The computer technique employed by each artist is not necessarily the same as their own personal artistic technique. However, their understanding of the computer’s artistic nature informs their approach to creating images. The artistic use of the computer involves the following factors:
- The “tools” perceived by the artist (icons, menu items) are a visual shorthand for processes within the program which the artist works with. These tools may have very defined and controlled effects, or lead to further experimentation. Their resemblance to physical tools is only notional, but enough for certain commentators to mistake this for a true correlation. In fact, as bounded procedures they are both more and less than physical tools which rely on very close feedback and modification from their wielders. They are essentially discrete procedural elements.
- The computer “space” is an environment which contains these tools and the surfaces they work on. Unlike most physical tools, they do not change the environment by acting upon it through physical contact; instead they mark out a path and alter it from within. Physical tools generally work upon their medium; computer tools work within and through it.
- Without human input, the computer is inert. Although it may be programmed to develop images in unpredictable ways, the computer cannot display anything that could not first be conceived or imagined. A human artist is always required to set its processes in motion.
- The computer’s attraction for many artists is that it facilitates visualisation. The medium’s inherent plasticity and polymorphism makes it seemingly closer to the process of imagination. There can be a reciprocal strengthening of mental visualisation as well: graphics users have mentioned to me that using 3D computer packages has strengthened their imagery skills.
- Computer Art is formed in a space that is both bounded and non-linear. Like the physical world, the computer graphics environment has underlying rules but the outcomes are not necessarily predictable. Considering the aforementioned similarity to mental imagery, perhaps the graphics industry’s quest for fidelity and realism is also an urge to manifest internal images; to realise purely imaginary worlds.
- This space is, in essence, a non-material space which exists independently of the artist’s physical reality. Within it, the artist’s technical and conceptual skills can realise a great variety of visual outcomes. Conceptually, this computer space resides somewhere between completely internalised imagination and externalised form.
The issue of what constitutes the “art” is bound up with the nature of the artist’s interaction, or collaboration, with the computer. Some artists prefer the visual directness of using the computer as an extended tool or virtual canvas. They prefer the computer to be a part of the artistic process rather than an end in itself. But other artists favour the conceptual directness of programming and specifying the development of images.
