In this original Digital Art and Philosophy class, we will become familiar with different forms of digital art and related philosophical issues. Digital art is anything related to computers and art such as using a computer to create art or an art display that is digitized. Philosophical aspects arise regarding art, identity, performance, interactivity, and the process of creation. Students may respond to the material in essay, performance, or digital art work (optional). Instructor: Melanie Swan. Syllabus: www.MelanieSwan.com/PCA

1. Image: Emese
Szorenyi
Digital Art and Philosophy #1
Melanie Swan
University of the Commons and the Emerald Tablet Gallery
Syllabus: http://www.MelanieSwan.com/PCA
Slides: http://www.slideshare.net/lablogga

2. What is Digital Art?
Probably not what comes to mind!
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3. What is Digital Art?
3

4. What is Digital Art? ‘Official’
Definitions
• “Digital art is anything involving computers and
art such as using a computer to create art or
digitized art displays” – EB Boyd, Writer
• “Digital art is using new technologies for the
digital, computer-based composition, display, and
reproduction of images and sounds” – Katherine
Thomson-Jones, Professor
• “Digital art is a general term for a range of artistic
works and practices that use digital technology as
an essential part of the creative and/or
presentation process” – Christiane Paul, Curator
4

5. Reading: What is New Media? by Lev
Manovich (2001)
• New media:
– Internet, websites, computer multimedia, computer games,
CD-ROMs & DVDs, virtual reality, and possibly many other
areas
• New media revolution:
– Shift of all of our culture to computer-mediated forms of
production, distribution, and communication
• Simultaneous development of modern media and
computers (1800s daguerreotype, punch card loom,
Babbage analytical engine):
– Media machines and computing machines are necessary
for modern mass societies to function
• Situating digital art: Art eras: representational art
(reality), abstract art and photography, digital art
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6. "Every culture will use the maximum level of technology
available to it to make art" - Scott Draves, Generative Artist
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x0OK1GiI83s
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7. What is [regular] Art?
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8. Classic definitions of art
• “Art is the expression or application of human creative
skill and imagination, typically in a visual form such as
painting or sculpture” – Wikipedia
• Art “…is a means of union among men, joining them
together in the same feelings … towards the well-being
of individuals and of humanity.” – Leo Tolstoy
• “Art is a discovery and development of elementary
principles of nature into beautiful forms suitable for
human use.” – Frank Lloyd Wright
• “Art is not a thing — it is a way.” - Elbert Hubbard
8

9. An Essay in Aesthetics by Roger Fry
(1909)
“A certain painter, not without some reputation at the
present day, once wrote a little book on the art he
practices, in which he gave a definition of that art so
succinct that I take it as a point of departure for this
essay. 'The art of painting', says that eminent
authority, 'is the art of imitating solid objects upon a
flat surface by means of pigments.' It is delightfully
simple, but prompts the question - Is that all?”
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10. An Essay in Aesthetics by Roger Fry
(1909)
“A great part of human life is made up of instinctive reactions to sensible
objects, and their accompanying emotions. But man has the peculiar faculty
of calling up again in his mind the echo of past experiences of this kind, of
going over it again, 'in imagination' as we say. He has, therefore, the
possibility of a double life; one the actual life, the other the imaginative life.”
“Between these two lives there is this great distinction, that in the actual life
the processes of natural selection have brought it about that the instinctive
reaction, such, for instance, as flight from danger, shall be the important part
of the whole process, and it is towards this that the man bends his whole
conscious endeavour. But in the imaginative life no such action is necessary,
and, therefore, the whole consciousness may be focused upon the perceptive
and the emotional aspects of the experience. In this way we get, in the
imaginative life, a different set of values, and a different kind of perception.”
10

