Art technicians: The industry’s dirty secret, or all part of the process?
One of the longstanding examples of this that immediately sprung to mind is Dale Chihuly (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Dale_Chihuly" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Dale_Chihuly</a>), the renown glass sculptor.<p>Except Chihuly has not physically produced ANY of the glass sculptures attributed to him since 1979: &quot;...he continued to blow glass until he dislocated his right shoulder in a 1979 bodysurfing accident. No longer able to hold the glass blowing pipe, he hired others to do the work.&quot;<p>It&#x27;s an interesting thought experiment about what art actually IS: is art the idea behind the piece? Is it the skill that the individual has in physically bringing the piece to life? If the person with the vision doesn&#x27;t physically produce the outcome, is it still their art?<p>It&#x27;s pretty easy to sit back and say &quot;No, of course not, if you only have the vision and don&#x27;t do any of the work, then you don&#x27;t get all of the credit!&quot; And yet, think about how this translates over to the technology world. Whose name is associated with the iPhone? Steve Jobs. Did he, alone, design all aspects of the device? Perhaps. Did he code every chip, bevel every edge, sketch every wireframe? No. Did it come to fruition in a vacuum? Of course not, and yet very few of us can name any of the other individuals who collaborated with Jobs. Does Steve Jobs deserve credit for the invention? Of course, and he signed off on every design decision and charted the course for the device to come into existence. However, he was not an independent actor, but a spearheading collaborator with a very large team coming together to work on one project. And yet, Steve Jobs is the name we know.<p>So in that vein, is Dale Chihuly an artist? If he only designs the pieces (and from what I&#x27;ve seen, &quot;designing&quot; consists of vaguely sketching out colored shapes on large pieces of paper and then overseeing all of the glassblowers who make the various parts of his sculptures) but he never physically produces ANY of the sculptures attributed to his name, does he deserve all of the credit? If he oversees the whole process, start to finish, and has final say on every single aspect of the sculpture, should he be lauded for his vision even though it was not his effort that brought that vision to life?