Traditional ways of the Fine Arts may possibly never be abandoned by artists, since there have always been a select few who haven’t forgotten the legacy of the Ancients and the Old Masters, and who wish to continue in their footsteps, using their media, striving to achieve their expertise, while practising their creative freedom. This is certainly a virtuous approach, yet I do believe that with new and more advanced wings available, we must strive to soar higher and further, in order to truly live up to their legacy. As always, there will be those who remain conservative, and those who explore new ways. My intention is to provide some predictive and suggestive insight into what forms and what stages these new ways will take and go through.
The predictions which follow, will likely be events in art similar to the appearance of photography, acrylics, or the airbrush. While many will take up the new media, there will be some who don't, for various reasons.
Computerized creation is already a method of many digital artists today, and I suspect that their number will grow and take up a majority among all visual artists in the near future. Their growing number will demand easier and more efficient ways of creation. One such revolutionary way in existence, is having a sensitive computer screen as canvas, on it a digital palette, and a special physical paintbrush (stylus) which can pick up colors from the palette, and transfer them onto the digital canvas, while also being able to imitate the effects of traditional brushes. Provided with such a system, a painter may experience an increased level of creative freedom and resulting visual complexity. The painter may concentrate less on the technical and tedious parts of the painting procedure, such as the mixing of colors, the degree of paint application, and the drying of multiple layers, which take away time from the real creative process, and break its fluidity and continuity, thus somewhat hindering the painter. It not only spares the painter unnecessary steps, it also gives advantages that increase creative efficiency in many ways. The special methods and techniques which come with digital media, are not trickery, but rather more advanced and efficient wings for an artist to soar and express oneself with.
I believe that the current efforts in the field of 3D Volumetric Display, or holography, will give rise to an even more advanced digital method of the combination of painting and sculpting. Currently there are digital sculpting softwares, but none which are holographic. Only a handful of companies are involved in such projects, and their devices are mostly developed for scientific purposes, for the plotting of exact 3D functions. But as these devices are perfected, the engineers will hopefully go on to developing a device for artists as well, which can pick up an artist's directions in real time. I imagine such a device to be controlled by hand motions, by wearing special signal-emitting gloves, on which the artist’s fingers can pick up colors from an also holographic palette, to paint an improvised color 3D image in the air, not necessarily flat but in actual space. At first, such a device will likely be monochromatic. The device would locate the motion of the hands and pick up the several signals emitted, and would create an analogous 3D image in the air, displayed simultaneously with the process of creation, the artist's improvisation. As we will understand the human brain sufficiently, such expression of a person's imagination, will become directed purely by thoughts, by reading the mind electronically. From this point follows Salvador Dalí's vision of an ultimate future art form, that of humans being able to manipulate matter in real time via their thoughts - called Quantum Realism.
As for a potential unification of the Arts, it is easy to see how artistic movements of the body, as one sculpts a color holographic image in the air, will bring the Art of Dancing into the creative process, which in turn will demand the assistance of the Arts of Music and Singing. Singing has always gone hand-in-hand with the Art of Poetry. The Art of Acting will soon follow, as more people participate in a single unified creative process, taking self-expression to an all-new, currently unimaginable level, that will include the creators within their creations as performers. Thus the various forms of Art will be unified. The art of "opera" had the same unifying goals, of which the described method is a modernized version.
Robotics, or even future organisms engineered by humans, may well become a part of the artistic creative process, or they may even be programmed to create art themselves, but genuine advancements and recognitions in Art will likely always be made by humans, as we cannot instill in robots the special portion of the divine aesthetic sense of God, that it has endowed us humans with, for that is likely an eternal mystery.
Seeing such a fluid potential transition described above, into novel creative media of the future, I hope that today’s generation of artists will remain open to any new advancements, and will profit from these opportunities when they become available, thus allowing themselves to open doors to higher levels of creative freedom.
The predictions which follow, will likely be events in art similar to the appearance of photography, acrylics, or the airbrush. While many will take up the new media, there will be some who don't, for various reasons.
Computerized creation is already a method of many digital artists today, and I suspect that their number will grow and take up a majority among all visual artists in the near future. Their growing number will demand easier and more efficient ways of creation. One such revolutionary way in existence, is having a sensitive computer screen as canvas, on it a digital palette, and a special physical paintbrush (stylus) which can pick up colors from the palette, and transfer them onto the digital canvas, while also being able to imitate the effects of traditional brushes. Provided with such a system, a painter may experience an increased level of creative freedom and resulting visual complexity. The painter may concentrate less on the technical and tedious parts of the painting procedure, such as the mixing of colors, the degree of paint application, and the drying of multiple layers, which take away time from the real creative process, and break its fluidity and continuity, thus somewhat hindering the painter. It not only spares the painter unnecessary steps, it also gives advantages that increase creative efficiency in many ways. The special methods and techniques which come with digital media, are not trickery, but rather more advanced and efficient wings for an artist to soar and express oneself with.
I believe that the current efforts in the field of 3D Volumetric Display, or holography, will give rise to an even more advanced digital method of the combination of painting and sculpting. Currently there are digital sculpting softwares, but none which are holographic. Only a handful of companies are involved in such projects, and their devices are mostly developed for scientific purposes, for the plotting of exact 3D functions. But as these devices are perfected, the engineers will hopefully go on to developing a device for artists as well, which can pick up an artist's directions in real time. I imagine such a device to be controlled by hand motions, by wearing special signal-emitting gloves, on which the artist’s fingers can pick up colors from an also holographic palette, to paint an improvised color 3D image in the air, not necessarily flat but in actual space. At first, such a device will likely be monochromatic. The device would locate the motion of the hands and pick up the several signals emitted, and would create an analogous 3D image in the air, displayed simultaneously with the process of creation, the artist's improvisation. As we will understand the human brain sufficiently, such expression of a person's imagination, will become directed purely by thoughts, by reading the mind electronically. From this point follows Salvador Dalí's vision of an ultimate future art form, that of humans being able to manipulate matter in real time via their thoughts - called Quantum Realism.
As for a potential unification of the Arts, it is easy to see how artistic movements of the body, as one sculpts a color holographic image in the air, will bring the Art of Dancing into the creative process, which in turn will demand the assistance of the Arts of Music and Singing. Singing has always gone hand-in-hand with the Art of Poetry. The Art of Acting will soon follow, as more people participate in a single unified creative process, taking self-expression to an all-new, currently unimaginable level, that will include the creators within their creations as performers. Thus the various forms of Art will be unified. The art of "opera" had the same unifying goals, of which the described method is a modernized version.
Robotics, or even future organisms engineered by humans, may well become a part of the artistic creative process, or they may even be programmed to create art themselves, but genuine advancements and recognitions in Art will likely always be made by humans, as we cannot instill in robots the special portion of the divine aesthetic sense of God, that it has endowed us humans with, for that is likely an eternal mystery.
Seeing such a fluid potential transition described above, into novel creative media of the future, I hope that today’s generation of artists will remain open to any new advancements, and will profit from these opportunities when they become available, thus allowing themselves to open doors to higher levels of creative freedom.
The Future is Now
/added on Aug. 10, 2010/
The following videos well illustrate the above essay. The first and second videos were made earlier than my essay, while the rest are from later. I do not imply an influence of this essay, but possible.
