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Creativity is critical

Lillian Schwartz is an American artist renowned for her work in the field of computer-mediated art in the 1960s and 1970s, long before computers became common household appliances. She recently spoke to TODAY about art, inspiration and the medium she helped define over her creative career. These are excerpts from her interview.

Lillian Schwartz is an American artist renowned for her work in the field of computer-mediated art in the 1960s and 1970s, long before computers became common household appliances. 
Born in 1927, her innovative spirit was apparent even as a young girl growing up during the Great Depression, when she experimented with readily available and inexpensive materials like sticks, mud and chalk — paired with her imagination — to create art. She moved on to other media like oils and acrylics, and experimented with other forms of expression, including plastic paintings mounted over lights, electronic mobiles and graphics that could be viewed in 2D and 3D.
The Betwixt Festival, which ran from Feb 25 to March 1, paid tribute to her pioneering spirit with screenings featuring the works of this doyen of digital art. Lillian recently spoke to TODAY about art, inspiration and the medium she helped define over her creative career. These are excerpts from her interview:

How did your experience with classical forms of artistic expression shape your approach to computer-mediated art? 

Creativity is an innate, incessant whorl within the mind and soul that does not permit an artist to stop. Beethoven created when he was deaf. I am nearing blindness but I see and know the images I have not made into films. 
I always moved from medium to medium when I felt that I had achieved what I needed to do and my creative spark pushed me into a different direction. I began at the age of four, drawing with whatever I could find. When I was eight years old, my brother, who drew cels (transparent celluloid sheets that were used to draw cartoons) for Disney, gave me more advanced tools. 
Later, I was taught the different kinds of brushes and their uses, pigments and how to mix them, the types of paper, even cloisonne (a way of creating designs on metal utensils with coloured-glass paste), so I was immersed in Eastern culture, art, and tools. 
In the United States, I already knew the Renaissance painters whom I studied more at the museums in New York City. I would pick one master and sketch, learning his techniques. I was enchanted by Leonardo da Vinci because his work mixed science and technology. So I went from oils to acrylics. I’d do parts on sheets of acrylic that I then laminated and inserted into light boxes for a 3D effect. 

Does using a computer to create visual art limit artists today? 

These days, computers are used as a tool for social media, not art. As for older forms, there are no older forms of tools. Even if I use a computer, I should know the basics, like how to draw, paint and study the masters like Leonardo da Vinci. 
There is a test artists sometimes have to undergo: Draw a hand, a foot, and a three-quarter profile of a face in five minutes. Dali once drew my portrait, pencil on paper, in that time, although I do not consider him to be an artist but a technical artist. 
So there is no advantage (with using a computer), for you still need that innate sense to create, be creative, to move a viewer’s psyche, emotions, his soul. 

What advice would you give to young artists today? 

If you are truly an artist, creativity will also make you curious. The past merges into the present and presages the future. You have to avoid defaults and storyboards, those standard methods of teaching, and ask, what is coming through me that wants me to create this? 
If the computer does not work, or work at first, then draw, paint or sculpt. While I was doing computer-based art, I also became interested in computer-controlled mobiles. Some involved computers, some just engineering. 
So do not rely on the computer, rely on that incessant abyss that erupts and you have an image. 
See which tool is best. Just be an artist.

How can artists who create art with computers continue to innovate without being limited by technology, however advanced it is?

I do not like saying computer-generated art because I am an artist whose tool happens to be a computer. Today, a majority of people use social media sites, such as Facebook (to post pictures), so now it seems everyone is an artist. 
It is similar to some early computer art which appropriated images that could be made with FORTRAN (a programming language) and then claimed to be the first in computer art. But those print-outs were just that — print-outs of FORTRAN-based images. The computer was not yet a tool for art. It became that when technology became commonplace. So too, did the tools. 
While the emphasis is on tools, it is creativity that has to exist and that is now stifled by Facebook, Twitter, games, texting, sending mobile-phone pictures. So I see a cultural shift that has already occurred. 

Computer-generated art has come a long way in the last 30 years. How do you think it will evolve over the next 30 years?

We’re now starting to see virtual reality goggles being used, so this could become our next phase. But virtual reality is a phenomenon that further isolates us as humans who should interact in person or meet on the street by accident. Better yet, we could meet at a museum, share a bench, observe an oil painting or a film that is computer-based. 
One can watch anything in virtual reality and it will involve you in some manner, but you are alone. 
Artists will create for virtual reality so there will be an adjustment in terms of perception. And what will be the tool? 
I fear the loss of the true creative spirit because societal interaction has changed. Being with a live person is no longer important so why would art be important? 
In brief, technological developments will shift the psyche to how many followers do I have (on social media platforms), away from creativity, pushing the tools, accepting the defaults. And we will end up devoid of life while filled with meaningless interactions.

Produced by the TODAY Special Projects Team

 

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