Computer and art essay

We can definitely say that the computer revolution which had so greatly spread world wide, is on its logical finish. It doesn’t mean that the progress in this area of technology and science is going to finish. No way. It just means that the computer and PC for more clearance had already taken its place in the life of society as an irreplaceable assistant of the man as a universal means for communication, entertainment, study, and is generally taking more and more that before was belonging to books and all kinds of paper databases.

Along with the favorite PC our life was enriched by new phenomena and conceptions, about which none was really thinking about and had a very unclear idea about. To be more specific it’s the slogan appeared not so long ago: “new generation chooses games”.  But computer games are not the only subject of entertainment industry born by computer revolution. In general the opportunities opened by computer era made a big revolution in the world of visual art giving more space to work on for movie effects specialists, designers, artists, photographers, etc. For a long time the level of technology has been limiting computers in their capacities of being used in art related industries, the workstations used for graphics modeling coasted millions of dollars and couldn’t be an instrument of design. But as soon as technological side of a computer became more advanced it turned to be a powerful tool for solving of numerous problems. A modern artist gets unlimited possibilities of using colors, hues, making special effects and colored reliefs. But as this art was made on the screens of computer monitors, the results of such creative work often look unnatural if printed, everybody agrees that the sphere of exhibition of such works has to be only on the screen of the monitor.  The same image on the paper and on the screen has different influence on a persons esthetic world.

Printed images of computer art loose their effective influence, uncatchable feelings of uniqueness and inner meanings.

The opportunities of realistic reflection of our imagination and fantasy are the very advantages of computer arts, because computer technologies can exactly unite the power of human mind, imagination, reflection of feelings along with high speeds and ability of monotonic work made by machines. This union makes new relations between a human and a computer.

The whole process of computer graphics creation involves some kind of compromise between changing emotions of an author and external, independently developing technologies. This process or a struggle makes the equilibrium between improving, changing technologies and the creative process of an artist in the forms and meaning area of computer art. The majority of computer artists mark that because of the changes and innovations in the area of computer graphics tools, methods and applications introduce new limits to their creative work, unknown before, they, artists, feel the displacement of their attention to the new, reserved areas of their creative abilities. The words design and model don’t mean that computer art can be considered as rational, scientific, or more over surface and accidental work. This process demonstrates the colored application of rational parameters: sorted and grouped combinations of them appear in the motion of the soul, and the advantage of the man is emotional part, while the advantage of a computer is technical perfection of the ideas and thoughts realization.

As the result the esthetics of this art depends upon the behavior of the spectator. An artist makes just the basic form, describes the wide context of what’s happening, provides the diversity, complication of the environment, and later organizes the “points of entrance” into the system, by means of which the spectator gets access into created virtual space. This scheme defines the limits of interactive art, that are on the wide level of penetration into the life of big groups, on the level of individual experience of the participant of creative process.

The set of terms: spectator, watcher, participant, publics, player it’s more appropriate to use just the only name of all these roles. It’s the term “user”, because only the word “user” is the most fundamental and includes a wide range of  interaction between an  individual and interactive system , no matter if this interactive system can be called art or not.

One of innovations that penetrated into our life with computers are the computer games. They appeared in the begging of computer era as a mean of stress removal, that happens to programists working all day long on PC. And later they step by step occupied an important place in the world of high technology. For a long period of time the spread and influence of computer games industry was not that visible, because the games to the mot part were very primitive. The ideas of the designers were limited by computer abilities. But since 90th with rapid development of hardware and operation systems, with the appearance of 3D video accelerators designers got a lot of space fort their creative work and realization of the bold ideas. It’s not a surprise that a big part of PCs bought nowadays are bought for playing games and entertainment. Actually for a majority, computer games are not just means of stress cure but, if not a religion, then the “life style”.

The twentieth century would have a lot surprises to our predecessors. A lot of modern art have it’s basics in technology, as photography, cinema, modern architecture (which is a good example of symbiosis of art, technology, science and rationalism), modern music (which is represented by a variety of electronic instruments), so there is no wonder that the branches of a specific parts of math science as math modeling, games theory together with electronics gave a birth to a new form of world perception called “virtual reality”.

Then to decide this essential problem it’s better to be defined with the sides of this question:

1. Graphics of the modern computer games is an essential and integrated part of pop culture, if to look on this question locally it’s a part of modern pop art, and that’s why it can be discussed from the esthetic position.

2. As any other kind of results of the creative process computer animation or computer graphics appeals fist of all to the inner world of a person.

3. Computer animation is a synthetic kind of art and its roots go all the way to “old” (classical and traditional) types of creative work graphics, painting, literature, and cinema.

