In the week since the Fine Art Astrophotography group was launched there have been several exchanges regarding the definition of “art.” For example, “How will I know that I am making art and not just another astrophotography?” Many of us that contribute to AstroBin have backgrounds in science, engineering, and technology, and not a lot of experience in the art world. I thought that it might be valuable to discuss how we recognize and create art as we explore astrophotography.
There are different definitions of art, but for me the simplest has always been “art is a creative endeavor (painting, photography, dance, etc.) that evokes strong feelings in a person or is appreciated for its beauty.” That is to say, when you experience art, you feel something special. So with this as a thesis, I suggest that each of us will make “art” when our image “works” for us personally (i.e., we see it as beautiful, or evokes a sense of mystery, or it harkens to another powerful event, etc.). When we share that image with our group and other have similar reactions, its art. The more impactful the feeling and the larger the audience, the more powerful the art.
Another topic that came up a few times was the idea of making art by “warping reality” and make something artificial. Needless to say, for many of us that do science for a living, this does not feel right. We collect data and do analyses to test hypotheses and better understand phenomena. When we do science, we often treat the data in different ways to better “see” patterns. For example, tens of thousand of numeric measures are just pages of numbers, but when we display them in a scatter plot we can sometimes see a pattern. Applying different functions to the data also reveal different relationships. In these science examples, the data were not changed, we simply displayed them in a different way to reveal something hidden in pages of numbers. I propose that we can consider our manipulation of our astrophotographic data in a similar way. Changing channel color assignments does not change the data. Differentially exposing portions of a frame to reveal textures and structures does not change the data. Instead of testing a hypothesis, however, we are make these changes in an effort to create an image that has the power to make us feel strong emotions. We are endeavoring to make art by manipulating our recordings of the shadow and light of the cosmos. It is real, and our efforts can make it art.
That’s my thesis. I invite you to weigh in and express your position. As I stated when launching this group, fine art astrophotography is very new and there are no “best practices.” Your perspective is important.
There are different definitions of art, but for me the simplest has always been “art is a creative endeavor (painting, photography, dance, etc.) that evokes strong feelings in a person or is appreciated for its beauty.” That is to say, when you experience art, you feel something special. So with this as a thesis, I suggest that each of us will make “art” when our image “works” for us personally (i.e., we see it as beautiful, or evokes a sense of mystery, or it harkens to another powerful event, etc.). When we share that image with our group and other have similar reactions, its art. The more impactful the feeling and the larger the audience, the more powerful the art.
Another topic that came up a few times was the idea of making art by “warping reality” and make something artificial. Needless to say, for many of us that do science for a living, this does not feel right. We collect data and do analyses to test hypotheses and better understand phenomena. When we do science, we often treat the data in different ways to better “see” patterns. For example, tens of thousand of numeric measures are just pages of numbers, but when we display them in a scatter plot we can sometimes see a pattern. Applying different functions to the data also reveal different relationships. In these science examples, the data were not changed, we simply displayed them in a different way to reveal something hidden in pages of numbers. I propose that we can consider our manipulation of our astrophotographic data in a similar way. Changing channel color assignments does not change the data. Differentially exposing portions of a frame to reveal textures and structures does not change the data. Instead of testing a hypothesis, however, we are make these changes in an effort to create an image that has the power to make us feel strong emotions. We are endeavoring to make art by manipulating our recordings of the shadow and light of the cosmos. It is real, and our efforts can make it art.
That’s my thesis. I invite you to weigh in and express your position. As I stated when launching this group, fine art astrophotography is very new and there are no “best practices.” Your perspective is important.
