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DOI: https://doi.org/10.34069/AI/2023.64.04.31
How to Cite:
Zabora, V., Kasianenko, K., Pashukova, S., Alforova, Z., & Shmehelska, Y. (2023). Digital art in designing an artistic
image. Amazonia Investiga, 12(64), 300-305. https://doi.org/10.34069/AI/2023.64.04.31
Digital art in designing an artistic image
El arte digital en el diseño de una imagen artística
Received: February 21, 2023 Accepted: May 12, 2023
Written by:
Volodymyr Zabora1
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6273-5430
Karolina Kasianenko2
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4602-314X
Svіtlana Pashukova3
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6890-1145
Zoya Alforova4
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4698-9785
Yuliia Shmehelska5
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6136-0905
Abstract
The research aim lies in describing new
approaches in art. The use of digital art allows
displaying an artistic image that perceives new
ideals. The development of digital art in the era
of global digitization implies introducing several
modern tools for designing an artistic image. The
paper raises the issue of the media of digital
works, including photographic paper and canvas.
The technological and automated side of some or
all digital works is also described. The question
of their uniqueness or singularity is raised. The
paper reveals the aesthetic aspect of a computer-
designed work, which depends primarily on the
parameters of brightness, contrast, and saturation
of the creative software used, as well as the
parameters chosen for printing. Since this aspect
is the same as for a traditional work reproduced
in printed form, from a purely artistic point of
view, a digital work can resemble a traditional
work in every way if it borrows elements from it,
such as hand-painted or digitally drawn textures.
Moreover, when traditional techniques are
combined with digital techniques, creative ways
are likely to multiply because of the variety of
techniques. Consideration is given to the use of
1
Teacher Department of stage direction and public holidays Faculty of theater, film and pop Kyiv National University of Culture and
Arts, Ukraine.
2
Doctor of Philosophy, Associate Professor Department of Fine Arts and Design Faculty of Ukrainian and Foreign Philology and
Study Art Oles Honchar Dnipro National University, Ukraine.
3
Senior Lecturer, Kyiv National University of Technologies and Design, Faculty of Arts and Fashion, Department of Digital Art,
Ukraine.
4
Doctor of Arts, Professor, Head of the Department of Methodologies of Cross-Cultural Practices, Faculty of Audiovisual Arts,
Kharkiv State Academy of Design and Fine Arts, Ukraine.
5
Candidate of art studies, Senior Lecturer, Kyiv National University of Culture and Arts, St. Yevhena Konovaltsia, Ukraine.
Zabora, V., Kasianenko, K., Pashukova, S., Alforova, Z., Shmehelska, Y. / Volume 12 - Issue 64: 300-305 / April, 2023
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correction tools to facilitate modification of the
composition.
Keywords: art, composition, design,
digitalisation, pixel.
Introduction
To understand digital art, it’s design and
production, it is necessary to realize the
difference between art that uses digital
technology as a primary tool to create more
traditional objects - photography, print, or music
- and art that uses it as a medium. In the latter,
work is produced, stored, and presented only
digitally and uses its interactive or participatory
potential (Kress & Van Leeuwen, 2020).
Digital technology and interactive media
challenge traditional notions of creativity,
audience, and artist. The artist is no longer the
sole creator of the work, but often the mediator
or animator of the interactions between the
audience and the artwork. The creative process
itself is often the result of a complex relationship
between the artist and a team of programmers,
engineers, scientists, and graphic designers. A
number of digital artists undergo engineering and
design training themselves.
