Creativity and Technology

Throughout history, artistic movements have indicated an opening to social changes. Between conceptual art ideology (where the idea makes the art, as suggested by Sol Lewitt (1967) in an article entitled “Paragraphs on Conceptual Art”) and contemporary technological advancement, the influence of computer-automated technology on artistic practice can be interpreted in many ways. Lewitt (1967) proposed that, “When an artist uses a conceptual form of art, it means that all of the planning and decisions are made beforehand and the execution is a perfunctory affair. The idea becomes a machine that makes the art” (p. 80). A few decades later, the artist’s creative process is assisted by a computer-automated technology (CAD), a “machine that makes the art.” With CAD, a visual representation of an artistic concept may be sent to a machine that fabricates the art object.17 _{Today, automated fabrication influences not only} the artist’s creative process and artworks’ modes of production but all spheres of society, such as is described in the following article on recession and technology:

Year after year, the software that runs computers and an array of other machines and devices becomes more sophisticated and powerful, and capable of doing more efficiently tasks that humans have always done. For decades, science fiction warned of a future when we would be architects of our own obsolescence, replaced by our machines . . . (Condon & Wiseman, 2013, p. 9)

Within the framework of this research, sculpture practice is influenced by a digital medium linked to a spatial context and a computer-automated mode of fabrication. Whereas artists’ creative drives could never be obsolete and they cannot even be envisioned as being replaced by a machine, the machine can enhance artists’ creative freedom—so long as artists are open to experiencing a spatial interaction with objects within a technological context. Creativity is influenced by knowledge and observation. As presented by Boden (2004), educational psychologist David Perkins (1981), “sees, creativity as grounded in universally-shared psychological capacities such as perception, memory and the ability to notice interesting things and to recognize analogies” (p. 35). Boden (2004) identifies that, “What makes a difference between an outstanding creative person and a less creative one is not any special power, but greater knowledge (in the form of practised expertise) and the motivation to acquire and use it” (p. 35).

1.8.1 McLuhan’s Message

Two important concepts from Marshall McLuhan’s writings on the impact of technology on society are identified through examining the many ways in which technology influences sculpture practice: “the extension of man” and “the medium is the message” (McLuhan, 2001), and are re-contextualized and adjusted to the context of this study. Leading to an augmented concept-percept-effect creative experience, technology becomes an extension of man. As discussed previously, this frees up artists from sculpture production mode constraints. In addition, it reduces time-consuming sculpting physical labour. By extending artists’ spatial explorations (3D software) and sculpture concept modes of production (CAD and RP), technology frees up artists’ minds and time and moves the focus of the practice primarily to imagining and communicating ideas.

McLuhan’s (2001) concept of technology as an extension of man specifically addresses communication media; in the context of this research, what is common is the way in which technology moves artists’ ideas by freeing their communication means from physical constraints and inviting them into an extended concept in sculpture practice, that of the immaterial: a digital sculpture that can travel through the web.

From a different perspective, freedom also incites artists to explore, to experience a state of being as described by Walter Benjamin (1999) in the concept of the flâneur.18 Originally proposed by French poet Baudelaire, this concept is associated with the act of strolling, which plays an essential role in the complex phenomenon of creative activity (Benjamin, 1999, p. 10). Strolling allows time for conceptual exploration by liberating the mind from practical constraints.

McLuhan (2001) proposed the concept that the medium is the message, meaning that within this era of new media of communication, the medium not only conveys a message but is the message. A symbiosis between concept and process is experienced. Ideas are expressed and sent simultaneously to travel through various media modes. In opposition to McLuhan’s concept, Nicholas Negroponte19 argued that the medium is not the message and asks: “to what degree can the notion of formless data be extended to less prosaic material.”20 Negroponte (2008) explains “when bits are bits . . . the medium is no longer the message” (p. 61).

While the concept of bits being bits was not conceivable in his time, McLuhan would certainly have considered a possible symbiosis of medium and message through the transmission of “bits received as bits,” as presented by Negroponte. Moreover, in the

context of this study, the so-called bits environment implies that inside a digital context, bits address a digital medium that conveys information on a sculptural object. Not only can a sculptural object move from its to bits but in many disciplines and from different perspectives data move from analogue to digital. Furthermore, physicist John Wheeler (1990) proposed that the entire world of physics moves from its to bits.21 _{Today, when} artists use a 3D scanner to digitize an analogue sculpture form, its become bits: the digital medium contains a message that is in fact the artist’s idea. From a digital medium perspective, a formless representation embeds a physical object through which bits can return to its again through RP technologies.