Applied Aesthetics - Digital Art

Digital Art

A new art form struggling for acceptance is digital art, a by-product of computer programming that raises new questions about what truly constitutes art. Although paralleling many of the aesthetics in traditional media, digital art can additionally draw upon the aesthetic qualities of cross-media tactile relationships; interactivity; autonomous generativity; complexity and interdependence of relationships; suspense; and playfulness.

Artists working in this type of art are often forced to justify their use of a computer rather than a traditional medium, leading to, like the debate over Warhol's "Brillo Pad Boxes", a question of what constitutes art.

The criticisms of digital art are many. For example, graphics programs allow perfect shading to be achieved with little to no effort. In other types of programs, there is a sense that because of the variety of tools, filters, distortions, etc., that an artist has a veritable image factory at their disposal. The various criticisms ultimately come down to the issue of "what effort is the artist putting into their work?"

The 3d art community frequently references that while the programs they utilize render and shade the objects, their efforts are more akin to the sculptor or architect, presenting an aesthetically arranged, lighted, and textured scene. The users of the other programs such as Photoshop or Gimp point out that while they may have many tools at their disposal, the art itself must be that much more detailed and imaginative to stand out. In both cases there is the challenge of overcoming the barriers of limited technology and the lack of direct contact with one's medium.