Contemporary Arts Essay

Essay by dvsmonkeyUniversity, Bachelor's March 2010

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Contemporary Arts Essay.

I will discuss how the growth of technology and the effect of globalisation over the past century has impacted contemporary art practices, and why it has created a 'remix generation' amongst artists and musicians.

Advancements in technology throughout the past century have significantly altered the way artists produce and distribute their work. Personal Computer (PC) software is now readily available to consumers, which allows anybody who wants to be an artist the resources they need to create a work. Ranging from music sequencer programs to Photoshop and imovie, each household with a PC has become a multimedia studio. The Internet and globalisation has given artists a direct source for worldwide inspiration and also a resource for various forms of media which can be downloaded and manipulated to produce new compositions. Within the different artistic disciplines, remixing, sampling and the re-use of existing media has become a trend amongst artists.

Not only does the Internet give consumers access to media, it also gives them a tool to share their finished work with the world. Self Promotion and digital distribution of Music and Art has become a feature of 'generation flash' and the 'remix generation'. Over the past decade we have seen an increase of the 'long tail ' of the market, where the amount of unknown artists working from their home is increasing, creating more and more niche genres within the worlds of music and art.

"The development of post-production and image processing technologies received fresh impetus in the late eighties with the introduction of digital editing and effects software, which offered a series of improvements from previously available technology"�. The greatest aspect of the digital age is the ability to conduct processing without the deterioration of quality, which previously occurred with analogue technologies. This allows artists a...