Digital Art Community Forum for Artists & Creators

Username: WyrmHead
Post Date: 2018-05-29 21:50:45

Hey All, I have a College Paper that I need to write and my topic was . . . "Is Digital Art . . .REAL Art?" That's with a Capital "A". So . . . [i][b]These are my questions:[/b][/i] Is Digital Art real? Seeing that . . . I can't touch it . . . Unless I print it Computers can't produce real art . . . Really Just push a button and . . . Magic If you can provided me your input, it will be immensely valuable to me. Thanks in advanced for your help! Peace Out WyrmHead

Username: Jason Maranto
Post Date: 2018-05-29 22:29:25

That's some pretty primitive thinking about what art "is". Much of the modern art you'll see at museums is already digital or temporal, often in the form of video (in the modern art world this goes pretty far back -- even Andy Warhol was doing it) and performance art (which often leaves no physical result, thus temporal). Onto the topic of the mythical "magic" make art button: there are some things a computer makes easier and some things the computer makes more difficult (just like any medium). Much of that will depend on the software, but in almost all cases the need for drawing and painting skills are fundamentally no different in the computer than they would be for a traditional media artist. Probably the only thing I could label as a true cheat is "undo"... there is absolutely no denying that being able to instantly undo is something that allows a huge amount of leeway for the digital artist. I can say for myself that I have experienced working on a traditional media piece and after I made a mistake I instinctively tried to hit CTRL+z. Anybody who really thinks that the computer does the work of an artist simply hasn't tried it -- if they had, they would not speak so foolishly. However, that can definitely change in the near future as AI proliferates... there have already been a few impressive examples of AI creating high end art completely unaided by humans (the questions remains about AI creativity, but intellectuals can't even agree that humans really have free will... so maybe creativity is just an illusion).

Username: WyrmHead
Post Date: 2018-05-29 22:57:56

Thanks Jason! This is exactly what I was looking for. I never even considered that museums and galleries were already digitizing their existing pieces of art and then you get to...Magic and AI. I Love this explanation. WOW! Peace Out

Username: Jason Maranto
Post Date: 2018-05-29 23:26:05

Digitizing has the huge advantage of being much easier to distribute to traveling shows around the country, and you can play it as many times as you want without the wear and tear you would get on the original celluloid film (not to mention not having to find and maintain the old projectors). That said, many of the newer generation of artists are just recoding straight digital and doing some pretty trippy stuff. I've been to a few installations where the whole room is like a walk-in piece of art and several digital videos are looping all the time. Then of course you get the fine art photographers: It is enormously difficult to develop traditional film these days -- so people have largely been forced to embrace digital to be able to even continue working in the photographic medium. Honestly, I could see the same thing happening with paint and brushes. Once the drafting and commercial illustration industries went digital, there was a greatly decreased demand for traditional media materials (paint, brushes, paper, canvas, etc). As a result the art supply business has been in near constant decline for a long time now, and I could see it collapsing one day. At that point I would think most artists would be forced into digital simply because they wouldn't want to be back in the situation pre-industrial artists were, where they had to make thier own paints, brushes, etc. An original piece of art has the intrinsic value of being the only one of it's kind -- but that is as far as it goes. There is nothing inherently better about traditional media when it comes to expressing the artists' vision. So I guess the real question you have to ask yourself is this: is the value of art in its scarcity or in its "personality" (the creativity, vision and skills of the individual behind the image). If you say scarcity, then traditional media has to be your thing. But if you say the personality, then digital is just as valid in every way.

Username: Kerioak Christine1
Post Date: 2018-05-30 12:47:51

Are you going to show us your finished paper here ? On so many forums people ask questions like this but we never see the results :) [size=16]Is digital art real art?[/size] Yes. Art is a creative process that has many forms - thinking of some over the years such as a cow chainsawed in half and displayed in a tank of formaldahyde, an untidy bedroom scene, a pile of bricks ! To me digital art is definitely real, it is an expression of creativity and that, really is what Art is, isn't it? As a photographer there have been many discussions over the years as to whether digital photogaphy is real photography as you can take so many photos instead of just a few but you still have to work/wait/plan to get the photo you want (I am thinking especially landscape and wildlife here). Even the traditonal photographers used editing during the printing process so digital editing is just an extension of that. [size=16]Computers can't produce real art[/size] Probably true although with the AI progressing so fast that is probably. That would take us back to what is Art and how much imput does a human need to make for it to be called Art? Is it purely art in the eye of the beholder or the creator? However, the human using the computer as a tool can most definitely use it to produce Art in many forms. Music has been been capable of being digitally created for years, who asks if that is real? Writers mostly use computers rather than actually writing with pen on paper, which makes deleting and moving paragraphs around so much easier but no one questions whether they are still writers or not. [size=14]Just push a button and ....[/size] I wish! The landscapes I create take as many hours on the computer as they do if I was using acrylic or pastels, and both physical and digital art has some identical, but also many different skills need to master the particular medium in use. For instance, Rebelle is similar in some ways but very different in others to Photoshop, and both need mastery of the mouse / pen and tablet / pen and screen to be able to use them efficiently. Just as the physical media needs mastery of the various tools used to put colour on paper. To conclude I would say, (as I did above :) ) that Art is an expression of creativity and that to express that creativity you need mastery of the tools at your disposal be they physical, digital or a combination.

Username: Peter135
Post Date: 2018-05-30 15:01:00

Just some thoughts: If an ART is made digitally or traditionally, it is ART. There is no difference. Computer, software, tablet pen, mouse, camera, brush, pencil, hammer is just a tool. In prehistoric times someone could say: "You are painting with a pencil, that's not art, it's too easy, art is to paint with fingers on the cave wall." :) With some tools it is easier to make some kind of art, with some it is harder. Tools helps to achieve desired style. Real artwork can be created only by real artist. And it is not easy to create art. There are many painters, photographers, illustrators, but just few of them are artists. Even the best painters have not to be artists, they could be good technically. There is no easy answer what is art. But the tool can be anything.