Art technicians: The industry’s dirty secret, or all part of the process? • Hacker News Board

Re: Art technicians: The industry’s dirty secret, or all part of the process?

#51

Post by oytis » Thu, Jul 19, 2018, 1:15 PM UTC

wolfgke wrote: post #25

oytis wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cause Rembrandt actually teached that apprentice how to do his work. Apprentice's skill is the result of master's work. That makes a huge difference to me.

> Cause Rembrandt actually teached that apprentice how to do his work. And a modern artist told his technician how to do his work. In this sense, I think the boundary is much more fluent. In my personal opinion, the artist is the person who has the "most established name" to sell the piece of art that he branded under his name to rich people.

Then maybe these rich people should get the credit for the piece of art, because it's their willingness to pay their money that makes it valuable.

Re: Art technicians: The industry’s dirty secret, or all part of the process?

#52

Post by extralego » Thu, Jul 19, 2018, 1:16 PM UTC

rainbowmverse wrote: post #33

mattkevan wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not necessarily. It's the same as with many creative fields. An architect comes up with the overall concept and, if they're famous, gets their name on the building. But they still have a roomful of structural engineers figuring out how to stop it falling down. Or a musician. Creating an album takes a team of session musicians, producers, engineers etc. But it's the artist's name that goes on the front.

It's possible to do an album on your own, but it takes knowledge of every step in the process. Otherwise you end up with levels all over the place, and people stop listening at the first song that's too much louder than the others.

Major difference between making an album and handing it off to a producer or sound engineer. Pretty poor comparison.

Re: Art technicians: The industry’s dirty secret, or all part of the process?

#53

Post by ArtWomb » Thu, Jul 19, 2018, 1:17 PM UTC

Art apprenticeship has existed since Caravaggio's time and beyond. But one relatively modern phenom is that you don't see artists assistants emerging after their period of indenture as stars themselves. People tend to get plucked for glory right out of school. Or they themselves hustle and blow up via Instagram. But you'll meet plenty of technicians in NYC at least who have been working in that role for 10+ years. Without emerging with a name or career of their own.

Re: Art technicians: The industry’s dirty secret, or all part of the process?

#54

Post by illwrks » Thu, Jul 19, 2018, 1:17 PM UTC

protonimitate wrote: post #45

pmoriarty wrote: post #2

As an artist, this article makes me so upset. The people doing the actual work should be getting credit. Of course the people coming up with the ideas should be getting credit too. When one person comes up with the idea and another with product, it's a collaborative work and credit should be shared. Artists who try to pass off a work they merely collaborated on as exclusively their own are despicable.

I wish the crews would receive more credit as well. A good analogy would be if Hollywood films didn't list credits and pretended that only the director worked on the film and did everything by themselves. It would be insulting for people to believe that a director did 100% of the work on one of their films and ignored the entire crew. Not sure why this doesn't apply to the art world where teams are way more common th…

Do you know the names of the people who produced the marketing campaigns that sold the film to audiences? Highly unlikely, no one ever knows those names....

Re: Art technicians: The industry’s dirty secret, or all part of the process?

#55

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Jul 19, 2018, 1:20 PM UTC

extralego wrote: post #52

rainbowmverse wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's possible to do an album on your own, but it takes knowledge of every step in the process. Otherwise you end up with levels all over the place, and people stop listening at the first song that's too much louder than the others.

Major difference between making an album and handing it off to a producer or sound engineer. Pretty poor comparison.

[deleted]

Re: Art technicians: The industry’s dirty secret, or all part of the process?

#56

Post by emodendroket » Thu, Jul 19, 2018, 1:20 PM UTC

Balero wrote: post #37

sageabilly wrote: post #30

One of the longstanding examples of this that immediately sprung to mind is Dale Chihuly ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dale_Chihuly ), the renown glass sculptor. Except Chihuly has not physically produced ANY of the glass sculptures attributed to him since 1979: "...he continued to blow glass until he dislocated his right shoulder in a 1979 bodysurfing accident. No longer able to hold the glass blowing pipe, he hir…

The music industry seems to have a pretty good solution for this. The performer gets a cut. The lyrics writer gets a cut. The melody writer gets a cut. I'm sure something similar could work. I'm also recovering from just finding out that the process I thought happened behind artwork was largely false, and has more in common with renaissance painting businesses than the title artists work.

