Saturday, November 10, 2012

CAN PAPER SURVIVE THE DIGITAL AGE?

We've discussed this topic repeatedly in our class, right? However, it is a hot topic and articles continue to be published about it.

Here's another one published recently in The Guardian.

I love the idea that "paper is our second skin" (it is for me despite all these new technological gadgets) and also the strong link between paper and art:

"For better and for worse, paper remains our absolute all-time favourite self-extending prosthetic technology and device. It enables and represents the best of us, and the worst. Take art, for example. Of course, not all art takes place on paper. And not all art on paper is paper art. And some paper art may not be everyone's idea of art at all. Anyone for Lucio Fontana's paper-piercings? Or Gordon Matta Clark's paper slits and cuts? Joe Good's pellet-peppered paper? Martin Creed's Work No 88, A Sheet of A4 Paper, Crumpled Up Into a Ball (1994)? Or – my favourite, a masterpiece of its kind – Tom Friedman's 1000 Hours of Staring (1992-1997), stare on paper, 32½ins x 32½ ins, which is simply a plain white piece of paper that has been stared at. For a long time. But these are only the more obvious examples of the role of paper in art. It's possible to argue that the development of all modern art derives from what the critic Clement Greenberg called the "pasted-paper revolution". The use of paper collage in the early 20th century, according to Greenberg, liberated art from being merely decorative, an illustration of reality."

2 comments:

  1. I like the part that says writers have an appetite for paper. Last week I listened to two podcasts in which Javier Marías and Paul Auster said they use paper instead of computers to write their novels (Marías types, Auster uses notebooks). They gave very interesting reasons for doing that.
    (I don´t know how to paste the link, but it´s in the BBC World Bookclub).

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  2. THANKS for commenting!! I listened to those too and I was impressed by both. J. Marías's English is very good, btw. And I loved the part in Paul Auster's podcast where there was this guy also named Paul Auster and with so many things in common with him. He has a good sense of humour too.

    Here are the links:

    Paul Auster's >> http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p0104h52/World_Book_Club_Paul_Auster/

    Javier Marías's>> http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00ymn99

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