Independent Study Reading Blog #1

website used: https://magazine.artland.com/digital-art/

Digital art, categorized as new media art, encompasses creative practices utilizing digital technology in the artistic process. Similar to traditional fine art, it provides many mediums like digital photography, computer graphics, pixel art, and more experimental forms like AI-generated and AR art. It goes beyond conventional creative expression, constantly changing in production, distribution, and viewing. Digital art uses diverse electronic technologies, giving digital final products such as vector images, Photoshop collages, virtual environments, and NFTs. With technology's integration into daily life, artists now have an expansive toolbox, which brings new artistic possibilities to life.

Digital art has its roots in the 1960s with artists like Frieder Nake, the group EAT, and Allan Kaprow exploring the connection between humans and machines. In the 1970s, Nam June Paik envisioned a future of limitless communication with the "electronic superhighway." In the early 1980s, artist Harold Cohen and engineers created AARON, a robotic paint program that evolved from abstract to representational drawings, eventually incorporating color in the '90s. While Cohen saw AARON as a tool for his expression rather than a creative entity, it's now recognized as an early example of Artificial Intelligence in art. With the emergence of the personal computer in the early 90's, the ability to expand on digital art has helped cultivate artistic freedom.

Unlike Cohen's early creation, modern AI art involves using AI and machine learning technologies. The artist selects a set of images to feed into the algorithm, which then generates several output images. The artist chooses and approves the final images. The algorithms responsible for this process are known as GANs (Generative Adversarial Networks). Another class of algorithms called AICAN (Artificial Intelligence Creative Adversarial Network), operates with two opposing forces: it learns existing styles while avoiding too close imitation of known artworks, ensuring innovative results without straying too far from familiar aesthetics. This approach is likely to draw inspiration from recent trends in art history.

Mario Klingemann, a well-known figure in AI art, created a series of prints in 2017 by experimenting with inputs for his AI models. His main focus was on the human body, as he trained the models to turn stick figures into paintings, earning him the Lumen Prize for his work, "The Butcher’s Son." In 2018, Edmond de Belamie's AI-generated human portrait, auctioned at Christie’s for $432,500, showcased the potential of autonomous AI algorithms fed with famous art portraits. Refik Anadol, a notable Turkish-American artist in digital and AI art, is known for data-driven algorithms creating abstract environments. His ongoing project, "Machine Hallucinations: Nature Dreams," explores data aesthetics using visual memories of space, nature, and urban environments. Anadol's team collects and processes data from digital archives and public resources, using machine learning to cluster images into thematic categories, revealing the semantic context of the data universe.

The art form of AR (augmented reality) combines the real world with computer-generated information, enhancing real objects with digital elements. The key value of AR lies in seamlessly blending digital components into a person's perception of the real world.

Prominent artists in the art scene are incorporating Augmented Reality (AR) into their work. Olafur Eliasson uses AR to bring rare natural objects into people's homes through screens, and Kaws displayed 25 AR sculptures of his famous character Companion in various cities worldwide in 2020, with each piece selling for around $10,000. Traditional painter Trevor Jones, working with oil and canvas, began incorporating digital layers into his paintings, starting with QR codes and later exploring AR. The artistic duo Tin&Ed uses AR to animate their distinctive inflatable spatial installations, exploring the relationship between the physical and digital, as well as the connection between humans and non-human elements, a core theme in their artistic inspiration.

Digital art is a new phenomenon, opening many doors for creatives alike. Digital art's accessibility via various devices has expanded audiences, enabling artists to build careers without traditional representation. Recently, the media's focus on digital art, with headlines like "Digital artwork sells for record price," is linked to the increasing monetary value and ownership concerns surrounding digital art. In 2020, the idea of NFTs (Non-fungible tokens) took the world by storm. Unlike the traditional art market, the NFT market offers benefits such as viability for digital works, authenticity, transparency, quicker authentication, and royalties for future sales. This puts artists in a better position compared to the traditional system where they don't earn money from secondary market sales. The revolutionary aspect of NFTs in the art industry lies in ownership, particularly for digital art. While some argue that owning digital art copies seems senseless, the market sees owning an original piece—whether physical or digital—as having both monetary and social value.