Thirty years ago left and right brained people across the globe would have had a very skeptical response to the idea of computers and their involvement in our every day lives. Who would have ever thought that the combination of plastic, circuit boards and wiring would be the heart and soul of organizing, documenting and convieniencing people's lives? Most skeptical of all might have been the members of the art community, whose lives have been forever changed by computers in both an actual and a philosophical sense. Computers have proven to be beneficial to artists and their work, both as a tool creating endless new possibilities, and as an organizational tool for the business aspect. .
As far back through the documented times of our society that we look, people have always argued the definition of art. Is the existence and quality of art determined by the creator? The viewer? Is there such a set definition? Thousands of years have passed without an agreeable concrete answer to that question. George Berkeley (1685 - 1753), a philosophical idealist, once said, " how can any determinate, material objects be properly represented or painted forth by several distinct things each of which is so different from and unlike the rest?" (Soccio, p 304) Coming around to the present times of our technologically saturated and cyber space influenced existence, our society is now pondering the credibility of digitally produced art, which is now recognized as a cultural form. It provokes questions about what art is and how we choose to evaluate it. (Lomax, p 2) Is it considered to be art in the eyes of the art community? A large majority feel that yes, in all of its different forms, it is. The ideal question to be posed is how have computers affected artists and their work?.
Computers have opened up endless possibilities for artists today. Artists themselves come in all different forms.
