Art and technology have always influenced each other as artists respond to the evolving tools that are available to them. The only thing that has changed since the dawn of the information age is the rate at which technology is advancing. The side effect of this is that we start to see projects that have arguably been constructed purely because the possibility of their creation exists. As we transitioned into the digital era, the philosopher Marshall McLuhan famously said “the medium is the message,” which feels like a limiting assertion when more and more of today’s art is driven or inspired by the digital technology that defines it’s medium, rather than an idea outside of its own medium. As technology progresses exponentially, allowing ‘the medium to be the message’ is akin to allowing a representational painting to entirely describe ones understanding of the physical world around them. While a representational painting can provide an abstracted visual interpretation of the physical world, artists of the Neo-Concrete, Op-Art, and Space and Light Art movements (among others) have shown us that art is capable of providing more possibilities. Art is capable of providing us with insight into our actual perception of the world around us, rather than just an abstracted representation of it.

Digital Art seems to be at greater risk of becoming a pure demonstration of it’s own medium, as tools and processes become available faster than messages beyond ‘look at these new possibilities’ can be conceived by those with the means to execute them.

Exploring Perception

In the 1970’s, artists such as Robert Irwin began to look at art as a forum for truthfully engaging with our own sense of perception of the world that surrounds us rather than attempting to represent it. Irwin describes this in his book Being and Circumstance as ‘nonobjective art.’ The first key point of Irwin’s theories on nonobjective art is the core idea of change, the most basic rule of our universe, which is responsible for any sort of perception at all. Irwin proposes the irony of calling works of modern, postmodern, or conceptual artists ‘abstract’ when more classical representational art is an abstraction at its very core (the rendering of a human form through any medium is not ‘truth’ despite how accurately it has been rendered, it is still an abstracted representation of reality), while a nonobjective process aims to explore our actual perception of existence. As Irwin explains “The principle contribution of nonobjective art comes in replacing the abstracted figure with the presence of the specific individual observer acting directly in determining all matters of quality in art (and in life?).”

The French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty, spoke extensively of art having the potential to be a lens through which one’s perception of the world could be explored, simply because it forces one to actively reflect on his or her senses (which are strategically hiding their presence from us, according to Merleau-Ponty), and how those senses are constructing the world which is being perceived. Merleau-Ponty describes this quite eloquently in The World of Perception:

“Reflection does not withdraw from the world towards the unity of consciousness as the world’s basis; it steps back to watch the forms of transcendence fly up like sparks from a fire; it slackens the intentional threads which attach us to the world and thus brings them to our notice; it alone is consciousness of the world because it reveals that world as strange and paradoxical.”

Some strong examples of Irwin’s concept of nonobjective art in conjunction with Merleau-Ponty’s idea of art as a means for perceiving the world can be seen in the works of Carlos Cruz-Diez, and other artists from the Kinetic Art and Op-Art movements, as well as in the work of Space and Light artists such as James Turrell. Cruz-Diez’s compositions engage the viewer in his or her perception of color and value as forms and hues stay in a state of flux in response to the viewer’s orientation relative to the work, allowing the piece to actually exist between the composition itself, and the viewer who is experiencing it.

Cruz Diez - Physichromie No 21, 1960

Turrell’s Skyspaces provide viewers with the opportunity to explore a shift in perception between the tactile and void, the thing and the nonthing, the positive and the negative as a window through which to view the sky reveals day shifting into night within the context of a precisely lit room.

James Turrell - Skyspace

Exploring this idea of perception is crucial when attempting to evaluate art that has been created through any sort of digital medium, especially when adopting Merleau-Ponty’s perspective of art as a process for understanding and reacting to the world around us.

Arguing that all forms of art need to accomplish this process of allowing one to detach oneself from their senses in order for them to be able to actively explore their perception of existence and reality, would be misguided. However, when looking at the practice of art in the sense of its own evolution, one must acknowledge the significance of art gaining new potential throughout its various eras and isms, regardless of the changes in medium. While representational work is by no means obsolete, the potential for digital works to exploit the (subjectively) profound potential of nonobjective art, or function to the full capacity outlined by Merleau-Ponty is valuable opportunity.

Exploring Perception In The Context Of Digital Art

The work of digital artist Zach Lieberman begins to embody some of the aspects of nonobjective art, as described by Irwin, and fits into the ideas of perceptual awareness and understanding, or acknowledging, cross sensory relationships as a means for comprehending the world around us.  One of Lieberman’s pieces, Drawn, fits into the construct of Irwin’s nonobjective manifesto almost perfectly, until one questions the notion of context.

Drawn consists of a pad of paper stationed beneath a video camera, passing a video feed through custom software and projecting it onto a screen. After a user draws on the pad of paper with an ink brush, he or she can then manipulate the illustration with hand motions as the illustration takes life in real time on a projection above. The movements of the illustrations are accompanied by generative sounds that algorithmically respond to the (metaphorically) implied physical attributes that would accompany that illustration’s appearance and movements if it were to take life in a truly physical form.

Zach Lieberman - Drawn

Like Irwin’s definition of nonobjective art, the core mechanic of Drawn is non-representational, when looking at the piece as the entire process of bringing one’s illustrations to life through motion and sound in real time. Regardless of what a user chooses to draw, the experience that is unique to this interaction is purely perceptual. Also in line with Irwin’s ideas are the concepts of ‘change’ as these strokes of an ink brush evolve from representational, to seemingly tactile, to auditory; and the user dictates the entire process, with no two experiences ever being the same. What becomes difficult is when we ask if this process is really enabling the exploration of one’s perception of actual existence or ‘reality.’ This question could be applied to many manifestations of “digital art.”

