DPI: Digital Aesetics Defined

Over the past decade we have wistness the subtle birth of a new medium in visual art. It has been negleted, abused, and confused yet no one has really been prepared to discuss it or define it. People still have difficulty grasping the notion of digital art and often dismit it just as electronic music was in the 80's. Digital Art of the 21st century will be the equivalent of photography and cinema (radio and tv) in 20th. It will effect many current concepts from animation to print. Digital expressionism will also give birth to new concepts; virtual words where the viewer will not only look at an artist's creation they will experience it, seeing, smelling, feeling, and interacting with an expressionistic world, or the impressionism of the creator. It will vent the re-birth of forgotten concepts such as sound poetry and visual poetry. We have the technology but we are ignoring what it can do, so closed minded to the concept that computers, digital technology is the art of the future. [writers note: well 'we' don't actually have the technology it's usually in the hands of business who use it to produce the same bulshit cliche marketing drivel which manipulates and exploits it target market, if we are lucky perhaps we have access to it through our schools, sadly today the technology fall into the hands of business' not artists]

This article focusses on the specific digital medium of static visual art and it's printed counter parts. I gladly welcome feedback, debate, contribution, and wistfully hope that someone out there will read this and say "He's got some good ideas...shame he doesn't have the finacial backing to explore them...coz if he did he'd probably get a lot of publicity and recognition...I have a big company that could use publicity/I work for the Victorian Government and we provide grants and funding for this sort of thing...I'll organised to meet this individual and discuss the prospect of sponsorship". Hopefully if I have time I branch out into the discussion other digital mediums soon.

The purpose of digital art is not to copy the aesetics of other artistic mediums. Just as photography, flim, painting, sculture, and silk screening exist with their own individual aesetics so does digital.

One of the greatest follies of modern computer art is it's attempt to disguise the fact that it has been created on a computer. This is done by placing the highest importance of the 'realism' of an image and is usually an attempt to make the work appear to be a photograph. This style of digital art had become standard, it has also become cliche and has caused people to ignore so many things which digital art is capable of. Impressionism, Fauvisms, and Expressionism taught us that art is not about mimicing reality, it is about conveying your perception of it. You do not see painter trying to hide teh direction and texture of their brush strokes or the thickness of their paint, rather they embrace this as an important part of their meduims. Equally no attempt should be made to hide the aesetics of printed digital art. Features such as pixel size and colour compression should be embraced not hidden. Bretch concept of theatre, that people should be aware they are in a theatre, to only used what is needed to convey a message should be applied to digital art. One of the most beautiful aspects of the large scale printed digital medium is the abilty to percieve an image from a distance as a whole, then to be able to aproach it seeing it as parts, and finally being able to see the very pixels that make up the images. The arrangement and colours of dots and pixels in a printed digital piece are akin to the texture of the brushstrokes or directional splatter of paint on canvas and should be apprieciated and treated with the same respect.

These aesetics can be used in expression and creation, by placing low DPI images in contrast to higher DPI images, and low compressed colours in contrast to higher ones.

Hopefully one day we will be able to look at a newpaper under a magnifying glass, or place our eyes right up to a screen and see something more than 'just dots'.