Digital Art is the new Primitive Art

Meet “Venus” of Willendroff, an 11.1cm statuette dating approximately 15,000 to 10,000 BCE. Her home is a pedestal in Vienna's Naturhistorisches Museum. A profound discovery by archaeologist Josef Szombathy in 1908, she is distinguished as the earliest example of primitive art (Stokads). The texture and pronunciation of shape and surface emphasises her abstract form as other-worldly and goddess like.

Ahem…

There is no doubt that the “Venus” is a beautiful object, beautiful enough to name it after our beloved classical icon of western beauty, negating its own historical context. It may appear as a mere nominal anachronism, yet the Eurocentric naming of the figurine points to the danger of positioning a statuette of a naked fat woman under the canon of “Art”. Art in the western sense is a relatively modern ideology. The culture of Art as we know it today is the result of the modernist phenomenon of secularization and specialization. Thus, the cultural production and consumption a of Picasso or Pollack, differs greatly from the context of a prehistoric figurine.

It's a crime to strip the figurine of its cultural context and impose western ideologies of Art on to it. Rather, we can postulate that the figurine is a product of an “archaic sacred” civilization, an idol perhaps, that shares the same world as her worshipers. As Szerszynski article describes, the world of an “archaic sacred” civilization, has no division between the divine and the human. Unlike the monotheistic notion of sin and salvation, the world of gods is situated in the world of humans. Yet, the point of particular intrigue, and excitement, is Szerszynski idea of a “postmodern sacred”, a weird position with one foot in an “archaic sacred” world, and another foot in a “salvation seekers” world.

And this is where it gets interesting. Like the fat woman figurine to a prehistoric tribe, the materials of technology are crucial components to the rituals and practices of our daily lives. Our tenuously reliance on technology has transform such materials to our cultural idols. Like the statuette that serves as both practical and spiritual cultural product, similarly, our relationship to a light switch, that enables us to turn a light bulb on and off, offers to us, on a ‘postmodern sacred’ plane, a practical and spiritual fulfilment. In a ‘postmodern sacred’ sense, it provides a site of salvation, a salvation not directed to a metaphysical world or entity, but points back to us. Technology in a sense is the project of humanity.

The ‘cult’ technology within the secularized field of “Art” (with a capital A) I believe, needs to be celebrated and understood as a cultural phenomenon, not on a pedestal or within the neutral white walls of a gallery. In turn, our participation will lead to greater understanding of ourselves and the world around us. To appropriate a Joseph Beuys philosophy, “if there is conscious awareness towards our environment and actions, then everything is art, and everyone is an artist”.

It is all rather exciting.