Music and Art and All the Different Ways to Take It In

This article by Carrie Brownstein of Sleater-Kinney is interesting.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/monitormix/2010/04/the_amateur_vs_the_professiona.html

Largely, she just repeats many of the things that have been said about bedroom music and the Internet, but she mentions a few bands who were amateurs and presented themselves as professionals (James Brown and Nation of Ulysses), and professional bands who present themselves as amateurs (Kings of Leon and The Strokes). While I have no real interest in any of these bands, and no interest whatsoever in musical presentation, her talk of how the Internet and technology have blurred the lines between the amateur and the professional is worth reading.

Particularly, it made me think about music on the internet versus art on the internet. Anyone can upload their music, and anyone can find it and listen to it exactly how it is supposed to sound. Anyone listening to those songs are hearing the exact version of the song that was created by the band.

When translating this into visual art (specifically paintings, drawings, etc.--anything not done digitally), it completely changes. Many artists post their work online, but in this case, the online versions of the art are not the art itself, they are copies of it. Visual art is meant to be seen on a wall (there are exceptions), not a computer screen. A piece of original art can really only hang in one gallery at a time, and can only reach the audience who enter it.

I wonder if people are accepting digital copies of art as originals.

Despite a post for this topic, I really do hate talking about this. People should just create because they have the desire to do so, and they should upload it to the web and put it on walls or play it on a stage if they want to, so others can like it or hate it, and no one should worry about what genre or style they fall into, because however they choose to make it is exactly how it should be made. Brain to paper. No thoughts about its transmission through wires or websites or cultures or time periods.

Okay.