The Digital Tool for Artists

The digital medium always represents a challenge, in a global view perhaps less, but in a context of Luxembourg more and more. So what does it means to do photography and digital art today here in Luxembourg, Europe? Hereby I understand Digital Art as any artwork which the computer has acquired, manipulated, transformed or influenced. My understanding of DA offers a wide range of experience. Artists continually experiment with and adopt new technologies so I would like to contribute promoting this new medium, especially here in Luxembourg, the country I am currently living in.

To tell you more about Luxembourg : The Grand Duchy of Luxembourg is a small landlocked country in western Europe, bordered by Belgium, France, and Germany. Luxembourg has a population of under half a million people. Luxembourg is one of the smallest countries in Europe, and ranked 175th in size of all the 194 independent countries of the world; the country is about 2,586 square kilometers (998 sq mi) in size, and measures 82 km (51 miles) long and 57 km (35 miles) wide. Read more about this country on Wikipedia. Doing photography and digital art in this small country where even photography seems not yet completely accepted and its ranking is far behind after painting ( this is said from a gallerist's and collector's point of view), I feel sometimes like one of these pioneers who began to conquer once new land in Siberia! But why not say that I like this feeling?! There is a lot to do, to move and to reach. With each exhibtion and each art market and open atelier I feel, that the interest and the acceptance are increasing, but to overcome all the existing prejudices, which are described below, needs in my opinion still a big push. It's simply a fact that the digital medium represents a challenge for the traditional understanding and notions of the artwork, audience and artist. As it has been one or more challenging decades in which to gain the public’s and the art world’s acceptance in the US. So I feel that here it needs some more time.

Historical view: When exactly the history of Digital Art began can be discussed. I read that in the 1970s artists started experimenting with computers engaging what was then known as “computer art”. You remember these first pictures? Color and texture could be created and manipulated with digital technology. Wasn'it suspect? All kinds of creative professions, e.g. painters, photographers, printmakers and video and performance artists began to experiment with computer imaging techniques allowing manipulation of scale, color and texture unknown and unfeasible for physical mediums.
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Forms of Digital Art: The term Digital Art is a global term for a broad range of artistic practices and does not describe one specific form. Artists created, in some cases, works displaying distinctive characteristics of the digital, in other cases it is not easy to say whether we have to do with a digitally created work or not. Digital technology had also an enormous influence on music composition and audio. According to wordIQ Dictionary & Encyclopedia Digital art is art created on a computer in digital (that is, binary) form. The term is usually reserved for art that has been non-trivially modified by the computer; text data and raw audio and video recordings are not usually considered digital art, in themselves but can be part of a larger project, since the computer is merely the storage medium or tool which is used to create the work.
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Digital art can be purely computer-generated, such as fractals (have a look to the beautiful fractals of Mandelbrot, I was completely excited when I saw them for the first time and I am always admiring them), or taken from another source, such as a scanned photograph or an image drawn using vector graphics software, using either a mouse or graphics tablet. The availability and popularity of photograph manipulation software has spawned a vast and creative library of highly modified images, many bearing little or no hint of the original image. Using electronic versions of brushes, filters and enlargers, these "Neographers" produce images unattainable through conventional photographic tools. In addition, digital artists may manipulate scanned drawings, paintings, collages or lithographs, as well as using any of the above-mentioned techniques in combination. Artists also use many other sources of information and programmes to create their work.

Let’s face it: In March 2001 the art world’s acceptance of digital art was marked by the Whitney Museum of American Art’s exhibition: Bitstreams: Exploring the Importance of Digital technology in American Art. Some month later the Brooklyn Museum of Art staged its Digital. Digital prints are now part of the permanent collections of New York’s Metropolitain Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Art Institute of Chicago and so on…
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Naturally, criticism has been leveled at the new medium from many sides. But why? Because it is the new medium. It seems to threaten, but this is a grave misconception. The new medium is not here to displace but to enhance, just as did the invention of paper, photography, the airbrush, and the endless list of other tools that have preceded us and our "machines". A main question is if technical methods including automation do diminish the value of creative works aided by them? I don’t think so. Look back into history again: Michelangelo used teams of assistants, as did Leonardo daVinci. Painters as Caravaggio, Ingres, Velasquez and Vermeer used a camera obscura or a camera lucida lens system to speed up and improve the initial drafting step in their paintings. In his book “Secret Knowledge : Rediscovering the Lost Techniques of the Old Masters » David Hockney makes a solid argument that artists were enthusiastically using lenses and mirrors (the highest of high-tech at the time) in creating their art. Hockney’s book opens people’s eyes to the fact that technology has always been an important part of art creation. It is erroneous to think that the “computer does it for you”. The computer and other digital tools are just that – tools. Used in a hand of a perceptive, talented artist, a computer is not subordinate to brushes, palette knives or enlargers. The fact is that the artist’s own hand lies heavy on most of the steps in the making of digital art. Using cameras, scanners, digital tablets, and a whole host of image-editing software, artists have a personal relationship with their images as they guide them through the various stages of creation, manipulation and printing. The aesthetic decisions are always the artist’s. The artist has a range of techniques at his disposal with which to creatively express himself. With the exception of machine art, this is not mechanical art; this is imagery that emanates from the mind and the soul of the artist. And it is and produces fun and art should be and produce fun!
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Thanks to the
Sources: wordIQ Dictionary & Encyclopedia
Christiane Paul “Renderings of Digital Art”
Harald Johnson “Mastering Digital Printing”
David Hockney “Secret Knowledge: Rediscovering the Old Techniques of the Old Masters”

