What are the major themes in digital art and why?
Art, be it digital or analogue, always reflects on the specifics of culture, and technology has undeniably become an important part of our culture. Digital technologies have brought about massive developments which consequently serve as major themes in digital art. These themes include artificial life and intelligence; telepresence and telerobotics; database aesthetics, mapping and data visualization; net activism and tactical media; gaming and narrative hypermedia environments; mobile and locative media; social networks; and virtual worlds. While these themes surface in more traditional media as well, they are in many ways specific to the digital medium.
Artificial Life
The introduction of digital technologies has led to the discussion of artificial life and intelligence, topics which have long been an area of interest in science and science fiction. The digital medium is often used as a platform to artistically explore these relationships between humans and machines. The idea of blurring the distinctions between human and machine, robots, and the intelligence of inanimate matter all are all themes found in digital art.
Telepresence, Telematics, and Telerobotics
The concept of telepresence is also connected to digital technologies and consequently digital art. While telepresence is an old concept, recent digital technologies like the internet for example, have expanded the possibilities that a person can feel as if they are present, to give the appearance that they are present, or to have an effect at a location other than their true location. For example, the internet can be considered as one huge telepresence environment that allows users to be ‘present’ all over the world in multiple contexts without ever leaving the comforts of our home. Digital artists frequently use the theme of telepresence to explore remote human communication and exchange.
Body and Identity
The body and identity are also themes in digital art, centering on questions of how we define ourselves in a digital world. Due to the introduction of exact surveillance and identification physical objects have become more and more transparent, threatening the idea of individual autonomy.
Databases, Data Visualization, and Mapping
In the digital age not only is our physical body subject to “disembodiment’ but also information itself. Information in a sense has lost its body, becoming an abstract quality. The meaning of data and information relies on creating some form of organization or map that can allow for orientation. Tradition methods used to represent data including charts, graphs and sorting have experience a revival in the context of digital art. Digital technologies now allow multiple ways to give any given set of data visual form.
Gaming
Digital artists also use and reference games and game-like structures in multiple ways. Gaming explores many of the paradigms that are common in interactive art including navigation, simulation, linked narratives, creation of 3D worlds, and multi-user environments.
Tactical Media, Activism, and Hacktivism
Activism is not a new theme in art. However, digital technologies have ushered in a modern form of activism known as tactical media. In the realm of digital art, activist projects frequently use digital technologies in order to oppose and criticize a target. A popular strategy employed in tactical media is to turn the technology back on itself. Activist digital art also occasionally takes the form of hacktivism which is a method of activism that uses hacking – the breaking, reformatting, and re-engineering of data systems – as a creative strategy.
Mobile and Locative Media
Mobile and locative media are also concepts and themes explored by digital artists. Digital technologies including wireless networks and nomadic devices such as the mobile phone have blurred the boundary between the non-local and the locative. Mobile locative media is a concept and a theme that has been increasingly explored by artists. Electronic networks have redefined what we have traditionally understood as “public space” and have broadened our concepts “public art.”
Social Networking
The idea of linking and networking is intrinsic to the digital medium. Recently there has been a shift of emphasis from the linking and networking of media files to the linking and networking of people. The growing popularity of social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace has inspired art projects that explore their underlying paradigms.
Virtual Worlds
The connectivity created by digital technologies such as mobile devices and social networking sites also expands into virtual worlds. For example Second Life (SL), an online virtual world, allows users to inhabit and explore the virtual landscape, build homes, and even socialize. In addition to mimicking the real world digitally, virtual worlds can offer artists an environment to produce what is not possible or at least very difficult to achieve in the physical world.
