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Art

It would be difficult to exaggerate the impact of computers on the study and production of art. Not since the invention of photography has the art world been so radically transformed by a new technology.

Computers have changed methods of making art. Programs such as Adobe Photoshop, for example, can imitate the effects of watercolor, pastels, and paint through digital techniques and with greater flexibility than more traditional media such as oil or charcoal, because virtually every mark can be easily reversed or erased. Further, images produced with a program like Photoshop are much more transportable than images in traditional media because a digital image can be sent through e-mail or posted on a web site with ease.

There have been, however, some concerns about the alienating effects that such new technology might have on art and artists alike. With the production of images through traditional media such as oil paint, artists are able to leave physical marks on a surface such as canvas. Such imagery allows the presence of the artist to be recorded directly through brushstrokes or other gestures. With the mediating power of computer imagery, all artistic choices are filtered through a program. Thus the direct relationship between the artist and his or her medium is compromised. Further, with digital images certain non-visual pleasures that accompany artistic production—the smell and feel of paint, for example—are lost. Other changes might be architectural and environmental, as artists occupy computer labs rather than the romanticized environment of the studio.

Nevertheless, many contemporary artists enjoy the new possibilities computers offer, far beyond the intended capabilities of image-producing software. Some artists use computer parts as sculptural elements. Janet Zweig, for example, sometimes produces kinetic (moving) sculpture with computer fragments to explore the ways in which new technologies change the way one understands processes of thought. In Mind over Matter (1993), Zweig programmed a computer to generate all combinations of three sentences: "I think therefore I am" (Rene Decartes); "I am what I am" (Popeye); and "I think I can" (the little engine that could). The resulting permutations of sentences (such as "I think I can think") make it seem as if the computer truly contemplates its own existence. Further, a dot matrix printer scrolls the resulting sentences out into a hanging basket. The basket is balanced by a hanging rock that rises as the paper-filled basket slowly descends. The computer's "thoughts" thus achieve a weighty presence and seem to have an affect on the world (the rock)—though not according to computers' usual methods of "working."

Other artists create web sites. Mark Napier's now canonical web site <www.potatoland.org>, for example, offers a number of digital works that comment upon the notion of waste in cyberspace. At the site, one can visit Napier's "Digital Landfill," an ever-changing site to which people can contribute e-mail messages or other computer-generated documents that they wish to delete. One can then visit Napier's site to see how this "digital" landfill changes from day to day. The work is all the more interesting when one thinks about the ways in which "waste" works in a cyber environment. One usually thinks of waste as a pile of unpleasant refuse taking up physical space on the margins of a community. In some ways this conceptualization of waste persists in cyberspace, as people delete files by moving them to the "trash can" or "cleaning up" their hard drives. But with cyberspace, the marginal location of a "landfill" changes. Because all web sites are basically equal, the junkyard is just as likely to be next door to more "pristine" sites.

Other artists use computers to produce digital photography. Jason Salavon's Top Grossing Film of All Time, 1 × 1 (2000) reduces each individual frame of the film Titanic down to one average color. Salavon then places each small frame in order from beginning to end in a rectangle. The resulting image references computer pixilation, and supposedly allows the viewer to "see" the entire movie all in one shot.

John Haddock's digital photography addresses the imagery of computer games. His Lorraine Motel (2000) shows the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. as pictured according to the conventions of computer games like SimCity, and thus comments on the ways in which technology for children is intertwined with images of violence and social upheaval.

Digital images are transforming attitudes regarding the collection and exhibition of works of art. Once an image is digitally produced and posted on a web site, virtually anyone with a modem can gain access to that image and use it in whatever fashion one chooses. Images are evermore accessible, as major museums now offer web sites cataloging their collections. Some museums have adopted this development directly. The Alternative Museum, for example, once occupied a building in Manhattan's Soho district. Now it only exists in cyberspace at <http://www.alternativemuseum.org/>. The museum specializes in contemporary digital projects, web sites, digital photography, links to scholarly sites, and chat rooms.

This widespread distribution of images seems to democratize the art world. More people have access to images, while museums maintain less control over reproductions of images in their collections. Further, artists are increasingly producing "digital" works of art outright. Such images are not reproductions, but rather works of art in and of themselves. To download such an image from a web site is, therefore, to possess the work—thus more people can gain access to "original" works (or to works that challenge the very distinction between "original" and "reproduction"). Such images may allow some to bypass institutions like galleries, auction houses, and museums that usually control traffic in art sales. These changes in the distribution and ownership of images have raised legal issues regarding copyright privileges.

Computers also facilitate art and art history research. Computerized databases such as Art Abstracts and The Bibliography of the History of Art can help a researcher locate books and articles that have been written on art in the past several decades. Another online resource, <www.artincontext.org>, can also help researchers locate information on artists, galleries, current exhibitions, and reproductions of works of art. Even more impressive, the Getty Institute of California offers one of the most complete collections of databases and other digital research facilities in all of cyberspace. Its site offers art-specific dictionaries, auction catalogs, and catalogs of archival holdings in the collection.

Such sites are only the beginning. Every day research institutes post new information on the web. Scanned primary documents, finders' aids, and more sophisticated research engines are making art history research more accessible and efficient. This process, however, is still incomplete. Although computers are tremendous tools for researching works of art, they are no replacement for physical trips to museums and research libraries.