In or Out, Part 1
Pause for a moment, and contemplate how dramatically digital tools have changed the creation of art.
Once upon a time, there was one piece of art out of each piece of raw material. You started with something blank–a block of clay, a sheet of paper–and then you added or removed or altered it to create something new out of it: The work of art.
If you wanted to create another work of art, you had to either start completely over with another blank sheet, or you took the piece you had already created and continued to change it. That piece of art you started from, the infinite pieces of art created throughout the process, no longer existed in the physical system of creation.
With digital art, every step I choose to save exists as its own piece. So the photograph above can exist as a work of art, while my continued experiments with the same image exist as their own pieces, too.
In or Out, Part 2
It is up to me as the digital artist to choose, from that infinite possibility, where to stop. What to share.
Is that freedom? Or does it lead to overwhelm?
I see it as freedom. Freedom to experiment. Freedom to develop a new type of creative process, which moves forward, backward, and branches in different directions. Freedom to continue any conversation I might be interested in, to follow where it leads, with the possibility to go back and understand how it developed.
I love the destination of art, the finished piece.
I love the journey of art, the creative process.
And with digital, I love the ability of investigating and understanding the whole of it, the journey and any number of destinations.
