A is for Apple

It is right that we should take a few moments this week to contemplate the late great Steve Jobs and his achievements. Jobs passed away last Thursday this week at the young age of 56 leaving behind products  and tools that have become for most of us devices we may not live comfortably without. His life is a milestone especially for our generation.

Especially we, who spent our younger years grooving to vinyl records only to move from there to audio cassettes and Walkmans and finally CD  players, portable or  otherwise. We, who had to fumble through early versions of mp3 players until we finally  bumped into iPods, iPads and iPhones, through all these times asking ourselves, ‘Why don’t these things ever come with complete instruction manuals? Oh, we’re supposed to just use the “help” menu? “When did we figure that one out?

Of course, by now we know that every device and every software is a whole universe that will take us less than 5 minutes to be able to use but potentially a whole lifetime to master. We use a laptop computer to solve the most everyday conundrums such as searching for a good recipe for chicken relleno, but in the back of our minds, we also know that even such a mundane act as searching for information on the Web can be raised to a high level of skill and mastery. If only we had the time and inclination. The Web is a goldmine. The phone and Internet has been proven to be nothing less than a weapon of revolution. Consider Edsa, Egypt, and Libya.

And what about art? Imagine a new generation of artists and designers who know how to operate Illustrator, Photoshop and CAD even before they enroll in a college arts program. Such a development would radically change the very concept of art teaching. It has done so already. When the technology of digital cameras was new, the mindset of photography teachers was that students ought to learn analog photography before they started learning digital media. It seemed only logical. Analog photography means photography using film which was  developed in a darkroom and then used for making prints with a machine we call an enlarger. For the longest time this theory held until finally the chemicals required for processing film and printing photographs just simply became too hard to get and expensive.

Not entirely by the choice of teachers, photography teaching became digital. Soon, the advantages of making that shift began to surface. Digital photographs could be viewed and analyzed by teachers faster. Learning time accelerated to a rate far faster than before. Given a good teacher who knew the fundamentals, photography could be taught faster and more effectively using even the most simple and inexpensive cameras. And what would have taken hours to do in the analog darkroom could be more quickly and easily done in a computer using the most user-friendly softwares. And so the old mindset of looking at digital technology as something of a higher plane of learning became quite inevitably, as it turned out, overturned. At least where photography was concerned, digital technology became a fundamental skill. Analog photography began to be seen for what it was and should be, as photography of a higher plane, exotic and esoteric.

The wonder of this is that it probably reflects also in all other manner of art including painting, sculpture and design even if only a few recognize this so far. When one thinks of painting, the only fundamental, pre-digital skill that will be left in the long run is basic drawing. Eventually, even painting teachers will have to find a way to apply digital technology as a precursor to teaching painting. The reason is simple. The current practice is to ask students to produce paintings that teachers assess and give critique to. The students are expected to redo the painting and learn from the process but, of course, they seldom ever do. Given the length of time it takes to make a painting, the process is always cumbersome and slow, especially when it comes to teaching the fundamentals of form, such as color, composition and balance, and generally the whole aesthetic issue of art, the very same things that are so quickly and easily taught with digital imagery in a computer. And we should eventually find a digital way for teachers to directly improve paintings in front of the student, directly and quickly. Learning becomes immediate. Here also, digital technology will become fundamental; painting and sculpture will become esoteric and exotic. Not to worry, in that sense it only become all the more valuable and precious.

The prospects are nothing less than exciting. And it is all these at the most personal and individual level. And since it was said that the emancipation of the individual was one of the key projects of modernism. Then it must also be said that if we are there, then it was Steve Jobs who helped  get us here. He led a short but meaningful life. And since these words are being written into a machine he helped invent, then we should all feel he must still be here or somewhere near to us even now. His machine is a weapon of sorts. And we are only beginning to learn the range and caliber of its power. Walk with John Lennon, Steve Jobs.