To me, digital art is anything that involves artistic effort and has any hint of digital aspects in it’s creation. I see the definition is extremely broad, because it could be a painting that a photo is taken of and then digitally manipulated or it could be something that is created wholly through digital means like photoshop. Although, I am sitting here thinking about it and the argument could be made that photos themselves are digital art, because you are using a piece of technology to capture it? So for example it’s a digital camera. If you use a digital camera, inherently maybe then it’s digital art? I don’t think there are strict parameters on what could be defined as digital art.
The limitations I think are the platforms that most of them exist on. You can print out images large scale to display similar to paintings, but some of the other forms of digital art such as videos and gifs exist on a plane that while easily shareable in our every internet centric world, they cannot be displayed or valued in the same way as traditional fine art. Compared to looking at a painting in an art museum from my observations, people are less likely to sit down and watch a whole 15 minute digital art piece.
But also the possibilities are endless. It breaks down so many different traditional capabilities that art has and brings in new things that artists can do. As we mentioned in class, you can use the tools how they’re supposed to be used but when you misuse it, you can create even more amazing things.
Personal aesthetic-
I really appreciate glitch art. This is by my friend Ivona Moro.
Glitch art appeals to me because it is, it’s taking something that is considered a defect or error and focusing on it, and altering it deliberately in a way that is interesting or aesthetically pleasing.
The next thing that came to mind when thinking about digital art that I enjoy is animated stills. They’re gifs, but the juxtaposition between the still image and the moving image is something that I find really great. Here’s one example that I found while researching for this assignment:
This can also take other forms though, which creates more of a 3D gif effect… I don’t actually know how these are created but this one is by my friend Jingyu Lin. (I can’t imbed the image for some reason)
http://www.jingyulin.com/3d-gifs/4m11w84d7ik8fzh93m3ik3r2xbrl48
In my head it’s like a photo taken from different angles which would cause it to be considered an animated still? But also maybe it’s a video then turned into a gif. I don’t know. But I find them great. The movement in a lot of ways is jarring and eery because it appears as a photo initially but the moving aspect is kind of out of place.
Hmmm, i don’t know if that counts as three because while the two are so different they’re both gifs, so I’ll include one more.
I enjoy images like this which is two images edited to emulate the effect of double exposure. It’s just two images integrated together most likely using photoshop. This is one I found while researching for this assignment, by Dan Mountford
I like these because they’re a reference to the past practice of double exposure with film, which created some super cool and surreal images in a much more authentic and organic way. (Not that using digital tools makes it less credible? I don’t think that, it’s just different.) This ability to build on this technique, and perfect it through digital means really appeals to me.