While Drawn does allow one to explore a spontaneous and original relationship between the visual, the tactile, and the auditory in a temporal manner, are we really exploring those relationships in the context of actual existence? Here is where the fact that the project exists within a digital medium makes things difficult. One could argue that we are only exploring these relationships within the context of a constructed artificial reality.

Users of Drawn are able to experience a perceptual shift within the context of the world Zach Lieberman has created, a world of ones and zeros, where small illustrations can instantly animate to life and make noises. While there could potentially be a profound moment where a user gets “lost” in the experience of seeing their illustrations come to life, this perceptual shift can only happen while one is accepting (if only temporarily) the process that is taking place on the screen as reality. Regardless, the user knows (even if they don’t know how) that the illustrations are being manipulated on the screen by a computer program, and not actually assuming any sort of physical manifestation, but rather only providing the illusion of such.

In contrast, the previously mentioned works of Turrell and Cruz-Diez allow a viewer to explore these shifts in perception through multi-sensory awareness in the context of the physical world, rather than in a world that has been constructed by the artist (such as the perception of existence that Lieberman has created for his viewers). The shift of perceiving space between the tactile and void, the natural and the artificial, which is the essence of Turrell’s Skyspaces all happens in the physical world. The shift between positive and negative values, and the shift in ones perception of color relative to ones physical relationship to the composition, which is present in Cruz-Diez’s paintings and installations, again all happen in the physical world.

In this sense, the experience of Drawn in relation to our understanding of our perception is grounded within the digital, which of course is it’s own medium. So is this any different than a representational painting? A painting of a chair provides an abstracted representation of the physical attributes of a chair. Drawn provides an abstracted representation of the physical laws of the world that Zach Lieberman has created. The only difference is that we have seen a chair before, so it is not exciting. What justifies this complex new concept that requires months of innovation and thousands of lines of C++? Is it the novelty of it, in that it is something that we have not seen before? It would be difficult to argue something as ‘art’ simply because it is demonstrating the potential of new technologies. Going back to our earlier qualm with Marshall McLuhan’s idea that “the medium is the message,” one could argue that in order for something to be considered art, in both a nonobjective sense, and from the perspective of Merleau-Ponty, it’s message, or goal, needs to transcend it’s medium.

We need to acknowledge that Drawn was not necessarily intended to be nonobjective, or even purely perceptual, so we cannot hold that against the project, whether the intention was entertainment, or education, or anything else. For this analysis, Drawn simply serves as a comprehensive example for asking the question ‘what is digital art?’

We also need to re-examine this idea of “real.” If the argument is that potentially lots of digital works are only providing viewers with a perceptual shift within the context of the digital world in which the pieces exist, we must ask, can the digital world be seen as a less significant realm within which one might hope to shift their perceptual understanding? When looking at ideas such as Singularity, the complexity of this question is compounded. For the sake of this argument, we should look at the difference between a perceptual shift in the ‘real’ world verses a perceptual shift in the digital world.

An argument against applying equal significance to both is that the laws, sensory ability, and our general sense of perception within the digital world is in a constant state of development and flux, often as defined by these projects that are exploring the possibilities of innovative digital technologies. This can clearly be seen in a project such as Drawn, where Lieberman mimics through code what a profound, if not magical shift in perception of the real world might look like (ink illustrations animating to life). In contrast, creating work with the potential of changing one’s perception of the physical world extends beyond just conceiving “what if…” because a new set of physical rules cannot be constructed by the artist, if any rules even exist in the first place. Irwin points out in his writings that ‘we used to think that Euclidian geometry could describe our physical world, but we now know that Euclidian geometry can only describe the world of Euclidian geometry.’ Since the rules and paradigms of the digital world are constantly changing and being redefined by the humans that are creating and using them, our perception of that world is not really changing, but rather just constantly being created.

We are left with the challenge of finding digital works that actually do provide the potential to effect our perception of the real world.  The art installation Boundary Functions by interactive media artist Scott Snibbe arguably fulfills our criteria for a nonobjective piece created within a digital context. Boundary Functions consists of a dynamic set of lines that are projected onto the floor of a gallery space. As multiple spectators begin to occupy the room, a set of lines form at equidistance between all of the spectators within the gallery space, amplifying the participants’ concepts of personal space in relation to the people around them.

Scott Snibbe - Boundry Functions

Here we can see the perception of space being potentially changed for each participant as they engage with the piece.  In returning to Irwin’s definition of nonobjective art, Boundary Functions represents an experiential process based around the universal constant of change that is non representational, allows each user to engage with it directly, and constructs a paradigm through which one could develop their perception of the physical world, which in this case is the understanding that the concept of personal space only exists in relation to other people. Unlike Drawn, Boundary Functions provides an additional level of translation, bringing the capacity for a changed sense of perception back into the physical world.

As art and technology continue to evolve together, it will be interesting to see how artists of the twenty first century begin to mature and respond to rapidly expanding technological possibilities. Hopefully novelty and demonstration will cease to be fully encompassing criteria for fine art created with digital tools, and we can look forward to nonobjective and conceptual works that really start to exploit the potential and justify the use of the ever-growing set of new tools at our disposal.

If anyone actually reads this, I would be very interested to hear your thoughts on the subject.