141114 Why read the Innovator’s Dilemma?
The title of Clayton Christensen’s book, “The Innovator’s Dilemma,” was
magnetic for me. Personally, it described my dilemma as I moved printmaking
from its position in the schools of art I grew up with and which sustained me
for a generation.
By reading this book, which took as an example the history of the computer
disc drive over thirty years’ time, I can draw a parallel between the engineers’
dilemma as they invented better disc drives and my dilemma as I invented a
better reason for having printmaking in art schools.
In the book, the author used the term “disruptive technology” to describe
the innovator’s introduction of new ideas. The parallel with this and art
education is, for example, to say that printmaking is a time-based art and this—not
a visual art base—is a viable alternative to the standard art school curriculum
for printmaking.
By considering time in the equation of printmaking in addition to visual
communication, the artist is invited to consider the terms of motion pictures,
theater, music—a spectrum of art forms which diverge from the terms of painting
and drawing.
Most importantly, the artist is invited to enter the world of collaboration
and community because time makes things complicated. Compared to painting and
drawing, that are mediums an individual can control without outside help,
making an etching is feasible if the studio for it is shared with other people
and if experts from other disciplines are engaged.
The time-honored tradition of printmaking is publishing, and as such has
always been tied to economics and politics. In his famed essay, “The Work of
Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” Walter Benjamin went so far as to
say that the work of art itself changed to be a political practice more so than
a cultural practice.
Therefore, it lands in the domain of the printmaker to understand the true
meaning of printmaking and its roots in time-based arts, craft and design. I
think it is more difficult, because the printmaker, who may be an artist
inclined toward solitary invention and innovation using mechanical and
electronic mediums, has to engage a diverse society.
I am an example. My dilemma was, when I was in the University, that I had
an innovative idea—that printmaking is a time-based art and therefore the
students who studied printmaking should also study new technologies. Like the
examples in Christensen’s book that describe the big companies’ inability to
make use of innovators’ new engineering concepts, the University had a known
market and standards that were un-movable.
In my effort, I established that there was potential in bringing video art
and computer graphics into the art school curriculum via printmaking, but it
was not acceptable to the establishment so, of course, I had to plant my
unorthodox idea in the larger community.
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