The digital environment also poses different
challenges to the traditional art world: exhibition
space, collection, sale, storage. The term digital
applied to art is quite controversial because of its
semantic blurring: “art design”, “media art,”
“multimedia,” “transmedia” (Du, 2020). This
terminology is sometimes unconvincing because
of the literal English translation and too
noticeable is the load of the word “media,” which
certainly encompasses a reality different from the
reality that emerges in the artistic practice of the
21st century. This paper aims to describe
methods of designing an artistic image using
digital technology. Assignment - definition of the
concept of digital art, analysis of its typology,
evolution, and distribution channels. The
research questions are the next: Does digital art
undermine aesthetic codes with the help of all the
resources of modern techniques? Are the pieces
of digital art the result from the electronic and
computer revolution? Is the combination of art
and digital technology giving birth to new artistic
practices, new forms of works, and new
relationships with the viewer?
Theoretical Framework or Literature Review
In contrast to the visual arts, digital art can have
different definitions: classical and formal,
analogue and manufactured. Increasingly, artistic
practices are inseparable from technological and
computer advances, perceived as a revolution in
the art world. The technique of digital work is
quite “incidental” and goes beyond its role as a
tool and an aesthetic, symbolic characteristic
(Dominguez, Messina, Donoso-Guzmán &
Parra, 2019).
Rooted in the Dadaist movement of the 1920s,
digital art is closely associated with the work of
Marcel Duchamp and Man Ray (Randall, 2020).
In the 1960s, the Fluxus contemporary art
movement, influenced by Dadaism, mainly
touched on visual art as well as music and
literature and aimed to erase the boundaries
between art and contemporary life through
devastating humour (Oppenlaender, 2022). The
concepts, specificity, and aesthetics of digital art
are often inspired by science fiction novels.
The transition from the industrial age to the
digital age was accompanied by a growing
interest among artists at the crossroads of art and
technology. Digital art evolved to bring together
a wide range of practices, from the creation of
object-oriented projects to works aimed at
developing process-oriented virtual objects
(Neate, Roper & Wilson, 2020). However, it was
not until the 1990s that digital art gradually
entered the art world. Today, the relationship
between “digital art” and “contemporary art” is
quite complex.
Like any human activity, art has bowed to the
digital revolution and, in fact, has begun to revise
its own raison d'être. Yot (2019) in this regard
describes the changes brought about by
digitalization: the multiplication of sources, the
dematerialization of media, immediacy, and
virtuality, transversality, and networking.
Digital art is taking root and following the
contours of developments related to computer
science. This is evidenced by the semantic
variants of “cybernetic art” and “computer art,”
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which began to emerge with the arrival of
consumer microcomputers in the 1980s (Humm,
2022). At first, the visual work - computer
images, 3D, “new” images - was synonymous
with digital art practice. Therefore, the transition
from analog to digital may be the only criterion
for identifying the specificity of a digital work of
art. But this key point is not a support for the
qualification of video art. It only marks an
extension of the other modalities of projection,
installation, diffusion, exhibition. Li (2020)
traces the branching of digital art from the
beginnings of electronic music and experimental
cinema to the motifs of kinetic art. Gintere
(2019), argues that it is video art that is the
ancestor of digital art, realized by means with the
intention also in this diversion of function and
purpose of the technical object to make it a work
of art. Furthermore, in all its forms (projection,
virtualization, installation and/or device), digital
art questions the relationship between man-
machine-environment in the artist-work-public.
Methodology
This study is based on a comprehensive
approach, proper use of methods of system
analysis, synthesis, generalization, as well as
historical and comparative approaches, through
which the image system of modern digital art and
the opportunities it offers in creating an artistic
image is defined. The chosen methods of
research meet the goals and objectives: in
covering the historical component of the
emergence of digital art - historical and cultural
method; to identify its factors and typology of
digital artistic image method of abstraction and
comparison. In addition, the work used a
theoretical analysis of the literature.
Results and Discussion
The results of the work give strict answers to the
research questions. First, giving answer to the
question if digital art undermine aesthetic codes
with the help of all the resources of modern
techniques one should admit that the use of
digital technology in the design of the artistic
image means that from the production of the
work to the presentation, only the digital
platform is used and that it represents and
explores its inherent possibilities. The digital art
image is, among other things, interactive,
participatory, dynamic, and customizable
according to the artist's vision, and these features
give rise to a special aesthetic. There are factors
that best characterize digital art (Table 1):
Table 1.
