Artificial Colour in the City

A series of digitally produced photographs implementing the dramatic change that technological advancements have impacted how we now experience and perceive colour and light in urban environments.

Advertising, merchandising, marketing and other aspects of the consumer society take their place as shaping forces of contemporary culture. This has made evident the interaction of culture and technology at all levels. The earliest human societies used technology, in the form of tools and weapons, to transform their natural environment. 

Pop arts significance was its concentration on the artificial world of signs and images, at the expense of nature or the inner depths of the psyche. Pop Art reflected a ‘media saturated environment`, a ‘humanly constructed world of buildings, interiors, roads, traffic, signs, posters, newspapers, radio and television broadcasts.

Lorenzo Simpson defines technology as “that constellation of knowledge, processes, skills and products whose aim is to control and transform” (1995) A common definition of technology would refer to its artificial character this is, a technology is not a natural object but one made by humans.

Culture and technology; technology and culture. These two terms circumscribe a field incorporating many interests and disciplines. It is a dynamic field, reflected both in the rapid changes in technologies themselves, and in the growing range of relevant theoretical approaches. In academic terms, disciplines such as media studies, cultural studies and sociology have conducted theoretical inquiry into the complex relationship between culture and technology. The emergence of new media art – also called multimedia, cyber culture and digital media – is a central theoretical and practical concern of art schools, and of multimedia and media arts departments. New technologies have played a prominent role – from intellectual property to the changing notion of community.

Technological determinism refers to the belief that technology is the agent of social change. It is linked to the idea of progress; in this sense it was forged as a social attitude in the Victorian period, in which progress was measured in industrial terms: speed of movement, volume of production. 

But in tracing the far- reaching cultural effects made possible by certain technologies such as writing, print, the internet, their focus is on the way in which a new technology creates a new potential and possibility for human thought, expression or activity.

In the meantime we still consume – but now, where once we consumed objects, we consume signs.

Complex interplay of factors associated with cultural change.

Analysing the relationship between technology and culture

Contemporary artists are quick to explore the potential of new technologies

The historical period involved – from the second half of the nineteenth century to the beginning of the twenty first – embraces rapid and large-scale technological developments; the growth of industrialism and urbanism, the explosion of mass media, the shift to information economies and globalization. The technologies used to create art have themselves changed rapidly. We shall be inquiring into the role of art, in its many forms, in this period of profound transition. Does art reflect changes in technology and social organization? Does it respond to them? Does it engage with them, does it influence them? Is there any continuity between modernism and postmodernism, or do they represent radically different aesthetic orientations? Finally, what have artists had to say about technology and the societies in which it operates?