Die Launische Diva:
Art is hard... And mostly not for technical reasons.
Using the fruits of technological evolution doesn't make everyone an artist. David Hockney employs an iPad (how many Physics Nobel Prizes are contained in a tablet?) as a medium to convey his artistic messages. If I use the same tablet that doesn't make me a painter.
In the end of the day, the tools used by an artist are not important. They serve the purpose of implementing what he envisions and nothing more. No one remembers the brand of the paintbrushes Henri Matisse routinely used. We first recognize an artwork of Matisse for being a thought-product of Matisse. The means serve the message. The means aren't the message. But us, the astrophotographers recognize the creator of an image by the lens and software used (Samyang cat's-eye stars, PixInsight HDRTransform inside-out Orion Nebula). We recognize a Samyang work and not a Die Launische Diva work.
What we are doing is important especially if it relieves our souls from the calamities of our daily lives. I understand that because astrophotography is a demanding hobby, it is tempting to attribute to ourselves the noble title of a scientist and/or an artist. I, am extremely biased, and my knowledge in history of arts and photography is rudimentary. That's why I would like to hear the opinion of an external observer, an artist not related to astrophotography.
Hi,
I am a professional composer and music producer. I was lucky enough in my early 50s to be able to retire from soundtrack work and focus on album production and music composition that did not have to make compromises with the commercial world and for that I am very grateful. Speaking for myself, the urge to give artistic expression can be motivated by the most narcissistic and immature impulses for attention and recognition, it can also be motivated by a sublime desire to give expression to aspects of reality, both inner and outer reality, that are generally ignored in highly materialistic capitalist societies. Or anything in between. Like all human motivations, there is no one answer, most of us have multiple motivations for doing what we do. We say musicians play music--we don't say musicians work music. This is because the element of play is crucial to all artistic activity, the artist plays with ideas, with sound, or image, or words or paint--and it's through the element of play that we discover new ideas and ways of organizing artistic works. Mature artistic activity is the blending and synthesis of play and work, of knowledge and imagination, of technique and spontaneity.
Artistic expression is the about the need to explore the
beautiful; and beauty can be found in nature, in people and relationships, in joy, sadness, even in grief and sorrow. It depends upon how we look at life.
I didn't take up astrophotography under any pretense that I am a scientist. I place as much value on subjective experience as I do on the objective world of fact and evidence. By this I mean the inner lives of human beings interest me as much as the physical world, if not more so. I took up astrophotography because deep space objects elicit such awe, beauty, mystery and profundity that trying to get good photos of them has been something I've wanted to do for a very long time. I guess you could say it's been #1 on my bucket list.
Unlike music, where I can go into my studio and create anytime I want to (which is pretty much every day) astrophotography has far more uncertainties. It's highly weather-dependent and no matter what level of skill, devotion and equipment we bring to this pursuit, the weather and sky conditions are always a dominant factor. That's been the most difficult aspect of learning astrophotography for me because no matter my level of enthusiasm, the sky really is the limit.
I think there is an art to science and a science to art. Because we are all human beings, we bring an inevitable subjectivity to every pursuit, and because we have reason, logic, curiosity and intelligence, we also want to understand things as objectively as we can. So, maybe the artist and the scientist are not really that different, but use different tools, techniques and approaches to understand reality and the multiple levels that reality encompasses, including time, space, matter, energy and consciousness. Probably consciousness is the most mysterious of all because we are inside it and it is inside of us; we know we have it, but nobody really knows how it arises, where it comes from and why it exists.
Watch!
Astrophotographic Music Videos
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