Aperture Onto Existential Horror
Art appreciation in the modern age
A simulation that could elevate rather than degrade; complete rather than reduce
Recently, I found myself adding chromatic aberration and a barrel lens effect to a 3D animation. This way, my virtual camera could have all the defects of a physical one. Adding imperfections to otherwise flawless virtual objects is standard practice; in digital, imperfection is perfection. Slight asymmetry, signs of wear and tear—all of these add verisimilitude to a scene.
Likewise, painters often replicate camera distortions to, paradoxically, evoke a sense of realism—after all, what could be more realistic than a photograph? To the same effect, moviemakers splatter cameras with fake blood and retain artifacts such as that glorious lens flare without which no Hollywood sunrise would be complete.
Artists are keenly aware that the defects and deficiencies of a medium are what define it: pixelated 8-bit characters, screentones that don’t conform to the inked folds of a garment, and the nostalgic warble a singer injects into her rendition of the Depression-Era hit We Can Live on Love, as though she too were a broken record, are all examples of this phenomenon.
The limitations and idiosyncrasies of an artistic medium come to be what’s fond and familiar, to the point of being essential, even when rendered separable due to technological advancements.
What struck me as curious was that I was using a simulation to make another simulation more convincing. By making the camera seem real, I was implying the virtual object it captured was authentic. I seemed to be entreating, ‘Of course, this doughnut is real; it was filmed by a real camera’. In contrast to what Baudrillard espoused, I was confronted with a simulation that could elevate rather than degrade; complete rather than reduce.
Besides Simulacra and Simulation, I’m also reading Ways of Seeing. This eye-opening book likewise delves into the ways in which an original is diminished by its reproductions, granted preeminence but stripped of uniqueness; enriched by its historic overlay but also obscured by it.
Living in a world where reproductions of famous paintings are widely disseminated has its drawbacks. When an original artwork is viewed in the context of its countless copies, the question is in danger of shifting from ‘What does it show?’ to ‘What is it?’
“…the perceptual innocence of childhood, when the sensum was not immediately and automatically subordinated to the concept.”
―Aldous Huxley, The Doors of Perception
When you finally clap eyes on the Mona Lisa*, you perceive it as the original, semantically categorise** it as such, and move on. Even if you’ve travelled half-way around the globe, inexorably you find yourself preoccupied with the fact that you’ve seen her enigmatic smile grace book covers, movie posters, sequined t-shirts, and even a sheet cake. (Which is preferable to cake being on the Mona Lisa, as happened fairly recently; a man disguised himself as an elderly lady in a wheelchair to commit this batter-y.)
The existence of reproductions can stop us from truly seeing and appreciating art.
The uniqueness of the original now lies in it being the original of a reproduction. […] The meaning [and value] of the original work no longer lies in what it uniquely says but in what it uniquely is.
—John Berger, Ways of Seeing
The substance of an artwork finds itself subservient to its mystique as a relic that has survived a bygone era, a heist, aspersions of only being an apprentice’s handiwork, a desecration via cake, and perhaps even the dubious honour of being the most expensive painting ever sold. In the art world, context is king, not content.
However, reproductions can also have the opposite effect: they untether the work from the specific space and time it was meant to occupy. Instead of being shrouded by its past, an artwork becomes separated from its companions—a triptych left orphaned—or its unique viewing conditions, dragged into the light from the shadowy recesses of the cathedral it once called home.
Rather than ensconcing it in the mysteries of its origins, a reproduction can transport, say, the murals of the Mogao Caves and display them in your livingroom next to your (some would say tacky) Tiki mask collection and embroidery of your beloved teacup poodle, Fluffles. Doubtless something ineffable is lost in the process.
This tendency to ignore the substance of a painting has so blinded us, that I often find myself shuffling my feet in front of an artwork unworthy of a second glance, so sure is a friend they’re just “missing” something.
I find it quite disconcerting when people allocate equal time to each piece at art galleries. Not all artwork is deserving of your time. You’re allowed to think a centuries-old painting is an ill-conceived and ill-executed disaster and breeze past it—I give you my permission. You don’t have to stand there, burning holes into it.
In the same vein, I once had a coworker demure in her exhalation of an exhibit to tell me in apologetic tones that she could not recommend it to someone who hadn’t studied art history. What next, one can only taste a pomegranate if one is learned in ancient Greek mythology and the trade routes of the East India Company? Absurd.
If you can physically perceive art—you can enjoy art, provided the art in question has merit. I sometimes feel the faux intelligentsia could be displayed as a torus knot next to the Hyper Hyperboloid at MoMath, given just how far their heads are up their arses.
