We are going to tell you what digital art is by paying attention to all visual types of Digital Art, but still focusing on static images – whether it’s digital painting or digital sculpture. In order to make it clear what digital art is, it is worth first defining what art is in general.
Art learns about the external and internal, existing and imaginary worlds or parts of them, finds and highlights common and special features, and creates images of these worlds. The image that art creates does not have to be beautiful at all. It should meet the task of facing art at a certain historical time. These tasks are changing, and with them, the language of art is changing too.
In the second decade of the 21st century, a wave of the opening of museums and galleries of digital art took place all over the world. Different types of Digital Art are created on the basis of digital technologies.
The very first of all existing types of digital art was the so-called algorithmic art or Mathematical Art. These are images or sounds that are generated by the computer itself based on a written algorithm. Algorithmic art, especially the art of creating fractals, is able to present to the viewer pictures of extraordinary complexity and beauty.
Algorithmic art is part of what is called Science Art and is the visualization of mathematical models. But the union of science and Digital Art is not limited only to this. This includes, for example, Data Art (visualization of big data), the creation of three-dimensional models of biological objects, physical phenomena, and processes, and much more.
Hungarian digital artist Robert SzűCs, for example, created an artistic map of all the river systems of the continents, turning geographical objects into spectacular paintings.
The next in time of occurrence was the creation of images in the simplest raster graphics editors. This direction of digital art was called Pixel Art. Of course, photography (Digital Photography) had to respond to new technologies. The transition to digital cameras made it possible to take an unlimited number of frames and select only the best ones. The combination of photography with the capabilities of graphic editors allowed artists to create highly artistic images.
Interactive and Immersive Art occupies a large segment of what is called Digital Art and what is most widely represented in the exhibition space. This is also an algorithmic art. Certain algorithms are triggered as a result of some actions of the audience. The latest novelty in this direction of digital art is three—dimensional drawing.
Here we would also include work in Augmented Reality (AR) and the creation of virtual reality (Virtual Reality).
Part of digital art is digital painting. The best representatives of this trend use nothing but a small set of brushes and a palette, working on a tablet or screen according to all the canons of traditional painting. Digital painting has basic differences with traditional painting; they depend precisely on what resistance of the material the artist has to overcome to create an image.
