that broke new ground in their artistic endeavors.
That seems to be the story of art. When new media tools come along, they spark up the artistic imagination and lead to new ways of looking at the world. This fresh perspective in turn inspires new scientific discoveries.
It happened in France in the 1860s with the birth of the Impressionist movement – partly inspired by photography’s way of capturing a moment of time. Artistic rebels like Monet and Renoir moved away from the static, overly posed style of “classical” paintings and created a new art capturing the feel of a fleeting moment. They filled their canvases with the shimmer of water or the blurred movement of a street scene.
And here in the 21st century, this coming week the history of art might take a turn in a new direction. It’ll happen right in South Valley’s own backyard. From Aug. 7-13, downtown San Jose will hold its inaugural “ZeroOne Festival,” the very first digital arts event of its kind in North America.
Billed as “A Global Festival of Art on the Edge,” the $2 million event will spotlight more than 150 digital media artists from New Zealand, Tokyo, Paris, Germany, Eastern Europe, and throughout the United States and the San Francisco Bay Area.
And what kind of creations might you experience if you check out this brand-new festival? Well, you’ll see stuff at ZeroOne that will take you over the edge of digital vision.
One featured work of art is called “Pimp My Heart.” It involves a car’s stereo blasting, with the bass cranked up to reverberate with the driver’s heartbeat. Another art work is the “PigeonBlog.” It sends homing pigeons flying around the city with miniature backpacks containing GPS devices that transmit real-time text messages and image data detailing air pollution information.
Another art attraction at ZeroOne is titled “Karaoke Ice.” In this masterpiece, an ice cream truck driver in a squirrel costume convinces participants to record a karaoke song to be broadcast later. OK, so it ain’t exactly the “Mona Lisa.”
But maybe that’s what art is all about – to push people into new ways of looking at our world. Critics of the Impressionist painters derided the works of those pioneer artists as scandalous, ridiculous and plain ugly. And now those same Impressionist paintings fetch gazillions of dollars at art auctions. Who knows where digital art might lead?
The ZeroOne Festival’s director Steve Dietz ambitiously hopes the festival will make San Jose “the North American epicenter for the intersection of art and digital culture.” We’ll see next week if Americans are ready for artistic expression using digital gadgets. If it succeeds, ZeroOne will become a biennial festival, the premier event in America highlighting art in our high-tech age.
Silicon Valley is occasionally compared with the city of Florence of Renaissance Italy. The money that corporations generated here during the dot-com boom of the 1990s created a powerhouse that – like the Medici family of Florence – wielded great influence on national and world politics. But it never achieved the prominence in public works of art like that great Italian city did.
Businesses are only now starting to realize that art is tied to economics as well as science. That’s why Adobe, Sun Microsystems and Hewlett-Packard Co. are helping pick up part of the tab for ZeroOne. They realize the human need to seek out the science in art as well as the art in science.
So does Gavilan College. During my summer session at its digital media studio, I witnessed many talented artists working on amazing creations. Who knows if one day in that lab, some high-tech Leonardo da Vinci or Renoir or Monet might emerge from behind a computer canvas?
Martin Cheek is the author of ‘The Silicon Valley Handbook.’ He can be reached at ma****@**********rs.com.
