PrimeLuck ArtsDigital art
Digital art is art made with, or for, computers and digital tools. It ranges from early code-based drawings to interactive installations and work made with artificial intelligence.
- Period
- Postwar and contemporary art
- Approximate dates
- From the 1960s to today
- Place of origin
- Research labs and universities, United States and Europe
- Key regions
- Worldwide
- Art forms
- Computer graphics, animation, generative art, interactive and net art, virtual reality, AI-assisted work
- Major artists
- Vera Molnar, Harold Cohen, Refik Anadol, Beeple
Visual introduction
AARON drawings
Harold Cohen · From 1973 · Computer program and drawing
A long-running program that produced original drawings, an early example of art made by code.
Everydays: The First 5000 Days
Beeple (Mike Winkelmann) · 2021 · Digital collage, NFT
A collage of five thousand daily digital images that drew wide attention to digital collecting.
Unsupervised
Refik Anadol · 2022 · AI-generated moving image installation · Museum of Modern Art, New York (shown 2022 to 2023)
An artwork generated from a museum collection's images through machine learning.
Historical context
Artists began to use computers in the 1960s, often working in research labs. Vera Molnar and Harold Cohen explored rules and programs, and Cohen's program AARON made drawings from the 1970s.
Personal computers, the internet and smartphones put digital tools into many hands, and new forms appeared: net art, video games, generative art, virtual reality and online communities. Recent debates cover authorship, copyright, the use of AI, and how digital works are collected and preserved.
Visual characteristics
Process: code, rules, software, algorithms and data.
Presentation: screens, projection, interactive installations, prints and online spaces.
Qualities: it can be changeable, reproducible or responsive to the viewer, which challenges the idea of one original.
Related movements
Sources and further reading
Further reading: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. Tate, Art Terms. Smarthistory.