Attitudes to Digital Art

Software	None
Covers	Computer graphics, psychology, sociology
Skills Required	Interest in art, interest in social attitudes
Challenge	Conceptual ??? Technical ? Programming

Brief Description

Many artists put a lot of effort, artistic talent, craft skill and technical knowledge into creating digital paintings. These images are very similar to old-fashioned paintings done with a brush, but what is the artwork? What is the original? What is a copy? If the image is developed by reversible steps such as applying a filter, what is the relationship between alternative or successive states? Other artists do similar things to make digital sculptures, that are conceptually three dimensional but don't occupy real physical space, and can be seen from all angles and different distances but never touched.

Other artists create artworks by writing programs that generate the artworks, not always in ways that the author of the program can fully predict. Who or what, then, is the artist? Is the program the creator or the artwork?

When people look at digital artworks, what do they think they see? Does it matter if they are looking at a screen, or the output of a printer? Do people see digital artworks differently from digital images of physical artworks? Do people see digital artworks as having the same kinds of financial or aesthetic or moral value as a painting they pay £200 for, or a painting a museum pays £2000000 for? Being a 'thing' and being 'original' seems important for this. Could a digital artwork ever have that kind of value? Are there moral questions lurking in here somewhere?

How do people value the talent and craft and achievement of digital artists compared to their physical art counterparts? Does this just depend on how much technical skill they see or how much they enjoy the images? On the fact that bitmaps have finite resolution (so does a lot of physical art)? On snobbery? It would be surprising if these factors didn't infuence viewers' perceptions of quality and enjoyment.

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