---

Digital art, a divide

The "digital art" expression bears in itself a tension between two term, deeply opposite.

Art

See. Our conceptual model of specialities (frome geometer to judge), and our Roxame development model

Art refers to the human nature at its core. With its features of:
- transcendence and calling for an infinite respect.
- immutability; there can be properly no progress in human nature, but only on societi'es organizations; and even there, the Ocidental democracies seem to be an absolute limite, ot at least very near to such a limit, the distance could be reduced only like an asymptotic trend; it is the summit of life, above vegetals and animals;
- equality; it is a must to consider all human beings are equal, in "law" and as far as possibl in practice.
- a present gist of post-modernist philosophy.
- an impossibility of measurement and judgment (Kant. by analogy, "A gay person who is seeking God, who is of good will -- well, who am I to judge him? ".

In spite of its heralded immutability and equality, this model is challenged today by:
- growing inequalities between super-rich and very poor,
- an "irrational" evolution of demographics (11 billions foreseen in 2100)
- a philosophical divide between resurgent pre-modern ideologies (religious fundamentalisms) and post-modern ideologies (selfisness, Japanese otaku, gender theory...).

Art tends to be post-modernist.

Digital

Digital refer to a process considered mainly as machinic. With its features of:
- immanent, destructible at will by human beings, and their servant
- in regular progress from start and in the future; with
. a first emerence with life (4 billion years ago),
. and then the process on human emergence, coincident with tools (homo faber, Gn.3),
. a long predigital phase, with fragmentation/composition processes digging constantly deeper, up to
. the really digital objects appearing as a convergence with Von Neumann (and several others), and nearly at the same time the discovery of the digital nature of life (DNA);
. the exponential explosion of the digital machines(Moore's law, notably);
. still at its beginning, but taking force, the convergence of the two forms of digital beings, machines and life, cyborgs etc. The digital beings are no longer mere tools, but partners.
. the possibility (not certain) of a radical surpassing of men (singularity) but, even without that, a regular growh of machine performance, reducing the competitity of human beings.
- the possibility of ranking and judgment: processing power, storage capacity, transmission speed, programming language levels, degree of interaction....

"Digital art" somehow translates the classical definition of human as "rational animal", with a tension, probably since the apparition of man, of progressists (pushing reason and tools) against traditionalists (pushing animality and nature in general). This tension is more and more heavy, with the unemployment problems (with singularity on the skyline), made even more difficult

"Digital" is whatever pushes its fragmentation/organization processes to its logical limit, the bit. It has been a long quest, with important steps with Descartes, Saussure, the Impressionists, Cubists, mathematiciens, Shannon, with an apex around John Neumann (with the creation of the "bit" term en 1947) and after him with a generalization and an acceleration still exponential in the 2010's.

Everything, every art becomes digital today. But digital art properly implies that the computer is not taken only as a tool, but something more : a "second self", a partner, even something as a child. Artists are properly digital if they are able to drill down to the bit, in general through programming, for some of them including material components and the solder iron. It's a specific form of talent, and taste (if not of addiction). A particularly deep form of digital art is the generative one.

Digital art is of crucial importance today, with the exponential rise of machines and robots, and the threat of the "singularity".

In this environment, digital artists marry the liberty and creativity of art with an understanding in depth of the powerful digital tide. Around them, galleries, mediators, researchers and critics bring a necessary, and no less specific, contribution, to reach the public and private markets and to bring out the conceptual substrates.

Digital is naturally modernist. The present era and the digital in particular are a phase in an all-encompassing story. That gives light notably to art critic, since any work, any artist, can be seen and evaluated in respect of this general history. Some are forerunners, some lag in the repetition of accepted schemes (Alexandrianism, says Greenberg), and some are writing History.

To make it simple, digital art was borne with the computer, at the end of the 1940's. But the computer concretizes the convergence of three evolutions : fragmentation/assembly, - dematerialization, autonomy (with complexity).

Digital goes with several features, which were converging, but distinct up to Von Neuman.

Fragmentation/assembly

Something is digital if (and as far as) it has been born out of fragmentation/assembly process ; it is properly digital if the fragmentation has been drilled down to bits. Up to the computers, this fragmentation was not so radical : some cuttings, some systems of oppositions or decomposition into (spare) parts.

Historically, fragmentation/assembly bears on art through:
- language, which is a system of oppositions, according to Saussure,
- materials, obtained by fragmentation of natural bodies, in such manner that they can more easily used, or afford larger or more complex works,
- social space and time (metrics, clocks, but also decision processes).

Dematerialization

Dematerialization is the reduction of matter, time and energy to operate a given function. It goes along with fragmentation/assembly.

A beautiful example (not properly artistic, but not so far from it) is the silicon cutting, from the basic pebbles to the mini-chips of silicon crimped into the wood frame of the neolithic sickle. In more recent times, mechanics, electricity and electronics play the major role in dematerialization. But, reciprocally, digitization helps dematerialization, as has been seen from Von Neumann.

Complexity, autonomy, motriciy

Made of many parts, natural then artificial beings grow in complexity. Dematerialization lets them do it within sustainable weigh and energy dissipation limits.

Complexity is a tricky concept. We have tried to make a survey in our tentative ontology of the digital. It goes along with autonomy, most generally going along with digitization and the integration of motors. In the digital world, the fundamental motor is the clock, which at regular time intervals, changes from one state (0 or 1, typically, or on/off) to the alternate one. Autonomy is made easier by dematerialization : a paleolithic hunter could extend its domain if he used silicon as points of his arrows and no longer as an improved hammer.

Digital art

In this history, our reader will perhaps feel some scattering if not incoherence between the reported facts. That is not surprising : we can see digital art as a big tree: history starts from many roots, all around, scattered around the trunk. Viewed from decades if not millenia later, a lot of facts may be seen as roots of a future convergenge, and so express a coherence which was fully ignored on that time. For instance, around 1500, technologies are nearly at the same level in China and in Europe. But neither the Chinese nor the Europeans know it. It's only progresively than the small roots form larger ones : theories, technologies and arti practices converge, but you cannot see that when you are at their first start. Then, after the convergence on the central concept, the bit, the tree expands into large branches then smaller and smaller.

Historically, artists, in each period are afforded new kinds of works by new motors : animals for performance, mills and clocks, then steam and electricity for motors, then electronics to carry the motion into the mere logical and informational components.

The growth, in number of digital artists, is exponential, as shows the curve, drawn from diccan.com. But the computers emergence marked a major step. Today, creations based on artificial life give the most advanced demonstrations, with the building of virtual worlds, true artificial beings, more or less autonomous. And, yet begun todayn the convergence between artificial life research and biology proper [Johnston, 2006].

Some first references

< Berger P. and Lioret A. : L'art génératif. L'Harmattan 2012.
< Greenberg Clement : Art and Culture. Beacon Press, 1961
< Greenberg Clement : Essays. Edited by John Adams, 4 volumes. University of Chicago Press. 1988-1995>
< Shanken E.A. ! Historicizing art and technology : forging a method and firing a canon. 28 pages dans [Grau]