Comments

• Comment submitted by Nelly Rohel, France
  I agree with your thoughts about digital art. Sure, the PC and the mouse … are only new tools as the brush, canvas, knife, collages …The tool itself will not produce the art unless it is guided by an artist, who firstly has to know how to use it as well as having, more importantly, a creative soul.
  However the difficulty of recognizing digital art as a discipline in the art world is not this; a paintbrush and canvas makes a “unique piece of art” into “a unique original”. A computer and a mouse create a “unique piece of art” but can produce (and not REproduce) ‘originals’ at will.
  I, therefore, think that the disagreement between traditional painters and artists using the digital tools, lies within the difference of the production of the original artwork.
  (French original text :• Je suis d'accord avec ce que vous exposez sur l'art digital. Oui, l'ordinateur et la souris ... ne sont que des nouveaux outils comme le sont un pinceau, une toîle, un couteau, des collages ... L'outil ne fait pas l'art si la main qui le tient n'est pas guidée par un artiste ... qui sait l'utiliser et surtout qui a l'âme créatrice.
  
  Mais la difficulté à faire reconnaître l'art digital comme une discipline artistique n'est pas là.
  
  Une toîle et un pinceau font une "oeuvre unique" en un "original unique".
  
  Un ordinateur et une souris font une "oeuvre unique" mais pouvant produire (et non REproduire) des "originaux à volonté".
  
  Il me semble que les désaccords entre les peintres traditionnels et les artistes utilisant les outils numériques se situent dans cette différence de la production d'originaux.

  by yellowcat - 2/8/2008 11:16:16 PM

• Nelly Rohel makes a good point but I disagree. I started thinking about these issues and I apologize to Nelly for expanding it beyond her critique. Everything starts with the original, but the original what? Why should a handmade art object have more value, per se, than a reproduced object. Although a painting is a unique piece of art, and a carved marble is a unique piece of art, much of the art that is shown and sold today are not unique pieces of artist fabrication. The process of manufacture in all areas expands and yet narrows our options in individualizing what we make. Walter Benjamin identified this desire for uniqueness as the "fetishized object". What that term means is that we worship the object, we idolize it. We imbue value to these objects because of commodity capitalism. The basis is individualism, romanticism, and the cult of genius. Art separated from the rest of the world and now lives in isolation.
  Objects that can be reproduced are not fetishized but can be owned by anyone. They are like information. If art can be equated with information, I do not want my information in the hands of a few wealthy collectors. I would rather my work be in the homes of ordinary people. Are photographs unique pieces of work? Every time we see a great photo printed, even in a newspaper, we can "get it", grasp that transformation of understanding. Why should our artistic identity be attached to works of art? In earlier times artists were not individuals but members of a collective and did not need to stand out to find their identity. Even in the era of great classicism, the paintings of Ateliers were often the work of a large workshop of painters under the direction of the master. Jeff Koons has never painted a painting or made a sculpture. He is a designer. He hires scores of artists at an hourly wage to paint or fabricate them. Warhols early pieces were copies of manufactured products. His later works were copies of copies. The silkscreen paintings that were misregistered to give the appearance of uniqueness. How about prints? Silkscreens, lithographic, copperplate, zincplate etc. It can be said that they are individual, but that is not true. Each print has to be perfect. The ones that are individual are often misprints and discarded.
  My position is that digital prints are the creation of a unique artist and not a unique object. The focus is not on object but the artist that made it. There is also a misunderstanding as to hijacking or photoshopping of images. There are forensic analysts now who can tell how any digital print has been constructed and altered by analyzing pixels. My friend, whose work is on this site, Peter Ciccariello, is a master of hyperrealism in digital prints. His work is fully digital. The images look ancient. When Gila Paris creates a digitally manipulated photograph it is not like my work at all. Compare them. It is the unique vision that creates the artwork. The media and vagaries of technique and application are interesting but totally subsidiary to the artist.

  by frank - 2/18/2008 7:56:15 AM