And now lets cover all these points in details.

Speaking about popular modern art we basically mean those wanted products of civilization that have their purpose not to satisfy the material needs, but to the main place spiritual needs of a man. Modern popular art basically includes TV shows, fiction, movies, cartoons, etc. By “using” it the man tries to satisfy his “hunger” in emotions, feelings, and tries to compensate the lack of emotions by accepting this virtual reality. From this side, the computer game is an integrated part of modern popular culture.

The popularity of this kind of software is obvious, because it takes one of the top places in the computer related goods trade.

If to speak about connection of computer game with the inner world of a person, it can be compared to the reading the book. While playing a game or while  reading a book, a man is putting himself in the artificial world of virtual reality. But to the difference to a book the game is very interactive, which makes more realistic the penetration to the world of the game, while if reading a book a person has to use the “ready product”, watching it but not taking any participation in.

Another thing is the attention the game developers pay to all kinds of game demos, screen savers, game hero’s encyclopedias, and other attributes that don’t have any relation to the playing game process. This attachments to the games, mostly apprehended as fine game editions are the means of influence on our emotions, that make our mind pay more attention to the game and make play it. By means of that the designers using just the visual means reach their goal, they opportunity to a person to get rid of his routine problems and move to the world of illusions.

Basically it is the main goal of every kind of art, isn’t it? But they do it without paints and brushes.

By the words of scientists who work on the problem of psychological perception of the surrounding world, a healthy person gets 98% of information by eyesight and hearing. That’s why the “magic of computer games” is basically the game graphics, that has its ancestors in the face of animation, cinema and painting; that was modernized by the use of math and physics laws of space and motion, that all together gave a birth to computer animation.

The topic of literary origins of computer games can be developed independently. But it’s important to note that nearly every game has its own scenario, which often can be though to be a literary work. Often the backgrounds to the release of new games are fiction, historical events, fantasy.

The development of computer industry with its great and wide opportunities gave the birth to the new type of virtual art, as well as to new professions as computer designers, computer animation developers, etc. This new art, as I’ve mentioned before, unites the talent of an artist with the knowledge of computer programming and math modeling.

Many begging artists find out that they can realize themselves in computer animation industry. The knowledge of art is essential in virtual art as well. John Miles, creative director of Bullfrog, says: “A traditional education in art and qualification are very important for all artists that participate in the process of game design. They influence the working process in different ways, and giving a valuable experience to the developers team”¦ Making a team I choose only those who are talented in tradition art, and choose a suitable job for them”.

The most part of companies doesn’t care if an artist they employ is not acquainted with 3D modeling on computer.

The traditional skills are more important then computer skills. After all if you can not draw, it doesn’t matter that you can use applications for 3D modeling. Jason Batterly says: “A computer is just an instrument. It’s more important to have an art preparation, even from historical point of view.”

Computer animation requires a lot of skills. The whole process can be considered to be similar to the cinematography, but here an artist plays one of the first roles. The textures, backgrounds are the work for painters; while 3d modeling is an area for creative work of sculptors. Even so that computer art requires basically the skills of an artist and classical art conception is the engine for future development of this evolved art, the changes in this area of needed artists will be more obvious in future.

The 20th century as well as the 21st century, are the centuries of a high level of urbanization, globalization and other social processes which have some disadvantages. The biggest of them is lack of time for natural communication because of busy life rhythm. A person doesn’t find time enough for communication and for social participation.

At this point the interactive and virtual reality compensates the reality of life. The same thing happens to art. From year to year the art appreciated by the majority of people turn to be more and more interactive even so that it demonstrates intelligence, the power of human mind and thought, the ability for development.

It’s agreed that nowadays people struggle with system of reality perception, not only with their feelings and emotions in interactive environment. It’s to complicate to determine and realize the meaning and sense of computer graphics, animation because of high abstraction level of this art and inability to separate in the mind these conceptions as soon as they begin to differ from simple since. The nature of this problem in thought to be in the computer’s structure. For the majority it’s the mean of art and life reflection like a TV set, but in reality the environment created with the help of computer gives more abilities for work, then for its reflection. The whole idea of technology with the constant dynamics in its core gives more opportunities for realization and experiences for learning using computer, then it’s given in reality. The same thing is about art. The 20th century showed that classical art inherited new features like the use of metal, welding, constructive materials along with other means of technology. On this scene the usage of computer looks like a logical continuation to these innovations by demonstrating unlimited opportunities for artists with the only limit, their imagination. To the most part only art created with a help of computer modeling will address the demands of current century with its changeable rhythm and demands.

May be the interactive, virtual culture will be that one that will definitely follow the words of Oscar Wilde that “life should learn from art”.



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