Characteristics of digital art
Interactivity
Presence of a sensory component
Minimum interactivity
Navigation in the information space
Table: author's own development
The first factor characterizing digital art is
interactivity. Whereas classical works of art
(painting, sculpture) have remained static,
subordinate only to the contemplative side,
digital art works prefer a sensory component: in
particular, touch and gesture, hitherto absent in
the art world. Art of a device loaded with sensors,
digital art in its interactive version is driven by a
new attitude, not a passive one. Appropriation is
also a feature of the “multiple choice work”
(Koch, Taffin, Lucero & Mackay, 2020). The
second question was if the pieces of digital art the
result from the electronic and computer
revolution? Indeed, digital arts are a source of
genuine “inter-action,” requiring movement of
the work toward the viewer and, conversely,
from the viewer to the work. This interaction is
reduced according to a modality that differs
depending on the installed devices.
The minimal interactivity is always the
navigation in the information space. More
complex interactivity may prescribe the
generation of a programming algorithm. In this
case, it is simultaneously controlling the
observed process for the viewer and the author
(Aldouby, Hasler, Nadav & Friedman, 2022).
Interactivity can be the possible input of the
artist. Interactivity may or may not have any real
impact on the content or form of the work.
Contributions in this case are combined with
digital processing. Finally, interactivity can be a
breeding ground for mediated interpersonal
communication. This is where alteration - real-
time collective action - is at the heart of the art
project (Block, 2020).
The creation of an artistic image in digital art
occurs differently in its various forms (Fig. 1):
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Figure 1. Typology of digital art
Figure: author's own development
Interactive art - brings a new mode of existence
to work and the formation of an artistic image
whose state of completion remains an
“unfinished” production. Algorithmic programs
create the illusion of autonomous life for the
work and seem to increase its potential for
interactivity to the point where it seems to escape
its creator and is autonomous, alive.
Generative art (algorithmic art, computer art) is
primarily about questions of worldview and
randomness in the creation of images. Therefore,
generative art precedes the arrival of computer
science. Mathematics and robotics are the only
way for the artist to expand his intention, his
perception, his interpretation, his emotions.
Interactive and generative, digital art offers
touching and fascinating artistic images, works
where text, sound, image, and form and meaning
are modular and almost infinite.
Immersive art - digital art invites an experience
that is not only emotional but also sensual and
corporeal. Enhanced by sound and pyrotechnic
devices (spatial sounds, intense use of smoke,
and strobe lights). Immersive art leaves the
digital field to take over the body as well as the
mind with the most destabilizing projects
(Belting, 2022), immersing the viewer in a state
of epilepsy or catalepsy, depending on the
perception of the artistic image. Immersion is
primarily a matter of measurement--real or
virtual--and feeling again real or simulated
through interfaces (virtual reality headsets, data
gloves, controllers with “haptic feedback”).
Audiovisual performances are a mix of sound
and image, freed from the cathodic and magnetic
limitations that characterized video art. Going
beyond the simple function of illustration
(VJing), the audiovisual version of digital art is
available in installations and performances
enhanced by special sensors and software. Here,
too, the ongoing semantic shift says a lot about
the evolution of techniques and practices:
vijaying, live A/V, audiovisual performance,
audiovisual art, live cinema, film concerts, film
mixes, live media, stage design (Cetinic & She,
2022). Mapping perfectly illustrates the new
perspectives: new software allows artists to
project their images on a three-dimensional
building.
In terms of the third research question if the
combination of art and digital technology gives
birth to new artistic practices, new forms of
works, and new relationships with the viewer one
can conclude that an artistic image that multiplies
on screens, combines with pyrotechnic effects,
refracts on spatial sounds, modulates itself
according to the software, and has become, quite
literally, an experience to be lived.
Digital and Performative Art - Stage art, and
dance in particular, constitute a separate and very
dynamic field of activity in the world of digital
art.
