bryan gibson
Absent Friend
Art and artwork has evolved over centuries, yet in mere decades a new medium has revoloutionized the art industry, the art field, even the basic fundementals of art production: the advances of the computer and CGI.
These advances have created a totally new medium, that of digital art (CGI, digital imaging, and whatnot) and even now the ramifications and posssibilties are just being explored.
Example : even with todays tech an artist can, using a graphics pad ( like a WACOM, a digital pencil and pad combo) create digitally ( virtually) an image in 3D, download it into a file for tweaking, correction and full 3d examination, take this final product to a manufacturer and download it into a computerized fabricator and the fabricator creates the sculpture. The only ACTUAL fabrication, or physical artwork is the now fabricated sculpture. No pencil, no paper, no clay...
If this sounds extreme, far from it. Its a proved technology currently in use.
Yet the ramifications are also being made felt: CGI allows almost infinite possibilities.Pencil, pen ink and painted effects are possible, to the point of (in a digital image or printout) being indistinguishable, Indeed, the methods are so pervasive that inability to work in the digital medium practically gurantees inability to work in the field.*
3D modelling provides flawless photorealistic images, indistiguishable to the eye from an "actual" photo - digital imaging being such that lensed film cameras are rapidly being obseleted among working photographers.
The impact of digital imaging is only just now being felt - laugh or sneer all you want, but virtual game worlds are proving immensly popular, a billions per year industry, and growing. Interactive entertainment is expanding exponentially and how far away are the holosuites from the Star Trek series?
CGI impact is nowhere more apparent than in the entertainment industry, but even in the low forms of graphics design and packaging, it is seen and felt. That label may well have never seen more than a napkin in sketch form, and its a safe bet it was all designed and executed digitally.
But there is also a price: already, as more young ( and quite capable and talented) artists are coming out of colleges and schools, more and more they are turning out fewer that work in traditional mediums. Not incapable artists, but incapable in real or non virtual art.
This is nowhere better exemplified that in the printing industry. As little as twenty five years ago (think the LBB days) the most common method of printing involved layout, typsetting and pasteup...not the process, but actual physical techniques, requireing hands on paste up artists, typesetters and lithogrophers. Art was to be "camera ready', so that it might be photographed and burnt to a plate for printing.
Now of course, this is almost entirely done digitally, and few and far indeed are the people that can actually use these now obselete skills- its all done by computer, digitally- faster, cheaper, and in almost all cases, better.
Digital print media allows for color seperations that even a decade ago were only beginning to be imagined, and as recently as the 80's were a pipedream. No more blatant example of this is the humble comic book: the colors and quality that are now de riguer and in this generation taken for granted were physically impossible only a generation ago.
Neal Stephenson coined a phrase for this: "hard art", as opposed to digital "soft art"**.He drew the distinction as follows:Hard art is in essence the hard copy -a physical painting, sculture or pottery,or a carving done by hand. In contrast, soft art is anything digitally created without a true physical form. He maintains that as hard art becomes rarer it will reachieve a cachet, as the artist, making a mistake, must live with the consequences whereas the soft artist ( and of course, as any CGI artist knows, this is the CGIs greatest advantage, in that it is infinately adjustable and flexible)need not.
The focus isn't a discussion of which is better (its really just a matter of medium, just as watercolor or clay is a medium) but rather culturally what impact might it have, and to that end, where would it go in a Traveller universe? How would art be regarded? would a holoartist have the same standing as the craftsman of woodsculpting? Would there be a desire for true hard paintings, or would printouts of digital art be hanging in museums?
In basic form, the question is this? where will art be in the far future?
* As evidenced by the statistics provided by Mary-Margarat Services, a recruiting and employing agent for artists in the computer gaming industry as well as representaion, indicating a 50% drop in five years of demand for "traditional" artists, and even those remainiong jobs require digital competance as a standard of entry level employment. Also supported by discussion with members of ASFA as well as industry insiders in the more mundane commercial and graphics arts field , both with Alexis Int. ( an advertising company) as well as art directors in most printiong and publishing houses.
