705_Week 6_Digital Art

ITGM705 Interac/ve Design/Media Applica/ons ITGM‐705

Digital Art


Digital Art Compu/ng has made many inroads into our culture.

Its pervasive influence is evident in:

• educa/on • business

• commerce • communica/on

• entertainment • Art


In this Topic Area, we will:

• examine the early history of computer‐based art

• consider the concerns and themes surrounding digital art • select and evaluate a contemporary work of digital art


Prehistory of Computer Art

(non‐digital works) Even before computers became part of mainstream society, their ar/s/c poten/al has been examined by ar/sts and computer scien/sts alike.

‐  concept of randomness

‐  associate with programming

Nam June Paik, Random Access Music (1963)

During the 50-60s Composer John Cage embraced these ideas and shaped them into a structured system for composing music that embraced randomness.


The first computer‐generated artworks began to appear in the early to mid 1950s.

Computer scien/sts with ar/s/c slants, such as Ben Laposky and Herbert Franke, began wri/ng simple applica/ons that generated images displayed on oscilloscopes.

Benjamin Francis Laposky (1914-2000) was a mathematician, artist and draftsman in Iowa.

Herbert W. Franke (born May 14, 1927 in Vienna) Austrian scientist and writer. Active in future-reseach and computer graphics.


Works like Laposky's Oscilla'on explored the poten'al of mathema'cal equa'ons to generate images.

Laposky called these works electronic abstrac'ons.

Ben Laposky, Oscillation (1952) Herbert Franke, Lichtenform (1953 – 55)


Laposky called these works electronic abstrac'ons.

Ben Laposky


Michael A. Noll, one of the more important early computer ar/sts, created artworks using programs he wrote to determine the outcome.

With Quadra'c Equa'on (Figure 8), Noll wrote a program that followed a set of simple rules:

• Draw a point • Draw another point using a quadra'c equa'on • Connect these two points with a line • Draw a new point following the same equa'on • Draw another line • Con'nue un'l 100 points have been drawn • When a point reaches the top, draw the next point at the boMom.


Charles Csuri is considered by many to be the father of computer graphics—a /tle he shares with John Whitney Sr., who also coined the phrase mo'on graphics.

In 1964, Csuri began working with computers to procedurally manipulate drawings. His first works transformed drawings of the old masters through procedural manipula'on. He eventually began making anima'ons of his itera've, computer‐generated drawings.

Charles Csuri

John Whitney, Sr.


Almost as soon as ar/sts started crea/ng works with computers,

exhibi/ons and compe//ons appeared.

The first two exhibi/ons of computer art occurred in 1965.

The experimental art pioneer Howard Wise hosted

Computer Generated Pictures at his gallery in New York.

In the same year in Germany, Frieder Nake, Michael A. Noll, and George Nees organized

the exhibi/on Computergraphik.


The Cyberne'c Serendipity exhibi'on of 1968 took place at the Ins/tute of Contemporary

Arts in London.


Academia also recognized the crea/ve poten/al of compu/ng.

In 1967, Nicholas Negroponte started the Architecture Machine Group at the Massachuse]s Ins/tute of Technology.

In 1971, at Ohio State University, Charles Csuri founded the Computer Graphics Research Group and later created the Advanced Compu/ng Center for Art and Design.

In 1979, Arts Electronica—a fes/val (and later research center) focused on the explora/on of computers as tools of art and design—was started.

In 1980, Nicholas Negroponte and Jerome Wiesner co‐founded the MIT Media Lab, which, to this day, remains one of the premier academic centers for advanced computer‐based art and design.


By the early 1980s, the founda/ons of the digital art community were in place, though it would take another decade or so to reach a cri/cal mass and gain the

a]en/on of the popular press.


Since the mid 1990s, Joshua Davis has created Flash applica/ons that procedurally generate drawings and anima/ons.

Works like his Once upon a Forest series are based on a set of simple, ar'ficial‐intelligence‐like shapes that procedurally generate abstract drawings.

hMp://www.joshuadavis.com


Concerns of Digital Art

The authors' focus is on the tension points that arise between interac/on design ‐ which privileges clarity and usability over all else ‐ and the fine arts' interests in ambiguity, subjec/vity, etc.

Parallel for Fine art… CLASSIC CIVILIZATIONS 800 BC ‐ 337 AD (BCE‐CE) RENAISSANCE 1400 ‐ 1800 AD (CE) PRE‐MODERN 1800 ‐ 1880 AD (CE)

(Impressionism 1870's ‐ 1890's AD) MODERNISM 1880 ‐ 1945 AD (CE) MODERN & POST‐MODERN 1945 AD ‐ Present (CE)

D I S C U S S I O N P O I N T


Concerns of Digital Art

In her book, Digital Art, Chris/ane Paul introduces a number of addi/onal themes addressed by contemporary digital art.

• ar/ficial life and intelligence

• the human body


hMp://www.paikstudios.com/

hMp://www.joshuadavis.com

hMp://reas.com/

705_Week 6_Digital Art

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