The Digital Arts - Good or Bad?
Within minutes digital artists can place “21st century man” in heaven:
or cast him into hell, just by exercising a few keystrokes as opposed to thousands of brush strokes:
The ease of use, the ever growing power provided by hardware and software development and the drive for increased productivity are propelling the advancement of the Digital Arts at a monumental pace. Within two decades we have gone from slapping a little ball around and playing “PacMan” on crude computers to full length digital movies, both animated and realistic. The digital arts now pervade ever increasing sectors of our lives as individuals, challenging our economic livelihoods, cultural moral fabrics and international relations.
As with any tool, the digital arts can be used for “good” and “bad”. I could just as easily dynamically update this page with the “porn picture of the day” or with the “bible verse of the day”. Some even argue that the proliferation of pornography over the Internet is a component of the Moslem distain for the Western culture.
Whatever your opinions are, digital art technology is going to continue “forward” at an ever increasing pace. There is an old saying:
“Wherever there’s money, there’s time”. (unknown)
Modifying that for the 21st century it should read:
“Wherever there’s money, there’s time, hardware and software”. (Ken Webster)
These facts are behind news stories we see in the media every day. Chain stores are dropping film development services. Disney is producing more animated movies. Large digital arts (gaming) companies are merging for mega-dollars. The time savings and resultant cost benefit in advertising and entertainment media contributes to our continued march toward more productivity.
Just this week it was announced for the first time in decades that health organizations have lowered the life expectancy of Americans due to the current high level of obesity (30%) in our children. How much of that is due to setting around absorbed in computer games? Digital art companies are producing extreme games where warriors prove themselves, join up in platoons and do war with other factions in real time, against other players on-line. For some, that is extremely addictive entertainment. Can we blame the digital arts for making our kids fat, when beginning at at early age, we depend on those technologies as electronic baby-sitters?
Can we blame the digital arts for robbing traditional artists of their income since we can laser sculpt 3 dimensional objects and digitally reproduce texture on canvas? It seems like a 10 sided coin. The strongest prevailing argument by and for traditional artists seems to be the “Zen” quality and the intrinsic value in the originality of a “hand made” object, and indeed there is that element. This time of year, when I am cold, I love to snuggle up under a beautiful multi-colored afghan my wife made for me. It’s “one of a kind”, it keeps me warm in the winter, it’s brightly colored and full of “cheer” on cold, dark, gloomy days and best of all, I know it was made with love, warming my soul every time I use it. You just can’t buy that in a department store. If this aspect of appreciation weren’t still present, Sotheby’s and Christie’s would be out of business as well as every antique dealer on the planet.
Differing views are often based on “economies of scale”, especially where the general public is concerned. As the digital arts close the gap between the perception of “machine made” and “hand made” for many, does that infringe on the value of hand made originals or enhance their value? Even though Christie’s International recently held the second largest auction in art history during questionable economic times, it was deemed as unsuccessful due to the fact that the total revenue was near the bottom of the projected monetary envelope.
What if the “digital original” is a “hand made original” occupying a space of it’s own? Is that possible? What value does it retain? Are digital originals “hand made” with just a different set of brushes (electronic)? Those questions are easily answered, or are they? Will “Blue-Ray” win out over competition as the preferred DVD technology?
Below we have included an image of a milestone digitally created traditional “Still Life” by Gilles Tran:
This image was created by Gilles Tran with POV-Ray 3.6 using Radiosity. The glasses, ashtray and pitcher were modeled with Rhino3D and the dice with Cinema 4D.
If you would like to view this image in closer detail or want it for wallpaper, you can down load it from us in 3 different sizes:
Glasses - 800×600 - (154Kb)
Glasses - 1024×768 - (227Kb)
Glasses - 2048×1536 - (635Kb)
Western History is ripe with visionaries envisioning the “Digital Revolution” as far back as when computers less powerful than we have on our desktops took up large rooms and hummed with glowing vacuum tubes. James Bond’s 1963 Aston Martin DB5 featured in several films: Goldfinger, Thunderball, GoldenEye, Tomorrow Never Dies, and Casino Royale had an onboard navigation system strikingly similar to current day GPS navigational systems many of us have in our cars. His didn’t even speak to him in a digitized voice though. Another popular 60’s character; Batman had a red mobile phone on the console of his Batmobile long before mobile phones became a reality.
Digital Art is only a couple decades old, but it has changed the world we live in dramatically. Everyone has had to adjust from individuals to multi-national corporations.
Many artists have had issues dealing with the changes the Digital Revolution has ushered in. Have you?
Ken