WPAP as Digital media-based artwork

Bimo Prakoso Priatmadji bimo_priatmadji@yahoo.com | +628999815760 Lia Yuldinawati, ST. MM liayul@yahoo.com | +6281573835788

Telkom Institute of Management Indonesia 2012

Abstract Digital media as a form of changing era covered many aspects. For example is WPAP (Wedhas Pop Art Portrait), a unique Pop Art style of face portrait from Indonesia. WPAP focuses on people faces because it are unique identity to recognize them. WPAP has specific rules: no facet formed by curved lines. Initially, many artists including WPAP uses manual technique with poster paint as media and considered as art painting. Digital media converts art painting into printmaking, and so WPAP. WPAP was turning into more colorful and diverse artwork when applied to digital media. This paper is written because of the phenomenon happened in Indonesia. Many Indonesian artists keep their ideology of conventional arts and do not want to change their way of making art into digital media, resulting their works have no sale value whereas they are the economical assets for their country. Keyword: Digitalized media, WPAP, artists, sale value. Introduction Digitalization of media has certainly changed human life style and culture todays. Things have never been done before become common, like how people communicate through video call and socialize by internet network at the other side of the world in real-time. Digitalization of media also makes execution process easier and briefer, specifically for new artist when working on their arts. Many computer softwares can do working process of an art like sketch to coloring. WPAP is an art that apply digitalization of media, make its working process easier, also produce more appealing colors. Indonesian artist nowadays have inclination to stay with their style/ideology. They are not planning to develop the works to be more unique. Their works have become less valuable or even have no sell value in the middle of digital era that makes execution process easier. Method Two types of reserach data were collected : Literature Study : Authors found out literature from various sources, such as books, internet, etc. Observation : Authors tried to observe and formulate a conclusion from sample activities.

Literature Review 1. Art movement 1.1. Pop Art Pop art is an art movement that emerged in the mid-1950s in Britain and in the late 1950s in the United States. (M. Livingstone, 1990). The term first appeared in Britain during the 1950s and referred to the interest of a number of artists in the images of mass media, advertising, comics and consumer products. The 1950s were a period of optimism in Britain following the end of war-time rationing, and a consumer boom took place. Pop Art therefore coincided with the youth and pop music phenomenon of the 1950s and '60s, and became very much a part of the image of fashionable, 'swinging' London. (editor: Shearer West, 1996) 1.2. Expressionism Expressionism was a modernist movement, initially in poetry and painting, originating in Germany at the beginning of the 20th century. Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it radically for emotional effect in order to evoke moods or ideas (Bruce Thompson)

2. Competitive advantage A competitive advantage is an advantage over competitors gained by offering consumers greater value, either by means of lower prices or by providing greater benefits and service that justifies higher prices. 2.1. Competitive Strategies Michael E. Porter suggested four strategies to gain competitive advantage. The four strategies relate to the extent to which the scope of a businesses activities are narrow versus broad and the extent to which a business seeks to differentiate its products.

The differentiation and cost leadership strategies seek competitive advantage in a broad range of market or industry segments. By contrast, the differentiation focus and cost focus strategies are adopted in a narrow market or industry. Strategy - Differentiation This strategy involves selecting one or more criteria used by buyers in a market - and then positioning the business uniquely to meet those criteria. This strategy is usually associated with charging a premium price for the product - often to reflect the higher production costs and extra value-added features provided for the consumer. Differentiation is about charging a premium price that more than covers the additional production costs, and about giving customers clear reasons to prefer the product over other, less differentiated products. Strategy - Cost Leadership With this strategy, the objective is to become the lowest-cost producer in the industry. Many (perhaps all) market segments in the industry are supplied with the emphasis placed minimising costs. If the achieved selling price can at least equal (or near)the average for the market, then the lowest-cost producer will (in theory) enjoy the best profits. This strategy is usually associated with large-scale businesses offering "standard" products with relatively little differentiation that are perfectly acceptable to the majority of customers. Occasionally, a low-cost leader will also discount its product to maximise sales, particularly if it has a significant cost advantage over the competition and, in doing so, it can further increase its market share. Strategy - Differentiation Focus In the differentiation focus strategy, a business aims to differentiate within just one or a small number of target market segments. The special customer needs of the segment mean that there are opportunities to provide products that are clearly different from competitors who may be targeting a broader group of customers. The important issue for any business adopting this strategy is to ensure that customers really do have different needs and wants - in other words that there is a valid basis for differentiation - and that existing competitor products are not meeting those needs and wants.

