michaelgriffith (michaelgriffith) wrote,
michaelgriffith
michaelgriffith

Megan Heyward.... of day... of night...

What a fantastic session that was with Megan Heyward who not only provided such a detailed insight into the meaning and texture of her digital work, but who also helped to make us all feel the possibility of moving in the direction that she has pioneered.... add to this her great insight into the history of the technology that has led up to this moment of new expressive possibilities..... I think in years to come her lecture to university will be seen as a milestone in helping university creative artists find their feet in the new technologies!! I loved especially her insight into how, as an artist, she did not initially know where she was heading... she had some kind of intuition and then began looking around her for what tools were available... what animated paint brushes.... new systems of colours... new forms of paint animation... I am stretching the metaphor of painter here... but of course she was moving in the direction of a new composite art form which has become possible in the digital age.... would not Vincent Van Gogh have cut off his other ear for a portion of these new expressive possibilities....
Now talking about Vincent Van Gogh... a subject of intense interest to the first years who are about to begin an essay on Megan Heyward with some cross reference to dear old Vincent... Why I brought Vincent into the equation is because he was/is an artist who in his time was breaking all the rules of painterliness... he decided to forget painting things "as you saw them"... he wanted to express the inner truth of things... and to do this he had to invent a new way of painting... radically new colours and new expressive techniques like making the rough brush-strokes on the canvas completely visible... so that you got a real taste of the intensity with which he saw things... he said at one point that he wanted to paint people "as if they had a halo around them"... what on earth did he mean? or what in heaven did he mean?!@#?!@#??!@#??@!@#$%?!@#????/ .... perhaps he meant something like trying to express the inexpressible spiritual dimension... or maybe "inner" dimension... (if you don't like the word "spiritual").... it is so hard to put into words what can't be put into words.... and that is why Van Gogh of course chose paint and not words!!!!!!!!....sorry I am getting a little carried away here.... To cut a long story short: Van Gogh experimented with the "new technologies" of paint to create a radically new art form which in fact freed artists up in the twentieth century... modernism could not have happened without Van Gogh's daring.... So check out the following Web site (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vincent_van_Gogh) and check out these few examples of Van Gogh's breathtaking "new" technology of paint... and enjoy these snapshots of Megan Heyward and the spell-bound class... incidentally we had 132 people in the room... made up of 1st, 2nd and 3rd years... I hope this has a majorly, majorly, creative impact on your LiveJournals.... and PS.... I will be whacking Megan's PowerPoint presentation up into WebCT (first, second and third years)....
PS- you'd think I was a LiveJournal Guru... but I am not!!!>.. anyone tell me how I can bunch all these pictures up... next to each other without having them hanging off each other like the links in a diamond python!!!!!!??????
Ciao





PS check out again these links:
http://www.storycenter.org/diner/pages/mh1.html http://www.realtimearts.net/rt49/heyward.html
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