Scholarly Perspectives on Digital Art

From artist Bruce D. Price
A recent issue of ArtNews (November, 2003) featured a Russian artist said to be pursuing "a digital aesthetic." His works, it turns out, are "pixel-based paintings of art-historical classics." Why, one might ask, does digital art need to refer to anything historical? What's the point? Digital is the unpredictable present and the unseen future. Let's see where that goes.

At the start of the 20th century, intellectuals hailed the beauty of the machine. This philosophy was called Machine Aesthetics. What the intellectuals meant was the sleek aerodynamic surface of the racing car or ocean liner. (They did not mean the dirty engine or dangerous boiler.) At the start of the 21st century, we are entering an unexpected new chapter in Machine Aesthetics. Now there's no beauty on the surface, as the computer can be in a cardboard box or hidden in the wall. The beauty is deep inside the silicon chips that enable computers to perform a billion calculations a second. Digital art can be understood as Machine Aesthetics II--The Inner Beauty.

A sculptress (more precisely, a potter who makes artistic ceramics) was interviewed in the Princeton Alumni Weekly. "Sometimes," she said, "the most interesting pieces come from a series of guided accidents." Exactly. Many digital artists would tell you the same thing: "I'm looking for those wonderful accidents that are more beautiful than anything I might think up beforehand. Serendipity--that's the best part."

Digital art can be used to replicate traditional media and to represent traditional subjects--e.g. to paint a flower or a nude. Brilliant work will be done in this direction. But why use this exciting new medium in old-fashioned ways? Avant-garde thinking suggests: this new kind of machine (the computer) should be used to create new kinds of art.


How do they do it? Hard to say. Even digital artists can't always tell how other digital artists achieve their effects. There's trade secrets and luck and even unexplainable, unrepeatable results. In an odd way, digital art of today is like glass blowing in Venice in, say 1000, when every glass blower had personal secrets and techniques. This mystery is part of the fun in digital art. But don't be intimidated. If you don't like the art, it's bad. If you like it, it's good. Buy it.

That Jackson Pollack dripped all those paintings was a big problem for many people. Cynics said, "My kid could do that." The Jackson Pollacks of today are digital artists. People ask, "So, when my kids get a computer, then they'll be able to do digital art?" Sure--exactly to the degree that when they get a set of oil paints, they'll be able to do oil paintings.

A new field is emerging, the sociology of computers. Here are the first findings: Turns out that almost half the population thinks the computer is bad, a devilish machine that is both impersonal and anti-creative. This Luddite perspective views the computer as a cookie-cutter drudge. For these people "computer art" is an oxymoron... Simultaneously, almost half the population thinks the exact opposite! Computers are gods. Push a button and opera comes out. Any child and a computer can write War and Peace and outpaint Manet. An artist painting on a computer isn't doing anything because the god-like computer is doing the work. Sorry. Neither view is very helpful. The computer is just a tool. A word processor--i.e. a computer programmed to manipulate texts-- doesn't create poetry, and an image processor--i.e. a computer programmed to manipulate images--doesn't create art. As always, poets make poetry and artists make art.


Digital art--here's one reason why the art world sometimes tries to pretend it's not there--is hugely democratic. Once a piece is created, the artist can make multiple copies. In this respect it's exactly like the photograph, another much maligned democratic medium. For the first 100 years of its existence, let's say 1850-1950, the camera was not considered a real artist's tool. What did the photographer actually do? Push a button, that's all. Much too democratic. But little by little, good artists went to work with the camera and made great art. Philistine opinion gave way. The same story is now being replayed starring the computer. What took a century in photography's case will pass by in relatively few years for digital art.

Andre Breton and the Surrealists said that artists should liberate the unconconscious. The idea was that you don't try to control everything. You let the creative process loose. Turns out the computer is a natural ally to experimentation, freeing the unconscious and, in effect, getting out of the way.

Toward a Digital Manifesto: the pixel is the language of the future. Digital is the landscape on which we will live. The goal of the digital artist is to explore the vast new aesthetic possibilities that digital technology has presented to us.

Welcome to the digital universe.
© Bruce D. Price 2004