I've chosen to respond to "The Art of Instant Gratification" by Stephen Joel Trachtenberg. I chose it mainly because I'm interested in the evolution of picture taking, from early Kodak products to modern digital technology.
Trachtenberg's basic point is to compare modes of photography since it was debuted in the early 1800s. He puts emphasis on the notion of instant gratification. For instance, to get pictures from the first hand held Kodak in the early 1900s, you had to send in the entire camera back to the company and wait for them to return the pictures. Not exactly "instant." In the 1940s, with the invention of the polaroid, people could take a picture and wait barely a minute before having the picture in their hands. Now with digital photography, it is easy to snap a photo, put it on your computer and upload it to the internet for any to see, all within a couple minutes. It isn't really clear in the article whether or not Trachtenberg regards this as a positive development or a negative one, though I think it's more towards the latter when he says things like "What was once a religious mystery is now a technological wonder."
Are these ideas relevant to my practice as a media artist? Definetily. Film, especially independent film, is completely different today because of digital technology, and basically all of the films I've made and photographs I've taken have been digital.
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