We live in a digital world. From our movies to our toyish little iPods, the digital has become a part of the everyday.
But somewhere along the road, among the geometrical simplicity of Pong, movies’ computer-generated characters and the digitally altered photos of magazine covers, “art” affixed itself to that technology-laden word, “digital.”
The definition of digital art seems impossibly broad. Digital art can be as specific as a work created solely using computer programs, or as freeform as a piece that comments on society’s relationship to digital technology. So, digitally manipulated photographs, busty video-game vixens and web-animation all fall under the large umbrella of digital art.
Creators of digital art similarly run the gamut—computer programmers, artists trained in traditional or digital media, bored teenagers and Photoshop amateurs are all creators of digital art.
Despite its increasing presence, digital art is not a movement in the tradition of artistic movements like Dadaism or Cubism. “Art movements are based on an ideology or come with a manifesto,” explained Peter Lasch, a Duke visiting assistant professor of the practice of visual arts, drawing, painting, and multimedia. “Media are rarely a movement.”
Though not a movement, digital art is certainly a phenomenon—and more than just web surfers are taking notice. Symposiums addressing the state and future of digital art, like last week’s Digital Arts Symposium held in Winston-Salem, are sprouting up, and many colleges and universities—including Duke—are beginning to offer courses in digital media studies. Some schools, like the University of Southern California, are even offering digital art as a specialization within fine arts or media programs.
One concept that these symposiums, courses and programs emphasize is the interdisciplinary potential of digital art.
“The large bulk of contemporary art happens in an interdisciplinary way,” Lasch explained. Digital art, he added, is in constant conversation with this interdisciplinary tradition and has “deeply promoted” interdisciplinary artwork that refuses to be placed in a single genre or neatly constructed box.
Takagi Masakatsu's “Private Drawing”, for example, combines video, music and drawing to create a thoroughly genreless artwork. As violin-tinged techno music plays, colorful swiggles move from the left of the computer screen to the right, outlining and then filling in the images of people, places and objects. A still from “Private Drawing” could be taken for a sketch created with traditional media like colored pencils.
Levitated’s poem-generator also evidences digital art’s interdisciplinary tendencies. The generator allows the viewer to choose five “states,” such as “fellowship” or “peace,” to create a poem. The final poem spins word by word from the corners of the computer screen and toward the screen's center before finally disappearing into oblivion. Literature, movement and artist-viewer collaboration all combine to create a genreless work of art.
With its ease of distribution and ability to be displayed on the Internet, digital art is changing the face of the exhibition. Online museums like the Digital Art Museum, as well as artists’ websites, allow viewers an unprecedented accessibility to and intimacy with artwork.
This accessibility and intimacy also facilitates production and distribution. Not surprisingly, Lasch explains, digital art is confounding concepts like authorship and ideas of the artist’s original work. Whereas one can discover a traditional painting’s status as original by viewing its texture, or by forensic means, identifying the “original” form of digital artwork can be a little more tricky. Is the file created by the artist the original or is the image on the viewer’s screen the original?
For Lasch, the issue is moot. “I think that’s a very important thing about digital art,” he said. “Digital art and video art are based on distribution. The whole idea and fetishization of originality are destroyed.”
In terms of physical exhibition space, digital art remains largely confined to cultural powerhouses like New York, Los Angeles or Berlin or in niche galleries like Texas’ Austin Museum of Digital Art. Local museums with traditional, permanent collections serving a less adventurous constituency, like the North Carolina Museum of Art, are less eager to jump on the digital bandwagon.
“On my end, as a curator, I'm kind of waiting to see how it plays out in the art world. Solely web-based art—I haven’t seen that much that is interesting,” NCMA Adjunct Associate Curator of Contemporary Art Linda Johnson Dougherty said.
NCMA is slowly testing the waters of less traditional, more experimental media however. For example, its September “Crosscurrents” exhibition, a collaboration with Charlotte’s Mint Museum of Art, features emerging North Carolinian artists—some of whom incorporate digital media with traditional media.
Still, it may be a while before even works that mesh the traditional with the digital become a staple for the museums like the NCMA.
“I'm not sure I’d be ready to buy [digital artwork] for the museum and include it as part of the museum’s permanent collection, but I definitely think it’s worth looking at,” Dougherty said.
While traditional museums like NCMA take a “wait and see” approach, cautiously poking their toes in the brisk waters of digital art, digital artists continue to plunge into the pixeled waters with full force. With an exhibition space as large and varied as the Internet and throngs of digital enthusiasts, there is little need to wait.
Get The Chronicle straight to your inbox
Sign up for our weekly newsletter. Cancel at any time.