Digital Art -- New Art?

Columnist Edmund Morris of The New York Times thinks technology can be an enemy of the arts. He suggested in a recent column that contemporary society uses technology as a substitute for artistic creation. Artists themselves, both in creative writing and studio art disciplines, have debated the value of physical art versus that created by computers and word processors. Technology has inspired new approaches to and uses for art. But in the end, technology is just another tool for the artist, albeit a powerful one. \nIU's own School of Fine Arts has a digital media concentration within its studio art major, and the graphic design concentration requires fluency in technology techniques as well. In an age when computers and technological advances characterize every other facet of contemporary life, it's only natural for artists to manipulate the same mediums for the sake of art. \nArt Sinsabaugh, a photographer whose works are on exhibit at the IU Art Museum until December, used a camera intended for companies' commercial use to create poignant landscapes and cityscapes. Word processors and digital technologies are commonly used for "practical purposes" as well. But the artistic impulse to manipulate technology can create art at a wavelength digestible for society at large. \nTechnology is a tool to express the artist's aim in the same way a sculptor uses a chisel to create a sculpture. A computer cannot design on its own without programming or a click of the mouse.\nBut digital technologies are obviously more complex than most conventional artistic instruments. The distance between a sketching artist and the sketchbook is the length of a paintbrush, while the artist establishes a link with computerized images with series of commands and electrical impulses. \nWith complete mastery over digital media programs, the distance between the hand on a mouse and the final product is as short as an oil pastel. But without mastery of the medium, an artist could sacrifice artistic integrity to the computer's agenda. \nComputerized images in online galleries display many "digital" images that demonstrate new technology more effectively than an artistic effect. Other digital images stand alone as valuable works of art. Courses like those at SoFA help artists bridge the gap between the physical and the digital to create poignant, expressive works of art. With mastery over the newest technology, complaints like Morris' become moot. \nWhat technology does do is make the passionate evolution of art harder to trace and define. We have the good fortune to possess manuscripts-in-progress from the personal effects of artists like Beethoven, Mark Twain and Ernest Hemingway. Such manuscripts provide, to historians and aspiring artists alike, windows into the creative processes of genius minds. Few such contemporary manuscripts exist because modern writers and artists often save only the final draft.\nHistorians might need to revolutionize their techniques of fact-finding to keep up with what is becoming a paperless -- and in the case of visual arts, canvas-less -- society. But the artistic process is as involved and passionate as ever, with or without a paper trail.