What is the difference between using digital technologies as a tool versus as a medium?
Digital technology can be used as both a tool and a medium to create artwork. As a tool, technology can be used in a specific aspect of creation. Digital technologies are increasingly being employed in various stages of the creation by artists working in more traditional media such as painting, drawing, photography, and sculpting. For example, sculptors may employ modeling software or manufacturing machines to create their pieces. Artist, Robert Lazzarini’s sculptures skulls are a good example of using digital technologies as a tool. Lazzarini’s skulls are based on 3D CAD files that were distorted and then made into sculptures.
Robert Lazzarini, skulls, 2000
Digital media can also be used as a tool in the creation of a painting, drawing or print. Digital imaging can be used to manipulate images and digital technologies can be used as a tool in production or printing. Artist Charles Cohen utilized both digital manipulation and digital printing in his piece 16b. In order to create 16b Cohen used digital manipulation to erase the main subjects from a pornographic photograph and then produced it as archival digital inkjet print.
Charles Cohen, 16b, 2001
Digital technologies also play an important role in artist Chris Finley’s paintings. Finley frequently uses digital templates in order to create his paintings. Using imaging software Finley lays out his colors, shapes, and forms and then recreates his digital composition on canvas.
In addition to being used as a tool, digital technologies can also be employed as an artistic medium. When digital technologies are used as an artistic medium, the digital platform is exclusively used from production all the way to presentation. Artwork produced in the digital medium have a tendency to investigate and express the platform’s intrinsic possibilities. There are four key distinguishing features of digital art: it is interactive, participatory, dynamic, and customizable. These four distinctive features of digital art are not necessarily always all used together, but are used in varying combinations.
While all artwork can be considered interactive, relying on the interaction between the imagery and the viewer to create meaning, when it comes to experiencing traditional artwork the interaction is intellectual and not physical. With digital art, the interactivity goes far beyond a purely mental event and takes the form of physically navigating, assembling or contributing to the work. In contrast to traditional artistic mediums digital art is often participatory, relying on multi-user input. The digital medium is also dynamic in the sense that it can respond to changes in data. The ability to respond to the transmission of data is possible because the digital medium produces imagery based off a ‘back end’ consisting of code or scripting languages. The last prominent feature of the digital medium is that it is customizable. Some digital artworks, for example, are adaptable to a single user’s needs and the user’s individual profile becomes the basis for the work.
