Digital Art... Is it a legitimate art form?
Digital Art is something I am very familiar with and is one of my favourite artistic mediums. I began experimenting with it roughly three years ago. I was initially drawn to it, as are many artists, because of the lack of clean up or preparation time needed when creating digital artwork. As I became involved with the digital art community I became familiar with debates that have plagued this medium since its rise in popularity. Fears of digital art eventually entirely replacing traditional mediums has caused many traditionalists to strongly argue about the legitimacy of digital art and whether it can be considered a true art form. While in my experience the general consensus has been that yes, digital art is a legitimate art form, it is an interesting question to ponder: What makes something true art?
A digital illustration I created.
The first definition of art, when searched on Google is this: "The expression or application of human creative skill and imagination, typically in a visual form such as painting or sculpture, producing works to be appreciated primarily for their beauty or emotional power."
Something about this definition struck me, the use of the word "human" drew my interest. The Wikipedia page for art starts off with a similar definition, drawing a distinction with the word human:
Photo by Darya Tryfanava via Unsplash
The kind of digital art I am experienced in and I discussed previously in this post involves human input, through a tablet or mouse. However, there are other forms of digital art, some of which do not require direct human input, such as fractals or algorithmic art. Generative art such as fractals refers to art that in whole or in part has been created with the use of an autonomous system, typically non-human. This directly contradicts the previous definitions as they are not created by humans. This discussion brings up questions about computers in a much broader sense. Are computers capable of originality or are their artworks simply a product of their programming? Considering humans programmed the computer, did they technically create the artwork?
This article from artnome discusses how the programmers have control over the randomness of genertative art and thus the programmers are the true artists of the work:
Photo by Kelly Sikkema via Unsplash
Another way people within the art community classify whether art is true art is based on its monetary value. For a long time this was used as a way to discredit digital art as endless copies can be made of digital pieces, thus bringing down its value. This has recently seen a shift as artists are selling their art via NFTs (Non Fungible Tokens). While I could attempt to explain what an NFT is, this article does a far better job: https://www.theverge.com/22310188/nft-explainer-what-is-blockchain-crypto-art-faq
This new method of trading digital art has boosted its value exponentially, shown in 2021 by the highest selling digital art piece to date: a piece by Beeple for $69 million.
So we have established that digital art holds monetary value, is a"human activity" and its main purpose is to appreciated for its beauty. Digital art fulfils all of the requirements to be a true art form and thus I have singlehandedly settled the debate that has been plaguing artists in recent years. I am of course joking but hopefully I have done an adequate job of answering the question: Is digital art real art?
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