by Timothy Warnock // tim at timwarnock.com // work in progress

What kind of art do you do?

This question is difficult to answer. Every image tends to be completely different. Consider, for example, a piece that involved a large charcoal on newsprint, a pastel painting, both scanned in a high-resolution format, then layered with textures from photographs, then digitally painted with a Wacom tablet — eventually few traces of the original layers are visible. Additional layers are added changing the hue and color characteristics. And still, even more layers are painted adding highlights and definition to achieve the desired lighting and aesthetic. It is not uncommon that you would be dealing with several different mediums.

Some clarification of terms

The term “digital” often refers to the processing and storage of information in discrete numbers (typically in binary). The important distinction is that “digital” refers only to discrete numbers (the numerical base of the counting system is irrelevant). Non-digital, or analog, refers to non-discrete, or continuous systems. Our conventional base-10 counting system is, in fact, digital. A discrete counting system has in no way limited us from representing continuous numbers in mathematics and science — something computers excel at.

So what we’re really talking about with “digital fine art” is a classification of fine art. Digital fine art refers to art that was created with the assistance of computers, and that the artwork can be deconstructed into discrete numbers.

Considering the History of Science, Technology, and Art

Paul Brown, in his essay “An Emergent Paradigm” said it best:

It’s reported, although probably via apocrypha, that Michelangelo was advised by his contemporaries not to use stone as a medium. It was not befitting an artist who should, of course, have been using marble. Three centuries later the Impressionists were reprimanded for using paint from tubes because, as everyone knew, artist grind their own pigments in order to create a personal palette. By the early years of our own century we find the Constructivists being criticized for using modern industrial materials like plastic and steel and reminded that real artists used stone. Duchamp and Schwitters were just two Dadaists who were scathingly attacked for their use of found materials instead of paint out of tubes like the more commendable of their colleagues. [2]

The lessons of history seems plain: the art mainstream is hideously reactionary and beware any creative soul who experiments beyond the boundaries they prescribe. [2]

We’re all occasionally Luddites, even when we don’t mean to be. The beautiful part is what happens next. In every case of new science or new technology, art follows.

Strangely enough, art has historically lagged in its acceptance of new technology, in particular with fine art. Consider photography or lithography, while early pioneers existed in both it took decades before being fully accepted into the fine art world.

Computer art has been with us now for well over thirty years. [1] Photography appears to be the most relevant model for the adoption of digital fine art, and yet digital art takes photography into a new dimension of existence.

Digital Art techniques have freed photography from its own finality. In the hands of a digital artist a photograph is just the beginning, neither real nor unreal. [1]

Modern computing is poised to take over fine art, an eventuality that is as unavoidable as death and taxes. What is fascinating to me, is that digital art unifies the entire history of man-made art.

The visual styles of art which we have accumulated over the last six hundred years of art making–that is, all the art movements of the past that were identified as fostering unique imagery–these styles can be integrated into one another to make Digital Art. In this respect, Digital Art is the ultimate Mixed Media Art. [1]

Massively Mixed Media Art

So how do we combine our oil painting, our pencil sketch, a series of photographs we just snapped, all into a visualization of data collected from a hummingbird flight? Better yet, we want it aesthetically pleasing, and yet inventive in its uniqueness as to overwhelm the audience into a momentary reflection of the boundaries of their own existence. This intersection of science and art is revolutionizing fine art.

Let’s be clear: this is the beginning of a new art movement. [1]

We are, at this moment in history, able to leverage fractal geometry to build mathematical models of nature. And yet we can also leverage the entire body of knowledge of fine art techniques to masterfully produce these visualizations in ways that will stand out in every art history book as a turning point into a new era of art making.

The Art of the Code

Beyond algorithmic visualization [Work in Progress]

The Collectors

What this all means to the collector is that we have new frontiers of art-making to explore and examine. It means that, here at the turn of another century, there is an emerging form of art that comes directly from the technological invention that promises to define the culture of this century. [1]

References

1. http://www.collectorsguide.com/fa/fa100.shtml
2. http://www.dam.org/essays/brown01.htm