11. An Essay in Aesthetics by Roger Fry
(1909)
“The graphic arts are the expression of the imaginative life.
Art is an expression and a stimulus of this imaginative
life, which is separated from actual life by the absence of
responsive action. Now this responsive action implies in
actual life moral responsibility.”
“In art we have no such moral responsibility - it presents a
life freed from the binding necessities of our actual
existence. Art is the chief organ of the imaginative life; it is
by art that it is stimulated and controlled within us, and, as
we have seen, the imaginative life is distinguished by the
greater clearness of its perception, and the greater purity
and freedom of its emotion.”
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12. What is Digital Art?
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13. What is Digital Art?
Democratized Creativity: Performance, Music, VR, Gaming.
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14. What is Digital Art?
http://www.plummerfernandez.com/Digital-Natives 14

15. What is Digital Art?
Design Aesthetics of Meaning-Making: Info Visualization.
Social network visualization
of voting patterns of U. S.
Senators during 2007
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16. What is Digital Art?
Design Aesthetics of Meaning-Making: Info Visualization.
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17. What is Digital Art?
Natural Aesthetics: BioArt, GenArt, SynBio, Biomimicry, CrowdArt.
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18. What is Digital Art?
Portable ArtTech: Identity, Wearable Electronics, the Future.
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19. What is (early) Digital Art?
Hypertext, hypermedia, net.art, web art.
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20. What is Digital Art?
Tactical Media, Hactivism, Electronic Civil Disobedience.
Graffiti Research Lab and Stiktu augmented
reality social graffiti app from Layar
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21. Why Philosophy?
• Branches of philosophy
– Metaphysics
– Epistemology
– Aesthetics
• Aesthetics deals with the
nature and expression of
art and beauty
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22. What Philosophical Issues arise with
Digital Art?
• What is art?
• Why does art matter?
• How does art engage us?
• How does digital art change
our notions of
– Identity
– Performance
– Interactivity
– Creativity
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23. A Sudden Gust of Wind (after Hokusai) by Jeff Wall (1993)
http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/wall-a-sudden-gust-of-wind-after-hokusai-t06951

24. Travellers Caught in a Sudden breeze at Ejiri by Katsushika Hokusai (1832) from
The Thirty-six Views of Fuji 24

25. Philosopher: Mark Hansen
Production of Images
“The disembodiment characteristic of the virtual image is synonymous
with its dependence on the activity of the body-brain: lacking any
material autonomy of its own, the image does not preexist its
actualization and can be given body only through this activity.... here it
is the very divide between the virtual and the physical that is most
significant. The aesthetic experience solicited by these works
juxtaposes a spectatorial synthesis that seamlessly fuses virtual and
physical space with a background awareness, triggered by certain
material elements, that the events thus fused belong to incompossible
space-times. In this way, attention is drawn to the capacity of the
spectator's body-brain activity effortlessly to produce a virtual image
out of heterogeneous material.” - New Philosophy for New
Media, 2006, p. 61
Summary: The virtual image lacks any material autonomy of its
own and is produced by the viewer 25

26. Digital Artist: Jeffrey Shaw
The Legible City by Jeffrey Shaw (1988-1991)
http://www.medienkunstnetz.de/works/the-legible-city/
Video: http://www.medienkunstnetz.de/works/the-legible-city/video/1/
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27. Digital Artist: Douglas Gordon
Play Dead Real Time by Douglas Gordon (2003)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q-XD6fuf0ho
Henry Rebel (2011)
Video installation, two HD video
projections, sound, 93 min, looped
27