Forget academic elitism: art is meant for everyone, and people now have greater access to it than ever before. However, it must be acknowledged that paintings are only somewhat reproducible; the thumbnail image on your phone can only hint at the ebb and flow of brushstrokes in Starry Night, or the sheer scale of David Hockney’s works.
Inherently, this is not the case with digital art. While NFTs are, as the acronym suggests, non-fungible, the underlying content, in the case of digital assets, is wholly reproducible. This is often noted by detractors who seem to have mistaken the asset for its tokenisation.
As a result, NFTs often derive value from contextual significance, much like physical works of art in this epoch of not seeing the trees for the forest. This significance may lie in their rarity, paradigm-shifting or Zeitgeist-capturing quality, or else is a matter of the artist’s reputation. There is, however, one key difference: NFTs can be perceived as valuable merely by dint of your ownership.
This is particularly the case for AI-generated art, such as those unbecoming apes—personalised with pustules or a Rasta hat—celebrities were showing off not too long ago. There is no basking in the artist’s reflected glory as there is no artist—but there may be an art buyer longing to be immortalised through the inviolable blockchain record.
Another issue with reproductions is that they can outlast the original, not only crowding it out of your mind’s eye but replacing it entirely. That must be why—among the many cultures who feel the camera is capable of capturing, in perpetuity, the essence of a soul—the indigenous people of Australia are averse to images depicting the deceased***.
The other psychological effect of getting behind a (virtual) camera is that I am, like the artists of the Renaissance—robbed of godhood, forced to contend with the selection of one isolated, singular perspective, cognisant of the fact that within space and time, it is only one sliver of a multitude—as am I.
As I continue to learn about 3D art, I develop a deeper appreciation of its illusory nature. I once imagined textures—metallic, glass, ceramic, hard candy—were determined by some sort of holy bible of spectrophotometric readouts. In practice, the artist merely considers a few key attributes and moves the appropriate sliders until it looks right.
You just eyeball it—so much for the mystique of 3D art!
If the object you're modelling is, for example, typically ceramic, then very little suggestion on your part is required. Despite advances in simulating subsurface scattering, ambient occlusion, caustics, and other complex interplays of light, 3D art, like all art, is merely evocative of reality. As much—or rather as little realistic—as a photograph.
Every time I select a camera angle or the roughness assigned to a texture (which doesn’t affect the underlying geometry but is merely deceptive), I feel as though I’m shattering my reality to forge a new one. No wonder Jon Roffe likened the mind-altering effects of art to an aperture onto the inhuman in Seduce or Die:
When do you really have your own money? When you can buy drugs for your friends—that is, when you can afford to open an aperture on the inhuman for someone other than yourself without resorting to direct violence or an art gallery.
And now, I bid you adieu for simulated worlds.
Footnotes
*Or rather, the crown of her head unless you are either very tall or very small (and punctual). Do you think a smoke bomb could clear out that section of the gallery? Asking for a friend.
**I’ve also started on Temple Grandin’s Visual Thinking though it seems to me that “verbal thinker/thinking” is a misleading term. If your thinking tends toward sequential, linear, and orderly it’s merely easier to verbalise than the thought process of highly associative, all over the (visuospatial) map thinkers—but to call it verbal thinking seems like a stretch. I refuse to believe anyone is out there constructing thoughts from words as though they were phenomenological LEGO® bricks.
Ultimately, we are all translating thoughts into words as seeing (and feeling) comes before words, both in a developmental sense and in the way we process external reality. As Ways of Seeing emphasises: although we explain the world with words, ‘words can never undo the reality surrounding us’ (much as ideologues strive in vain).
***On that note, I once read how utterly morbid an Aboriginal man found passion plays; I suppose they do have a ring of killing the poor bugger all over again.
I am, once again, remiss in not updating my newsletter as often as I should. Recently, I finished my third animation which involved trickery—as it always does—this time in service of making 3D objects appear two-dimensional and 2D objects three-dimensional, and that kept me well occupied.
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This reminds me of a recent conversation I had with a professor. I had some success culling his fear of AI-generated images by reminding him that while these programs can dress the Pope in oversized high-fashion jackets, they can't make him (or the jackets) look convincingly unclean.
Perhaps that hurdle will come to be known as AI imagery's defining charm—that it can put people on Jupiter, but can't put egg yolk on their shirts. That said, AI scores low in the area of lived experience, and that'll keep anyone out of today's art press.
Cool read as always, Angela! Thanks for sharing.