As technology has become more and more advanced and increasingly prevalent in our lives, we have reached an interesting point in history. People around the world carry tiny machines with them that allow them to communicate instantly with anyone else. I carry a tiny computer on my keychain, an extra set of memory which works far better than my own. Our computers allow us to have access to dictionaries, encyclopedias, and translators anywhere, and allow us to connect to a global network of information.
All of these computers which have become so ubiquitous in our daily lives have changed how we function drastically. In a sense, they serve as Mental Prosthetics, extending our mental abilities just as simple tools extend the power of our own hands and leaving more time and power to other functions. Our new prosthetics allow us to keep massive amounts of information with us at all times, to design and build faster and more accurately, and even to perform delicate surgeries. They perform simple tasks for us like arithmetic and spelling, leaving us time for other pursuits, and provide us with a constant feed of information, in sound, text, images, and video, to keep us up to date.
I would like to put forth Mental Prosthetics as a different way to think about the interaction between humans and technology. Perhaps a new way of thinking of our machines can help us see their great potential as a tool to aid humans and also to keep us aware of the dangers of dependancy.
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I've been working for a while with
Processing. Most of my recent work with the language has been generative scripts which through some iterated process builds complex imagery. This series of work stems from some of my older drawings and illustrations. I realized that what interested me about the imagery was not the specific composition but the textures, forms, not a particular drawing. I also realized that the processes I was following could be easily done by a computer. Although some might think this takes a lot from the work, I think of computers as just another tool.
I would love to hear any comments or critique people have. Most of this work is still very much in progress, so let me know what you think. There is also more work, from the same and different scripts, in my
blog.
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I have considered myself a digital artist for quite a while now and although my work may seem quite detached from any historical context I am quite aware of my place in history and have spent a lot of time contemplating the history and future of art. Over the years I have occasionally encountered opposition against the use of computers in art. This is not unexpected or problematic, but is nonetheless saddening.
As computers and tools like photoshop became widely available a situation was created very similar to the advent of photography. In an artistic environment of handcrafted paintings and drawings it was not strange for some negative feelings to arise against new technology which put 'art' into the hands of the masses, including people with no knowledge art history, traditional rules, or knowledge of complex symbolism. However, photography was slowly integrated into the standard media of artists and built up it's own tradition. So much so that digital photography created quite a stir when it came about.
Digital art seems to be following a similar path. Since the first pixellated computer drawings of the 1960's artists working with computers have slowly pushed there way into the mainstream world of art and others have begun to adopt computers as a tool for other work, just as the camera obscura became a tool for painters. The differences in these to technological shifts are only of scale. It seems to me more people have had access to computers than early cameras and because of computers being adopted in so many other fields and aspects of our lives, the acceptance of digital art is not taking long at all.
Digital art is forming it's own following, aesthetic, process, and tradition, and more and more fantastic work is being produced by artists around the world. I wonder now what will be the next technical revolution in art and which side of it I'll be on.
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