Art is something that leads to the essence of taste, artists produce works in a unique way, using imaginative, contemplative power, so that the work will have a deep philosophical value. Although the goal is the same, the way to produce it is not always the same, or even continues to develop according to the times, artists are able to respond to things that are around them to be used as a source of ideas for the creation of a work.

Turning to talk about what is happening now, and what influences the changes that occur. Technology is a tool to facilitate human work, humans continue to explore to be able to find tools that can help them more and more, making the effort spent less but producing more results, more or less this is the description of technology.

When interpreted simply, we will find that technology is the result of human creation with a logical approach to facilitate their work. While art is the fruit of human creation with a sense approach. The distinction becomes clear where technology with a logical approach and its functional value, while art as created with a feeling approach with various philosophical meanings contained therein.

However, today, the barrier described is given as the meaning becomes blurred between art and technology. The explanation in the previous paragraph becomes nisbih, meaning nothing, because of the blurring of the boundaries. Nowadays, after technology is created to fulfill its primary needs, various secondary needs arise for the technology to make it more acceptable. One of them is to include elements of beauty in the technology, such as with attractive designs, or the addition of ornaments. This is intended to steal attention and eventually this technology can be well received. Of course, this is the effect of the pattern of industrialization that occurs, so that objects that have certain functions must be added with secondary or even tertiary complements to be accepted and consumed. The point of view of the explanation of the previous sentence is that technology requires a touch of art. So what happens the other way around? In making art using technology.

Artists use technology as a medium to become part of the work, or even existing technology is modified in such a way as to make it a work of art.

“As collage technique replaced oil paint, the cathode ray tube will replace the canvas. Someday artists will work with capacitors, resistors, and semiconductors as they work today with brushes, violins and junk. There are 4,000,000 dots per second on one television screen, just think of the variety of images you can get. It’s so cool. It’s like going to the moon.1

What Nam June Paik said above is what is happening today, where artists work with technology-based mediums just like artists work with brushes, and this is not surprising, because the technology is very close to artists.

Artists have a different perspective on the use of technology, or even a unique interpretation of function. The earliest trace that can be found in photography begins in the 18th century when the camera was invented, the photo tool was originally made as a tool to be able to capture the moment that occurred, if previously humans used paintings to capture moments, and technology (cameras) was used to update it, but after the emergence of photographic technology with clear functions, artists interpreted photographic tools in such a way that we can find photographic works that are very thick with artistic nuances, whether from the way the image is taken, the object taken, or other things that are experimental in the practice of using the camera. Afterward, more technology was used for artistic purposes.

Art does not have a medium limitation to make it today, without a medium, works can also be made today, such as works that are only in the form of ideas, when the artist is able to account for it as a work of art, then what he makes will legitimately become a work of art. The daily life of humans today is inseparable from the use of technology, such as televisions, gas stoves, washing machines, cellphones, and many others. This is what makes artists create works using technology, because technology has become a part of their daily lives.

The challenge for artists is how far they are able to capture the symptoms that occur around them, related to how technology has become an inseparable part of life. In the era of microelectronics, objects are no longer just an extension of human hands as McLuhan said, but are now a direct expression of the human self, becoming a human self – a kind of cyborg ². Then can artists become transistors of the symptoms that occur around them through the works they make, or do artists only have to dwell in the aesthetic realm while continuing to drown in the sea of technology that is used every day.

¹ Quote taken from https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Nam_June_Paik
² Yasraf Amir Piliang, The Running World (Yogyakarta, 2004), 264

• Written as a curatorial introduction to the exhibition entitled Novart 2017
• 2-4 November 2017
• At SASANA KRIDA UM (Universitas Negeri Malang, Jl. Veteran, Sumbersari, Kec. Lowokwaru, Kota Malang, Jawa Timur 65144)