I found this article really interesting, and something I have wondered multiple times and discussed with a few of my professors before. This conflict between creating art that is new and innovative and never done before versus art that is focused on perfecting a medium/craft. We discussed this before in our open sculpture class talking about the exploration of mediums and processes, but finding it difficult to explore without being inspired to use unconventional methods that were already discovered (i.e. expanding foam is an unconventional tool for art but is a pretty common medium for sculptures nowadays) I found that this dilemma exists in almost every field of art, from painting to new media art.
When the article talks about finding examples that are both first word and last word art, I thought that that’s the biggest problem with the conflict. It is almost impossible to create something completely new in art, either traditionally or technologically, and nowadays artists just want to create something that is innovative but also evolving the medium and memorable. Artists would like to aspire to create work that is of lasting importance, but when technology becomes involved as a tool or a medium, there are times when it doesn’t age well because of how fast technology is evolving and how fast trends come and go. How old the interfaces and graphics used in works are easily identifiable based on trends during the time and how sophisticated technology was at the time. The works become less impactful and more about nostalgia. This dilemma between first word and last word art is very grey-scale and is not clean cut. I think it ends up depending on what the artist wants for their art at the end of the day.