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Palm Used in Contemporary Art

Posted by Hemos on from the cool-ooking-stuff dept.

Malkthulhu writes "Artist Tom Kemp has created a huge new work of art with a Palm Vx. It is a staggering 4 feet by 17 feet and consists of one thousand tiny paintings all made using the TealPaint application. As far as we know, this is the first serious, large-scale painting produced on a Palm."

9 of 105 comments (clear)

  1. Patent it! by geophile · · Score: 4

    Yes, someone has done this, (e.g. Chuck Close is a recent example). But this guy did it on a computer, so now he can patent it.

  2. More palm art by Zoyd · · Score: 4

    These guys do some art on palms. Pretty good.

    (Yes, these are the fellows who do many of those amazing backgrounds that you see on screenshots at themes.org)

  3. Re:Dumb art by drivers · · Score: 4

    "This work does not inspire feeling"

    Speak for yourself. I thought it was a cool hack. That in itself is inspiration to me.

  4. Re:Whats the big deal? by interiot · · Score: 5

    I think he read too many "Wouldn't it be cool if we had a Beowulf cluster of those?!?" posts on slashdot.
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  5. Calling all lamers... by isaac · · Score: 5
    Predictably, a lot of people are crawling out of their holes to shout "that's not special! I could do that"

    Well, this guy DID do it. The Mona Lisa it ain't, but at least this guy unassed himself to create something new. Good for him!

    Those of you offended at this guy's "bad art", go out and create something better, and show this guy up. Otherwise, you're all talk.

    Reminds me of the people who talk shit about rap requiring no talent "because it's just talking fast". It was always fun to put them on the spot and start beat-boxing, waiting for them to rap along "'cuz anyone can do that!"

    -Isaac

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  6. Re:Should be titled: "Man Bored In Meeting" by Erasmus+Darwin · · Score: 4
    Yes, but that's the entire appeal of the piece. Through a subtle juxtaposition of form and style, it manages to create a holistic embodiment of the tedium of modern existence, as expressed through our neo-techno-centric culture.

    Furthermore, it manages to utilize shading and light, in order to express a sort of fuzzy gray, that is neither black nor white. This shows the artist's intention of trying to break from the traditional, clear-cut boundries of society, instead opting for a nebulous ambiguity.

    Also, the work speaks to the viewer's logical side, for it implicitly poses the conundrum, "If this is not art, then it must be pornography. Yet I feel no sexual thrill from the work. Therefore, it must be art."

    Finally, the doodlish nature embodies man's inner-child. Are we not all children at heart, especially when we get a new, expensive, electronic toy?

    (I'm generally reluctant to post humerous material on serious stories. But I can't see how anyone in their right mind can take this work seriously.)

  7. A non-issue--but for a different reason by OlympicSponsor · · Score: 4

    I see a lot of responses here about "so he doodles on a Palm Pilot and suddenly he's an 'artist', so what". That's a pretty specious argument which is easily torn apart by a counter-argument: "so he slaps a bunch of colored liquid on a piece of paper and suddenly he's an 'artist', so what".

    It's not the "he's not an artist" aspect that makes this story uninteresting. It's the fact that this story is no more and no less interesting than if he had used babylonic cuneiform on clay tablets. THAT'S what makes this story boring--it's just like all the others. He hasn't created a new art form or used the Palm in a novel way--he's just done regular old drawing and combined them in a mosaic. His message isn't exploiting his medium, I guess I want to say.

    I mean, imagine if he had made something that you could transmit to other Palms and it would modify itself (or the "user/viewer" could modify it). It's interactive, it's distributed--THAT would be new and interesting.
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  8. Doesn't work on an etch a sketch... by quamper · · Score: 4
    I tried doing that on an etch a sketch once, but when I took it into kinkos the just looked at me wierd when I asked them to print it for me.
    And I got all upset and started jumping up and down and my masterpiece was gone :(

    My next attempt was a light bright.. but that ended even worse...
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  9. It's not bad by CharmQuark · · Score: 5
    This, as I am sure many people will say, is not a revolutionary concept. People have been string pictures together in various ways for a very long time. Another collage or storyboard does not in itself make art.

    What is interesting is the use of a palm to talk about writing. Writing or drawing on a piece of glass is a very different experience than writing on paper or parchment or plywood or whatever. The potentially artful part of this may be the progression of the pictures, as the artist grows comfortable with this new medium and the restrictive size. Even in the few squares we can see, there is much experimentation. For example we see the contrasts of various levels of white space, or various amounts of entropy. If nothing else, the palm allows the artist to express an emotion or thought immediately.

    Of course, it looks simple and we all say we could do it; but how many of us do. We have to give the guy credit for trying.