Monsters Я US: the Next Computer DeGeneration

ART IS “SEEING”

Let’s look again:

So what happened? “Pay attention!” our teachers and parents would say. It was well meaning and it was intented to instruct us in the virtue of attention, to prepare us to receive knowledge. We “pay” attention, meaning that it costs us something, it is worth our time and we invest in the act of being attentive because there are sacred developmental steps in learning. What we give our attention to shapes our sense of the world, perception and relations. What shapes the minds of our kids today? What images are coding their schema? How are today‘s computer animation and digital/media art trends a reflection of a botched universal education and a complete break from reality and culture?

The language of our discontent

By canceling the Greek and Latin conduits of Culture, there became no more need for memorization, the hot iron for constructing meaning. And if meaning in stories were no longer demanded, then language became simpler, words with meager semantic range no longer inspired artful drawing as we would have seen in the 19th and 20th centuries. The Golden Age of Children’s Illustration and its mythological vernacular would be lost in translation.

What follows is a low expectation of the child’s intellect and natural inclination towards heroic virtue.

The images and clips that are so ubiquitous today “grab” the nascent attention away from the child as quickly as a bird takes seed from its hand and the child obediently sacrifices the virtue of attention without enjoying its reward and cognitive benefits. Animation passifies the young mind into submission, whereas spending time with something, nature, real things, the young creator and natural scientist emerges. The positive attributes of attentiveness in children require presence, a state of mind, a preoccupation greater than the child’s ego. The watching, waiting, questioning, pondering and the desire to know, discover and finally delight in the process are the acts of curiosity. When the opportunity to work the muscle of attention is taken away, the intellect atrophies and time and inquiry disappear— the mothers of invention and creativity.

Where are the inventors, philosophers and poets of our day?

Kids combined average screen time and use of computer devices: 5-7 hours a day

The hardest hit would be young children who absorb so much with their eyes, the windows of the soul. They are capable of memorizing more than we think and can handle complex literary themes spanning the human experience. The ancient tradition of story telling has been replaced by Aunt Bot: the human voice (the great teacher) substituted by speech synthesizers, pitch, resonance, articulation and emphasis all now manipulated. And if learning comes initially from hearing, we will see an unrecoverable learning deficit in our generation.

https://typecast.ai

Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin, the most distinguished proof of this theory became the creator of the modern Russian language in part by sitting at the feet of his Grandmother and Nanny listening to Russian Folklore, his education and training a menu of Russian, Latin, Greek, Arabic, French and the Liberal Arts. What are we transmitting to the next generation culturally? The following examples are alarming, the absence of natural settings and human characteristics through computer generated images speak for themselves. The story telling tradition and our great canon of Art and Literature, the vine of human formation has been severed by algorithms and the simulacrum.

The trends of distortion in children’s illustrations and animation are global, the dehumanization by digital templates have created a prism of stock characters eliminating the nuances of human emotion and expression that are key to childhood development.

With the exception of notable artists today who continue to work in the great tradition, we have disowned any visual standards for children that have survived before the 1960’s written off as Victorian or Traditional. We left great literature unread and as a result created a new dark age depriving the next generation of transcendent illustrations reminding us that children are worthy of Fine Art.

The origin of the cartoon had its purpose in mocking its viewer. It’s no wonder that the original cartoon was a poster child for political satire, the kind of abrasive mocking that we see so much of in today‘s children’s literature though less skillful.

There is nothing intrinsically wrong with cartoons, they are afterall “cartoons” distortions by nature and a genre just like anything else. Caricature and abstract art are also useful in training children in understanding the world, however there had been an unbroken tradition until the introduction of digital and media art that honored a human quality. The discipline and skill required of hand drawing and painting gave it its worth and intrigue:

Illustrators who do work in mixed media have had formal training in drawing and painting and can break through the cybergarten:

U.S and International Illustrations various decades, styles, hand-drawn (France, Iran, Germany, Russia, Mexico, Nigeria)

We all grew up watching Looney Tunes, the endless cat & mouse chases, and the proto clip, nevertheless they still followed a beginning, middle, end structure. The animation that is being made today is a series of effects disconnected from a story line or trunkated versions of fables and fairytales that require no reflection or comprehension. Parents and children are left to navigate through a mindfield of endless youtube videos of unwrapping toys from surprise eggs and slime dramas all the while the same videos are propogated by clicks of little hands generating algorithms and making more of the same. We championed “all access” to the internet and social media devices in the name of education without guidance or reference. Kids ruled the internet while the internet ruled them, while parents and nannies swiped their phones.

If time be considered so precious, how much more so for the child who passes through the necessary developmental stages at the speed of light? We are indebted to them to supply their time spending with substance or Studiosiras (Aquinas). “If we are to be intellectually temperate, we must seek to feed our minds on not just anything and in any way whatsoever, but only on what is truly important, and according to the unity that be-fits our vocation to wisdom”. Reichberg (1999)

The average child is only being exposed to the images on the right (seen below), they have no reference to anything else. As you read, cover all the images you see on the left hand side, this is what most children see. How does this messaging affect kids? What will they imitate? How will they perceive themselves?

While I wouldn’t normally make a comparative study between Fine Art and Applied Art or Oil painting with Graphic Design or Animation I felt it was useful to make references by taking a longitudinal cut through history to see the change in visual output over time to give parents, teachers and guardians the reference point to make the best choices—to take Art Literacy seriously. The impressionable child also has an intuition and a sense of the good, true and beautiful but lacks the training of selection, Classicus; what is best. There is a kingdom within them that can be inspired not pillaged by way of digital pirates:

The classic fairytale was torched if that were possible, the following examples are original drawings compared with contemporary adaptations. 300 years of human progress later, we managed to removed all traces of emotional, spiritual and moral ethos.

The human hand will always make the most contact by trying to capture the dignity and mystery of the human person. It best can render the architectonics of well being and equally stir the complexeties of moral, ethical and philosophical principles. In the end, the tragedy is not in the distortion machine, it is only being true to itself and commerce but that it all went unnoticed, and we were the ones not paying attention...

THE END

Bibliography/References

Reichberg, Gregory M (199) Studiditas The Virtue of Attention, in The Common Things: Essays in Thomism and Education. Washington, DC: (143–152).

Beaudrillard, Jean. Simulacra and Simulation Éditions Galilée, France, 1981.

https://medlineplus.gov/ency/patientinstructions/000355.htm

50Watts.com

https://www.rashinart.com

http://bolognachildrensbookfair.com

Resources:

50Watts.com

Gallery https://pixels.com/featured/three-spirits-mad-with-joy-warwick-goble.html

http://www.thefanbrothers.com/about

https://society6.com/igo2cairo