Strategy - Cost Focus Here a business seeks a lower-cost advantage in just on or a small number of market segments. The product will be basic - perhaps a similar product to the higher-priced and featured market leader, but acceptable to sufficient consumers.

Observation review 1. WPAP (Wedhas Pop Art Portrait) WPAP is an art genre developed by Wedha Abdul Rashid, a contemporary Indonesian artist. He developed this style in 90s when he had to deal with the decreased function of his eyes. He was using geometric facets of free hand stroke by crayon when he started to develop his drawing style. He also did not use skin tone. Then he developed his style with strong and bold stroke, but this style did not last long because he felt the color and the stroke did not match. Using poster paint he omitted the stroke and made imaginary lines from contiguous different color and cubicle facets. He named this style as FMB (Foto Marak Berkotak/Cubicle Rousing Photos) because it based on photo and used many colors and cubicle facets. In 2007, he changed the name of his style into WPAP (Wedhas Pop Art Portrait) because he thought it could not be consider as cubism or mosaic style and it used face as the main idea. Face is unique identity to recognize people, and has many meanings implied within. In this year, Wedha made major change to his artwork. He changed his drawing media from manual (poster paint) to digital (computerize), giving result that his artwork became more colorful, detailed facet, and made production faster. It also changed his artwork type from art painting into printmaking. Wedha was releasing book about history and tutorial of WPAP making. He did it to promote WPAP to wider audiences in order to make a legacy of it. WPAP has several important and specific rules: 1. 2. 3. 4. No facets formed by curved lines. Every facet must joint vertically and horizontally as long it still make resemblance. Every facet joint must converge. Every facet must be in solid color (without gradation) and use no skin tone.

2. Affandi Affandi was an expressionistic artist known as painting maestro of Indonesia and had produced more than 2.000 painting. As renowned artist, he had participated in various exhibitions abroad like India, Brazil, and Venice. He started making expressionistic painting in 1950s and found new style squeezing the tube. He found this technique by accident, when one day he felt impatient to find his pencil for draw a lines, he just applied the paint directly from its tube. The result the painting object appeared more alive. 3. Bragas painter artist Braga Street is a small street in the center of Bandung, Indonesia, which was famous in the 1920s as a promenade street. Nowadays, Braga known as old city because various Dutch Colonialism heritage buildings. One of Bragas uniqueness is various paintings sold at the roadside of Braga Street, form scenery, portrait, to abstract. However, many paintings sold in affordable prices because the artists for those paintings are unknown.

(a)

(b)

(c)

Images : (a) Affandis Wisdom of the West, (b) Mick Jagger in WPAP, (c) example of bragas painting

COMPARISON TABLE

Artwork WPAP Affandi's artwork Braga's painter artwork

Differentiation

Differentiation focus x x

Cost Focus

Cost Leadership

Preliminary Findings Artists who have their own sell value are they who apply strategy of differentiation focus, because every artist has their own uniqueness in their artworks, which become their sell value. Change which was done by Wedha in making WPAP from manual to digital is one most important thing to add sell value to his artwork. But, Wedhas decision to give tutorial of WPAP to public likes two sides of coin. One side it gives opportunity to WPAP to be famous in public, in the other side it will make his artwork become common and not special. Therefore, Wedha has to keep develop his uniqueness that distinguish his WPAP with others, and make his WPAP has distinctive value proportion. Later on, not only the artist who needs to develop their skill, but also the tools or supporting software need to be customized following each artists character istics. Reference M. Livingstone (1990), Pop Art: A Continuing History Michael E. Porter (1998), Competitive Advantage: Creating and Sustaining Superior Performance Shearer West (ed.) (1996), The Bulfinch Guide to Art History: A Comprehensive Survey and Dictionary of Western Art and Architecture Wedha (2011), Wedha & WPAP (Wedhas Pop Art Portrait) Pop Art Asli Indonesia