Net art - if an image is accompanied by digital
art, it cannot be defined without computer code.
By investing in the Internet, digital artists are
sublimating the coding process. Net art has
become emblematic of digital art and is
Interactive art
Digital and
Performative Art
Robotic art Computer game
Net-art
Generative art Immersive art
Bio-art
AR
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combined in a multitude: online art, web art,
google art, software art, ascii art, code art (Lee &
Lee, 2019). Again, the multiplication of
qualifiers associated with this art and online - by
and for the Internet - is indicative of protean
creativity, whose evolution and forms are
indexed to the evolution of new media
technologies. Net art is really “media art” and
“code art,” also playing with cultural codes,
communication codes (Walker, 2019). It is an art
that borrows factors of mobility, fluidity, and
virtuality from the Internet and new
communication technologies to create an artistic
image, changing the inner character of the work.
Bioart - our lives are influenced by digital
technology, and art is influenced by
biotechnology. We are talking about laboratory
techniques for creating an artistic image. The
artist's work is about molecular biology.
Robotized art is the artistic reprogramming of
industrial machines and robots for aesthetic
purposes. Addresses the living, in continuation of
bio-art or attempts at a recomposed and
augmented body, the experience of cybersex, and
the ultimate avatar, posthuman performance art
(Whitaker, 2019). Worked artworks in sound art
and some music-making devices.
Computer Game - Contemporary artists also
invest their talents in video games. In a computer
game, artists create artistic images already in a
transformed form, through dematerialization,
new media, and the players themselves.
Augmented reality - combining the real and
virtual worlds, capturing our senses, and
enriching our perception, augmented reality
opens an impressive window into the foggy
Internet universe (Liu, Liang, Xu, Wang, Hao,
Dong & Yu, 2022). To create an artistic image in
augmented reality, the artist simply has to
download an AR app, select a “layer” of data to
overlay on reality and point the phone screen in
the desired direction.
Thus, digital art is the marker of our time, the
basic aesthetic and cultural form that unites the
intimate and the common. Digital art holds up to
society the broken mirror of modern subjectivity.
Conclusions
Digital art is consonant with modernity; it
designs and reproduces our daily lives
transformed by new technologies and the
Internet. In contrast to contemporary art, digital
art does not simply undermine aesthetic codes
but makes use of all the resources of modern
techniques; and especially those resulting from
the electronic and computer revolution. This
combination of art and digital technology is
giving birth to new artistic practices, new forms
of works, and new relationships with the viewer.
As in other fields, the birth of “digital” art is part
of the beginning of the birth of the computer
mainstream. The software makes it possible to
create the latest artistic image. It is the medium,
that is, the computer and its associated technical
objects, which becomes the object of artistic
practice. But the foundations of this new artistic
construction rest with video art and kinetic
sculpture, based on design image and movement.
In the same way, kinetic art is already an art of
“motorization,” mobility, and interaction with
the environment or the public. Another
characteristic of digital art is its complexity and
diversity, which continues to grow with
technological advances. Motion sensors, for
example, allow artists to experiment with
previously unseen types of art in terms of the
formation of artistic images. But the status of the
artist is doubled by the status of technology.
The symbol of digital art is Net Art. Art borrows
from the Internet the factors of mobility, fluidity,
virtuality and has changed the internal character
of the work. The Internet is both a place of
production, but also a place of performance,
participation, experimentation, and
communication. A place with which galleries and
museums cannot compete.
The digital artwork is, among other things,
depending on the intentions and techniques it
involves, a “multiple choice work” a work in
constant creation, animated by algorithmic
programs. It can also be a “living” work, as in the
case of bio-art, combining art, science, and
biotechnology.
However, the creation of an artistic image using
digital code is a fragile work, dependent on the
technical environment, its quality, its
programming, its maintenance, and storage. The
next few centuries will show whether digital art
will be as sustainable as classical art.
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