How can you tell an art form has entered the mainstream? Is it a big feature in the New York Times? An exhibit at MOMA? James Franco deciding he can do that, too?
None of the above. The real answer: it gets a festival!
A William Latham piece. (Source: digitaartsonline.co.uk)
Actually, that’s a totally subjective judgment; art doesn’t really need validation from outsiders, and this post will probably get me in a big argument with my Facebook friends. But arts festivals have a rich history of exposing fresh audiences to new work, which dates all the way back to the patronage of the Medicis in renaissance Florence and the salons of 18th and 19th century France. So it’s pretty cool that the Arts Council of England and major companies like American Express have decided to sponsor a festival dedicated exclusively to digital artists.
One of the big exhibitions in the Brighton Digital Festival is a retrospective on the career of digital art pioneer William Latham. Best known as the creator of Organic Art, one of the first home computer programs for creating and interacting with digital art, here’s what Wired Magazine has to say about Latham:
“His work blends organic imagery and computer animation, using software modeled upon the processes of evolution. Starting with a simple shape, Latham introduces random ‘mutations’ of a form in order to generate increasingly complex three-dimensional creations that resemble fantastical, futuristic organisms. Mutator 1 + 2 is Latham’s first major exhibition in the UK in over twenty years, and includes his early hand-drawn work, large computer generated Cibachrome prints, video art and his most recent interactive projected imagery that explores and embodies evolutionary processes, physical and virtual space.”
Latham’s Mutator program (Source: digitalartsonline.co.uk)
So while museums and exhibitions aren’t the be all and end all for digital art, it’s does mean something when an artist like Latham gets this kind of recognition. For one thing, it indicates that digital art has been around long enough to actually have a history. Which in turn means that more and more people are seeing it, enjoying it and acquiring it. Which in turn in turn means that there are more opportunities for digital artists to create new work. It’s the circle of life! Nants ingonyama bigithi baba.
Another reason digital artists should embrace exhibitions like the Brighton Festival is that it gives them an opportunity to trace the development of their field. 3D rendering has obviously come a long way, even in the last 5 or 10 years. Look at emerging artists like Cristian Rio, who are doing things that Latham probably never even dreamed of; the seeds of the work of Rio and his contemporaries were planted by artists like Latham.
A Cristian Rio design. (Source: cristianrio.cghub.com/)
To me, the evolution of the form is one of the most fascinating things about digital art, since it doesn’t necessarily mirror anything in painting or sculpture – the closest parallel might be architecture, which also relies heavily on new technology. Regardless, the Brighton Digital Festival is one more step in the legitimization of CG art, and digital artists should be excited about it.
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