28. Digital Artist: Bill Viola
The Crossing by Bill Viola (2009)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHqhaH6m9pY
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29. Production of the Virtual Image
• The image in digital art goes
beyond the merely visual
• The digital image
encompasses the process by
which information is made
perceivable
• The virtual image lacks any
material autonomy of its own
and is produced by the
viewer
• ‘Image’ or ‘image’ and story
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30. Philosopher: Dominic Lopes
• Reading: “A Review of A Philosophy of
Computer Art by Dominic Lopes” by Timothy
Binkley (2010)
• Sudden ubiquity of computers and their ability
to turn abstractions into experiences
• What features of computer-based works make
them works in the computer art form and set
them apart from other kinds of art?
– Digital art: it is art, made by computer or made
for display by a computer, in a common digital
code
– Computer art: it is art, run on a
computer, interactive, interactive because it is
run on a computer
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31. Digital Artist: Jeffrey Shaw
Golden Calf by Jeffrey Shaw (1994)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=paaacEIF6wU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0yeIQB2o8xc
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32. Digital Artist: Ken Goldberg
Telegarden by Ken Goldberg (1995–2004)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gbyy5vSg8w8
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33. Digital Artist: Scott Snibbe
Boundary Functions by Scott Snibbe (1998)
http://www.snibbe.com/projects/interactive/boundaryfunctions/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Ax4pgtHQDg
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34. Digital Artist: Hisako Yamakawa
Kodama—Mischievous Echoes by Hisako Yamakawa (2005)
http://www.filefestival.org/site_2007/pop_trabalho.asp?id_trabalho=2293&cd_idiom
a=2&acao=visualizar&
http://www.ntticc.or.jp/Archive/2006/Openspace/art_technology/emergencies.html#
e001
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35. Audio example - EMI
http://www.snibbestudio.com/#/ REWORK
Interactive Philip Glass remixes by
Beck, Amon Tobin, and more
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36. Computer Art
• It is art, run on a
computer, interactive, inter
active because it is run on a
computer
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37. Why is Interactivity so important?
A-Volve by Christa Sommerer and Laurent Mignonneau (1994)
http://www.medienkunstnetz.de/works/a-volve/
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38. Interactivity
Text Rain by Camille Utterback (1999)
• Audience can be in
conversation with the work
• Audience can create the
work
• Artist has more ways to
communicate with the
audience
• Artist can be in
conversation with his/her
own process
• Interactivity is evocative
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39. Interactivity: a complex cognitive
behavior
Model of Interactivity Developed by Don Norman
Source: Understanding Interactivity, p. 34
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40. Merleau-Ponty
• The Phenomenology of Perception (1945)
• Perception is not stimuli reception
• Perception is a process of continuous interaction
involving the subject's intentions, expectations, and
physical actions in "communion" with its surroundings
– Perception is related to intentionality (goal-directedness)
• Two threads re: philosophy of digital art
– Dominic Lopes: Interactivity is related to deeply evocative
viewer responses, complex cognitive behavior, and the
process of perception
– Mark Hansen: Virtual image production is the process by
which information is made perceivable
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41. Digital Art Critique
• Diversity
• Dynamism, co-creation
• Ephemerality, archivability
• Role of critics
• Standards
• Valorization, value-determination
• Collecting
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42. Philosophy of Art
A Pair of Shoes
by Vincent Van
Gogh (1886)
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43. 43

44. Cultural unification: art and
technology
• “Two Cultures” lecture by CP Snow (1959) –
lamenting the division between arts and science
– At Cambridge a gap between the “science culture”
and the “arts” or “literary culture” where the "two
groups had almost ceased to communicate at all"
– Nostalgia for earlier times when science and
humanities were more closely aligned
• Digital Art crosses the rift
– Art developed with computers and computing
methods, digitally displayed
– Design, aesthetics, and elegance in technology (Apple)
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45. Agenda and Upcoming Sessions
2/12 - Introduction "What is digital art?" and what philosophers are saying
about it?
2/19 - The Design Aesthetics of Meaning-Making: Information Visualization.
“Aesthetics of Information Visualization” (Warren Sack, 2013)
“Authenticity and Computer Art” (Margaret A. Boden, 2006, pp 1-11)
Processing.org tutorial or download/test Tableau
Digital art interpretation of Van Gogh’s ‘Pair of Shoes’
2/26 - Democratized Creativity: Performance, Music, Virtual Reality, Gaming.
3/5 - Natural Aesthetics: Generative Art, SynBio, Biomimicry, CrowdArt.
3/12 - Portable ArtTech: Identity, Fashion, Wearable Electronics, the Future.
Comments and Feedback:
m@MelanieSwan.com
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46. Thank you!
Image: Emese
Szorenyi
Digital Art and Philosophy
Melanie Swan
University of the Commons and the Emerald Tablet Gallery
http://www.MelanieSwan.com/PCA
http://www.slideshare.net/lablogga