** refered to by Stephenson in his book The Diamond Age as well as sporadically throughout his novel Cryptonomicron
These advances have created a totally new medium, that of digital art (CGI, digital imaging, and whatnot) and even now the ramifications and posssibilties are just being explored.
Example : even with todays tech an artist can, using a graphics pad ( like a WACOM, a digital pencil and pad combo) create digitally ( virtually) an image in 3D, download it into a file for tweaking, correction and full 3d examination, take this final product to a manufacturer and download it into a computerized fabricator and the fabricator creates the sculpture. The only ACTUAL fabrication, or physical artwork is the now fabricated sculpture. No pencil, no paper, no clay...
If this sounds extreme, far from it. Its a proved technology currently in use.
Yet the ramifications are also being made felt: CGI allows almost infinite possibilities.Pencil, pen ink and painted effects are possible, to the point of (in a digital image or printout) being indistinguishable, Indeed, the methods are so pervasive that inability to work in the digital medium practically gurantees inability to work in the field.*
3D modelling provides flawless photorealistic images, indistiguishable to the eye from an "actual" photo - digital imaging being such that lensed film cameras are rapidly being obseleted among working photographers.
The impact of digital imaging is only just now being felt - laugh or sneer all you want, but virtual game worlds are proving immensly popular, a billions per year industry, and growing. Interactive entertainment is expanding exponentially and how far away are the holosuites from the Star Trek series?
CGI impact is nowhere more apparent than in the entertainment industry, but even in the low forms of graphics design and packaging, it is seen and felt. That label may well have never seen more than a napkin in sketch form, and its a safe bet it was all designed and executed digitally.
But there is also a price: already, as more young ( and quite capable and talented) artists are coming out of colleges and schools, more and more they are turning out fewer that work in traditional mediums. Not incapable artists, but incapable in real or non virtual art.
This is nowhere better exemplified that in the printing industry. As little as twenty five years ago (think the LBB days) the most common method of printing involved layout, typsetting and pasteup...not the process, but actual physical techniques, requireing hands on paste up artists, typesetters and lithogrophers. Art was to be "camera ready', so that it might be photographed and burnt to a plate for printing.
Now of course, this is almost entirely done digitally, and few and far indeed are the people that can actually use these now obselete skills- its all done by computer, digitally- faster, cheaper, and in almost all cases, better.
Digital print media allows for color seperations that even a decade ago were only beginning to be imagined, and as recently as the 80's were a pipedream. No more blatant example of this is the humble comic book: the colors and quality that are now de riguer and in this generation taken for granted were physically impossible only a generation ago.
Neal Stephenson coined a phrase for this: "hard art", as opposed to digital "soft art"**.He drew the distinction as follows:Hard art is in essence the hard copy -a physical painting, sculture or pottery,or a carving done by hand. In contrast, soft art is anything digitally created without a true physical form. He maintains that as hard art becomes rarer it will reachieve a cachet, as the artist, making a mistake, must live with the consequences whereas the soft artist ( and of course, as any CGI artist knows, this is the CGIs greatest advantage, in that it is infinately adjustable and flexible)need not.
The focus isn't a discussion of which is better (its really just a matter of medium, just as watercolor or clay is a medium) but rather culturally what impact might it have, and to that end, where would it go in a Traveller universe? How would art be regarded? would a holoartist have the same standing as the craftsman of woodsculpting? Would there be a desire for true hard paintings, or would printouts of digital art be hanging in museums?
In basic form, the question is this? where will art be in the far future?
* As evidenced by the statistics provided by Mary-Margarat Services, a recruiting and employing agent for artists in the computer gaming industry as well as representaion, indicating a 50% drop in five years of demand for "traditional" artists, and even those remainiong jobs require digital competance as a standard of entry level employment. Also supported by discussion with members of ASFA as well as industry insiders in the more mundane commercial and graphics arts field , both with Alexis Int. ( an advertising company) as well as art directors in most printiong and publishing houses.
** refered to by Stephenson in his book The Diamond Age as well as sporadically throughout his novel Cryptonomicron
