Connect Week 2015 Panel Explores Intersection of Art and Technology

DO ART AND TECHNOLOGY GO TOGETHER?

Should artists embrace technology, or stick to pen and paper? Once you involve a computer, is it really even art any more? Is technology ruining art, or making it better?

“Get Art Out of Technology” was a roundtable panel discussion held last week as part of the Innovate Pasadena Connect Week 2015. Convened by Echo-Factory, a Pasadena based advertising agency, artists working in the tech industry were invited to share their insights into the benefits and challenges that artists are faced with by new technologies. What changes and what stays the same as an artist moves from one technology to another? How will education teach the next generation of emerging young artists when technology is driving career changes at ever faster speeds?

The moderator was Jordan Hochenbaum, Co-Founder, VP of Engineering & Operations, Kadenze Inc. an online education platform that partners with leading universities and institutions worldwide to provide students with world-class art and creative technology courses. Jordan also teaches in the Music Technology: Interaction, Intelligence, and Design (MTIID) and Digital Media programs at California Institute of the Arts.

The panelists included Cleigh Reed a California based photographer and cinematographer for RED digital camera pioneers. Tony McCall, Managing Director – North America, Ableton which makes Live and Push, products that allow users and musicians to create and perform amazing things. And, Dea Goldsmith, Principal & Chief Creative Officer of Echo-Factory a Pasadena-based advertising agency that launches brands and develops marketing strategy and assets for a broad range of clientele.

The panel concurred that the culture of innovation and the culture of our world community are changing, so a merger of technology and the arts is essential to create anything of lasting value. Universally accessible technology is democratizing our workplace. Thus the arts are needed to make our ideas and innovations fluid and drive development for practical application.

Drawing on their own early arts training, the panel found the distinction between an idea, its presentation and its final product are collapsed together. As the divide between programmers and artists continues to blur, multi-disciplinary thinking and collaboration will be the essential tools to create things and ideas that are truly new.

Cross Campus, a new co-working space in Pasadena, California hosted the event.

Sponsors for the event include Innovate Pasadena, Cross-Campus, Echo-Factory, Artzray and Armory Center for the Arts