Understanding What Is Computer Art

Art is communication. Art is one thing above all these days: communication between artist and viewer. It immediately follows that the artist must be able to communicate well using the creative medium he has chosen in order to create relevant art. Man as a communicating being. The form of communication is “special” for those communicating through art, that is, artists and viewers. People have always communicated through sounds, words, language, sculptures, symbols, and images. In the last century, telecommunications and moving pictures, films, videos were added.

The computer in art

But where is the special form of communication on the computer? The answer to this question also answers the question of what computer art is. In general, it is IT – that is, technology, information technology.

People can use the computer to communicate with each other through software. In the meantime, it is hardly necessary to limit what kind of software this is. On the one hand, there are certain areas such as social media or multi-player gaming in which people communicate with each other directly or via the medium. On the other hand, IT also virtualizes or copies all forms of communication that have previously existed for humans.

These forms of communication developed by computers are not nearly as disruptive, so revolutionary and new for art, as there have always been different forms of IT for other areas (digitization, internet, big data, artificial intelligence, …). Instead, the forms of communication by computer are usually a resubmission, forms already known from analog media. Nothing that would make a big breakthrough. Another weak point of computer art is the lack of originality since every art object created by it can be copied 100 percent and as often as desired.

Computers Found Its Place In Art

Animation and rendering can be used to create digital, realistic-looking, sometimes moving objects. There are tons of animated films and films with digital effects that clearly have an artistic claim. It is also conceivable to see a virtual world – such as a Minecraft world – as an art object. These are unique features of the computer in art. But even the forms of communication that have been developed up to the last century offer material for relevant and above all interesting art in the form virtualized by the computer.

The prerequisite is that the artist has access to the technology used or makes it his own. Because computers are now fully integrated into everyday life, computer art is also a natural part of the overall spectrum of art. More and more people have the opportunity to express themselves through computers in a very low-threshold way. This will create more and more special computer art objects in the future. Digital art is a nice addition to the analog art world, although often only a copy of the latter.

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