Technical Tuesday

 

Eric Daigh

Harper, 36" x 48"

Pushpins on Board

Is This Art?

There is no question that the work of Eric Daigh is impressive, but it is extremely process driven and the actual act of creating the portrait is mapped out for him by a computer. Below is a great excerpt from Wikipedia:

Eric Daigh’s artwork combines creativity along with hours of diligent application. As a process artist, his work starts with taking a series of photographs of his subject. After carefully analyzing the photos, he uses a computer and specialized software to break an image down to a very low resolution and forces the computer to make the image out of only five colors (red, blue, yellow, black and white).^[3] He then uses a grid map to show where to stick the pins row by row. At first glance, Daigh’s artwork appears to be a low-resolution portrait, but upon closer inspection, onlookers can see each piece is made up of thousands of colored pins. Many of his art pieces use over 11,000 pushpins to complete a three-foot by four-foot piece and as many as 25,000 pushpins for a four-foot by six-foot piece.^[4] In Summer 2010, Daigh surpassed his own world record by creating a commissioned pushpin piece for automaker Acura, which used 109,687 pushpins.^[5]

So my question to you is this - if you do consider Eric Daigh's work art, what makes it that way? Is he a pure technician that came up with a great idea and ran with it - and if so - what impact does that have in judging it as art?

There are no definitive answers to this question, but I'm interested in your opinion. Check out this blog post to help inform your opinion.
-Denner