What Are The Roots Of Digital Media Art?
Like just about everything else these days, art has gone digital. Almost everything that has traditionally been done with physical media such as paper, film, and modeling clay, has a digital counterpoint with a whole new set of digital tools. In the world of broadcast media and video we now have digital capture tools as well as editing tools. In the graphic arts we have tools for photo manipulation, vector graphics creation, and pressure sensitive drawing. In the recording arts digital sound manipulation and synthesizing rule the marketplace. In fields such as animation and video game production digital authoring are now the mainstays.
Of course just because the tool sets have changed, does not mean that the fundamentals of art theory have changed. Old fashioned concepts such as perspective, balance and symmetry, composition, and lighting still apply. The roots of art theory and practice still apply with digital tools. In fact, they can be more important than ever, because the digital tools allow so much freedom and speed for the artist and can allow derivative and fake looking work if the same automated tools are used in the same way repeatedly.
Digital media arts have come a long way from the simple, sometimes clunky tools of the 1980′s to the rather sophisticated works we can create digitally today. Think back to the original Star Wars films, and then the improved special effects that were added in the reissued versions. With some of the programs and computing power available today, we can make art in our homes that can rival the computing power used in industrial settings 20 years ago. It’s a very exciting time for artists in all varieties of create fields.