DAMage Report - The Future of Art is a Virtual World Away

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/how-new-technologies-secure-a-place-for-the-arts/article1415229/

You remember that old tv series called Beauty and the Beast? There was a subterranian culture hidden beneath the city. That is what it feels like to have stumbled across a thriving arts community florishing in the underworld of the internet. A place called Smallworlds is an online game with something different. It is a full blown virtual reality that encourages and rewards the arts. The program has limited use drawing canvases to ensure originality of pieces. And artists have built galleries, created competitions, explored the works of famous artists in forums, and they even give drawing advice to students. Digital communities like this are inspiring and nurturing a new generation of artists.


With all the cut backs in arts education and decline in museum attendance it is exciting to see an area of the arts experiencing growth and generating excitement.

As Domonic Lopes points out in his recent article about technology and art "Times of rapid technological change push us to ask, what are the arts? Privileging books, live performance and gallery displays risks overlooking new realms of artistic creation....

Photography and filmmaking are more popular than ever, but what's really remarkable is that photographers and moviemakers can reach a potentially enormous audience through sites like Flickr and YouTube. Bypassing the galleries and movie studios encourages diversity: Flickr hosts communities of photographers who reject the aesthetic ideals endorsed by the art market, and YouTube has spawned entirely new genres like Machinima and trailer mashups. Engagement with the arts is down only if we confine the arts to the gallery, theatre and concert hall."

Artists from "Smallworlds" have observed that painting digitally allows people with limited physical space to create art, and the cost of art supplies is... well virtually nothing. (Heh. Sorry. Had to throw that in there.)

Teenagers like Marissa Carter have used the digital drawing games to develop skills that have translated to real life improvement in artistic abilities. She was particularly excited that her art teacher is trying to get her work into a show. (The digital painting of a strawberry is hers.) Other aspiring artists have seen the drawing games influence their interest in going to museums, in purchasing art supplies for the first time, and an interest in learning more about master artists like Thomas Kinkade, Rubens, Renoir. Arts education is alive and well!!!!
It doesn't begin and end in the tiny virtual world though. People have begun to collect digital art and display it in their homes in LCD wall screens. Entire new vistas are opening for the art world and the exploration and contagious excitement of the "virtual artists" is going to take art in an entirely new direction.

“Interactivity” explores the immersive potential of technology. You can “splash” paint across a screen by waving your arms in front of Mehmet Akten’s Body Paint installation, or watch the branches of Simon Heidjens’s digital trees move whenever the wind blows outside the V&A. These projects offer a foretaste of the next generation of sensor-controlled computers that we will operate with our voices or physical gestures, rather than keyboards and mice. - New York Times, 12/13/09

Digital art is still the Ginger-child of the art world, but it is moving toward having its day in the plasma spotlight.

*Strawberry Digital Painting by Marissa Carter

*Portrait of Woman by Truble King