It depends how you see everyone's contributions here... in some cases it seems a little bit like an album being attributed to EMI Records.

Re: Art technicians: The industry’s dirty secret, or all part of the process?

#57

Post by thanatropism » Thu, Jul 19, 2018, 1:21 PM UTC

The really interesting in this is not the question of authorship (whoever is paying gets the credit; whomever is getting paid can maybe get gracious acknowledgement), itś the concept/process duality. I.e.

1) Whether things are fully defined by concepts (and therefore symbolic representation) or whether there's something to objects that's fundamentally process-oriented; (this comes closer do Hubert Dreyfus' critique of AI)

2) Whether concepts themselves can be conceived as products of pure ideation, or whether there is the "concept-making process" of which concept-makers are technicians (this comes perhaps as a critique of pure conceptual art; for one, every pure mathematician knows you learn the stuff by doing and acquiring instincts), and, conversely

3) Whether meaningful things can be produced as pure process, fabrication, algorithm; or whether there's a necessary conceptual aspect to processes; whether an artisan carpenter or decades-experienced plumber have a concept built into their muscle memory and analytic instincts. (This comes close to programming: why, after so much process-development, is programming still so much a creators thing?)

Re: Art technicians: The industry’s dirty secret, or all part of the process?

#58

Post by protonimitate » Thu, Jul 19, 2018, 1:23 PM UTC

heavenlyblue wrote: post #46

sageabilly wrote: post #30

One of the longstanding examples of this that immediately sprung to mind is Dale Chihuly ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dale_Chihuly ), the renown glass sculptor. Except Chihuly has not physically produced ANY of the glass sculptures attributed to him since 1979: "...he continued to blow glass until he dislocated his right shoulder in a 1979 bodysurfing accident. No longer able to hold the glass blowing pipe, he hir…

>> It's an interesting thought experiment about what art actually IS: is art the idea behind the piece? Is it the skill that the individual has in physically bringing the piece to life? If the person with the vision doesn't physically produce the outcome, is it still their art? I sincerely enjoy the fact that people regularly visiting Hacker News think that is an "interesting thought experiment", in the context of ar…

>>On the other hand art is somehow assumed to be a special case in our world.

I think this is most due to a romanticized vision of what an artist really is/does. When people think artist, they think of the starving-artist stereotype - locked away alone in their studio pursuing their passion and living in poverty to 'do what they love'. Or, the crazy-genius archetype (think Van Gogh). People attribute creativity to 'natural talent' or 'artistic genius', when it's really a skill that can be sharpened the same as running a business like a CEO would.

Craftsmanship and creative vision are two sides of the same coin art, just as they are in business. You can have a killer business idea, but it's worth nothing without proper execution. The same goes if you are a skilled programmer but have no vision on how to sell your skills.

Re: Art technicians: The industry’s dirty secret, or all part of the process?

#59

Post by mrob » Thu, Jul 19, 2018, 1:25 PM UTC

lizardskull wrote: post #24

7952 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In software development I tend to believe that the idea is not particularly valuable. The real value is being able to implement an idea effectively. That is what makes a great product work. It is striking how differently the art technicians in this article think. They see the idea as having all the intrinsic value. More cynically I wonder if it is really the marketing value of a big name rather than the quality of id…

“Very little is actually about execution, because the execution's primary purpose is to represent the idea. It's the actual idea that contains the values.” This quote from the article is a strange reflection of what the world of software development teaches.

The difference is that software has to be functional. You can literally call a urinal or a can of soup "art", and if your "idea" (i.e. social status) is good enough then people will believe you.

Re: Art technicians: The industry’s dirty secret, or all part of the process?

#60

Post by protonimitate » Thu, Jul 19, 2018, 1:25 PM UTC

illwrks wrote: post #54

protonimitate wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish the crews would receive more credit as well. A good analogy would be if Hollywood films didn't list credits and pretended that only the director worked on the film and did everything by themselves. It would be insulting for people to believe that a director did 100% of the work on one of their films and ignored the entire crew. Not sure why this doesn't apply to the art world where teams are way more common th…

Do you know the names of the people who produced the marketing campaigns that sold the film to audiences? Highly unlikely, no one ever knows those names....

I don't understand the point you are trying to make.