So digital manipulation of visual images has been facing criticism in my ethics class, so I shall blog about that this weekend. And, because the spice lies in brevity :) my topics will be: "For" today, "against" tomorrow, and "but" on Sunday.
I draw every day, and I use digital manipulation (my current process involves Visio, then Microsoft Office Picture Manager, and then Adobe Photoshop). In fact, there is nothing except digital "manipulation" in my drawings. My ethics must be in the sewer or something :(
But of course my drawings aren't the kind of work that's under fire in ethics class. Mine are non-representational (they are also non-narrative, but that's beside the point). The images being discussed in class are photoshopped pictures of people. Let's rewind to those.
Artists have been doing that since long before photoshop: A painter, drawing a live model who's posing for the picture, can draw a cubist portrait or a cubist nude, and that is quite definitely "manipulated" much more drastically than the average photoshopped picture of a person. If manipulation were banned, what would remain of modern art?!
The standard next modification is something on the following lines: The ban against manipulation would be against images that are supposedly realistic. Two points about this:
1. So, do you now have some solid, concrete, set-in-stone definition of realism?
2. More importantly: Even realistic artists manipulate their images, of course! Just one example: Do you think Caravaggio actually had one of his models murder another for this, or did he perhaps "manipulate" as he painted?
I'm over 250 words, so I'll just stop my "for" blog by saying that the right to digital manipulation is part of artistic liberty (which, in turn, is part of the freedom of speech and expression).
Tomorrow: The "against" blog.
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