Where is digital art taking us? I believe, after researching a number of Internet articles, that the more appropriate question might be: Where will digital art not take us? So much is happening so fast. It's easy to make a speculation, and then, the very next day for that self-same speculation to become fact. That's just the way technology and the ideas surrounding it work. .
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Digital Media is taking artists everywhere at once. From interactive worlds and virtual sculptures to artwork meant for web-viewing only, it's forcing everyone to change the way we look at art as a whole. However, this is where problems seem to arise. After all, with so many new ideas flying around whose to say which is art and which is not. Harvy Blume asks similar pertaining questions in his online article, Bits of Beauty.
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"How, for example, does cyberart come to terms with inherited art-world formulae? How does it fit digital and non-digital into each other? And how does it make use of an overabundance of purely visual enticements?" (Online, 1-2).
What he discovers though, and I agree with him, is that "even excellent work calls attention to itself only briefly before disappearing back into the flux it has helped generate." (Online, 2).
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Unfortunately, this gives artists the very difficult task of convincing critics, gallery owners, and the art industry as a whole that their work is worth displaying and, to some degree, preserving. It's a very daunting amount of work and not all are up to it, but I think J.D. Jarvis states artists" defiance at its best in his essay, The Digital Manifesto.
"Nothing will stop this innovation. All the excuses that plague the digital artist today will be swept away as this wave hits the beach. My advice is to grab your mother-board. Paddle out as far as you can. Catch the wave and enjoy the ride." (Online, 3).
He's right, of course. Artists have always had to endure hardships forced upon them by patrons, critics, and even the common populace, yet we've survived.