Modern computing technology, graphics art software, and innovative web collaborations have all spurred interest in the phenomenon known as digital art. Through conventional programs, such as Adobe Photoshop, as well as digital painting software, like Still Life, artists can bring fantastical creations to life on the computer screen. With technologies, software, and methods evolving practically every day, digital artists can experiment with a literally boundless canvas. One of the earliest exponents of digital art as a legitimate fine art was the movie director, George Lucas. After the box office success of his space opera, "Star Wars," Lucas founded a special effects company, known as Industrial Light and Magic. ILM went on to revolutionize the film industry by introducing new sound, lighting, and effects technologies and making these technologies affordable to everyday filmmakers. Lucas recently put his digital art technologies to the test in his follow-up trilogy to the original "Star Wars" triumvirate. While these movies didn't garner critical adulation, they further pushed the envelope in terms of digital art technology. Yet computer artists don't just seek broad bandwidth, bigger processors, and more ornate graphical capacities. Many modern digital artists play with sophisticated mathematical algorithms, used to create patterns like fractals (e.g. the Mandelbrot Set). Others, inspired by the odd equations of String Theory (which postulates the existence of 11 dimensions at the sub microscopic scale), have employed digital art to create representations of physically impossible structures. |
