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Cyberculture Site

RCCS: Introducing Cyberculture

Looking Backwards, Looking Forward: Cyberculture Studies 1990-2000

© David Silver, Media Studies, University of San Francisco

Originally published in Web.studies: Rewiring Media Studies for the Digital Age, edited by David Gauntlett (Oxford University Press, 2000): 19-30.

While still an emerging field of scholarship, the study of cyberculture flourished throughout the last half of the 1990s, as witnessed in the countless monographs and anthologies published by both academic and popular presses, and the growing number of papers and panels presented at scholarly conferences from across the disciplines and around the world. Significantly, the field of study has developed, formed, reformed, and transformed, adding new topics and theories when needed, testing new methods when applicable.

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Pentimento, nice word

Pentimento – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A pentimento (plural pentimenti) is an alteration in a painting, evidenced by traces of previous work, showing that the artist has changed his mind as to the composition during the process of painting. The word derives from the Italian pentirsi, meaning to repent.

Mine don’t show the traces but I repent, repent, repent.

Here is one I like and just tweaked:

What follows is the previous saved version.

Continue reading “Pentimento, nice word”

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Software for drawing on the Tablet PC

I get asked from time to time what software I use. So here is a post to sum that up, I have done it before but it is out of date. Starting with what I use most. I can take images from one program to another, either whole or as layers.

ArtRage 2.5

It is my favorite because it has a good interface, and it can do a lot really well. It has some features no other programs have, or if they have them they are too hard to find or use.

ACDsee 4.

For some “post production” such as lightening or darkening images, changing the hue.

Corel Paint X

Very versatile, I can usually get the exact pen I want, and love discovering new ones.

Picasa

Other post-production. It can do some nice things like straighten & tilt.


Photoshop

It can do everything, I use it for printing.

Paint

This is the MS free one that comes with Windows. It is quick for text, and bucket fill.

~

I have tried lots of others but these ones are the most stable. ArtRage has never crashed my machine, and all the others have. I have spent a lot on software, but the $25 for ArtRage 2 was the best value for money by a long shot.

Of course it is all personal preference, it depends on what you know and what you do.

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Hand Made

I listen occasionally to Brooks Jensen’s short podcasts on photography, they often apply to all art and creativity, he is a thoughtful man. The Lenswork publication is beautiful. The website is beautiful. He has a great piece about printing images, all of which I fully concur with.

Here is the full archive: LensWork Recent Podcasts

I just listened to this one: LW0405: Considering Content, Considering Medium

It talks about the presence of the hand of the artist. So that is right on topic with the stuff I was looking at re Walter Benjamin recently. The useful point he makes is that some art is more hand-dependent than others, I am not sure if that is his word or not. Painting is at one extreme, and photography on the other.

Which makes images that are made by hand, but digital an interesting case in point. The hand is more there in the file, but when it comes to reproduction it is much like a photo.

My sketches work quite well if they are just printed on some machine in a store, but they loose a lot. The prints I make are another whole story, it has taken me a long time to perfect my technique, and there are rejects as I learn. I have found better paper, and I now have better mastery over the software, ie the colour.

So when I sign a print it means I am satisfied it is as good as I can do it.

The great masters of the darkroom probably have a strong hand in the work as well. Look at this by Sally Mann for instance.

There are a few twists to this reflection…

One is that my printing of the images influences what I make when I make digital images. In some deep way where medium is the muse, but I will tweak an image to make it work well as a print, and then the final version is posted on the net. This means it works well on my combination of screen, software, hardware paper & ink. That will be hard to replicate ever again! (I can’t always do it!)

When I do sign something that is 100% hand-dependent.

The other thought I had is that somewhere, sometime, someone and they may have already done it for all I know one of my images is presented in a way that is just wonderful. My hand, their craft.

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Earth Crosses Series Complete

I am really satisfied with my Earth Crosses series. It includes some from the Thousand Sketches and some I did since. If you have been reading my blog you will have seen most of them, but they look best together. It is this series I am working on exhibiting.

 

Here is the last one in the series.

Golden Cross

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Between Projects, and here is a Circle

I have completed an Earth Crosses series (more in the next post), it was something that grew out of the Thousand Sketches, so right at this moment there is no project. Plenty of work! Maintaining my blogs and setting up thumbnails and so on but I am in a creativity vacuum. This circle is a reflection on a moment.

One reason for the space is that I am reflecting on where I go.

Photos are on my mind. I’ll post a couple.

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