SUMMARY IN ARTS 10

Quarter II: TECHNOLOGY-BASED ART

Technology-based art is essentially computer-generated and/or manipulated. Today’s computer

artists employ the ever-expanding powers of image manipulation programs and applications to create
their works which can appear in an entire range of media—whether as a physical output or a virtual
experience.

Computer/Digital Arts first came on the scene in the early 1960s, due to the technology that was
constantly developing. Thus, the early experimenters were engineers and scientists who had access to
and experience with the hardware needed. It was they who began to recognize the potential of artistic
expression through the application of scientific and mathematical principles.

Example of Computer/Digital Arts

 Frieder Nake (Polygon Drawings, 1965)
 Georg Nees Schrotter (“ Gravel” 1965)
 Vera Molnar (Des) Ordres, “ Plotter Drawing1974”
 Ronald Davis (Mountain and Staurolyte, 1997)

The Philippine Scene

In our country, Filipino artists were likewise influenced by the technology trend in art. However, this
was more in the commercial sphere. From the 1960s to the 1990s, their computer-generated works
were primarily geared towards illustrating for international comic books. In fact, Filipino illustrators
earned quite a reputation for their talents and were highly in demand in this field. They eventually
became equally sought after as animators for some of the major film production companies in the
United States, as well as animated television series produced in different countries.

To view works by Philippine artists employing digital art techniques, you may visit the websites of the
more progressive museums and art organizations. Among these are:
 The Center for Art and Thought – http://www.centerforartandthought.org/
 Deviant Art – http://www.deviantart.com/browse/all/digitalart/
 The Ateneo Art Gallery – http://www.ateneoartgallery.org/
 Yuchengco Museum – http://yuchengcomuseum.org/

Cityscape
Antonio Gorordo, c 2010-2012

Institutions offering training courses on the digital arts

 First Academy of Computer Arts, the Philippine Center for Creative Imaging (PCCI),
 Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA)
 Animation Council of the Philippines (ACPI).
Courses such as these open up an array of career opportunities for young Filipinos in the fields of
advertising, animation design, multimedia communication, and web development.

“Computer/digital arts make use of electronic and mechanical devices, rather than the artist’s own
hand, to produce the desired images and effects. Thus, these are definitely technology-based art
forms. In recent decades, personal gadgets such as laptops, tablets, and android phones have
incorporated the artistic capabilities of the large-scale computers. So it is now possible for anyone to
be a digital artist.”

Mobile Phone Art / Computer-generated Images

The mobile phone that you constantly hold has evolved from a mere communication tool, into a
creative device that allows you to generate original works of art for an entire range of purposes.
These could be personal photographs and videos that you can manipulate with a myriad special
effects, both visual as well as sound and music. They could also be school projects or reports that
require you to combine images, incorporate text, even include simple animation. And the wonder of it
all is that you can do all these right on your own mobile devices, particularly the new-generation
models known as android tablets, phones, and combination of both called “phablets.” The tasks that

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traditional photo editors used to perform manually—cropping, retouching, airbrushing—are now just
a few of the many editing effects done for you with split-second ease at the click of a mouse, a
keyboard command, or a few taps and drags of your finger on a touch screen.

Image manipulation programs and applications that run on today’s android devices:

 Pixlr – a powerful, free online image editor

 Pic Collage – allows you to make collages incorporating photos, stickers, text,
and frames
 Photo Grid – a downloadable application for android phones that allows you
to make collages out of images from your photo gallery
 Doodle Booth – an iPad application (with a free downloadable version) that
enables you to ‘doodle’ on your images using available stickers
 Photo Booth – an application for taking photos and videos using an iPad or
iPad mini (a version for the iPhone, called SimpleBooth, is also available)
 Magic Mirror Booth – an iPhone application that allows you to take
amusing, distorted images, simulating camera effects
 Pic Monkey – a free online photo editing tool that provides filters, frames,
text, and effects to manipulate your images
 Flipagram – a downloadable application that allows you to ‘bring your
photos to life’ in short videos set to music of your choice
 Picsart – a free photo editor and drawing application, as well as a social
network for you to share your art with others
 Snapseed – a photo application that enables you to enhance, transform, and
share your photos; a free downloadable version for android phones is
available
 Instagram – a fast and fun way to share images with others; snap a photo, choose from among
the available filters, and share via Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and more Many more such
programs and applications are constantly being developed with even more new, exciting, and
fun features and capabilities.

Each of these has an extensive array of special features you can use to modify your images. Among
these are: frames, borders, and banners; filters, cropping in different shapes, automatic collage or
color change, stickers, text bubbles; effects such as warp, skew, tunnel, fish eye, and negative; adding
“spot color” to only certain elements of an image; creating a photo montage with music. Some
programs even make it possible to have any photo simulate a work of art in a whole range of media—
from oil to watercolor to pen and ink to charcoal to oil pastels to a Warhol poster to a Japanese
woodblock print.

Computer Generated Images

These are designed to run on desktop computers and laptops, so you would need to have access
to these larger and more complex devices. These enable you to perform virtually all of the tasks that a
program like Illustrator performs but, almost literally, in the palm of your hand.
Among such programs are:
 Gimp (GNU Image Manipulation Program)
 Paint.net
 Inkscape
 Extreme
 Artweaver
 Draw Plus
 Pencil
 Picasa
 Paint Star
 Smooth Draw
 Spray
 Karbon

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  Adobe Photoshop Express
 Corel PaintShop Pro X5

Video Games
 A major form of entertainment that today’s younger generation enjoys which comes
courtesy of computer devices.
 These range from educational games and mind twisters, to building and construction
games, to ones that entail physical interaction by the users (sports, fitness, dance). Then
there are the tremendously popular games of strategy, war, science fiction, and mythical
worlds that employ amazingly complex and realistic graphics, motion, sound, and other
special effects.
Similar to image creation and manipulation, it is now possible for video game fans to become
video game creators themselves. Online tutorials and guides are available on sites like e-how,
Instructables, and You Tube. Plus there are available programs that can be downloaded and used
immediately, with no need for prior knowledge on coding or web development.
Examples of such programs are:
 Twine - http://twinery.org/
 Stencyl - https://www.udemy.com/create-your-first-computer-game-withstencyl/
 GameMaker - https://www.yoyogames.com/learn

Digital painting is a method of creating an artwork using a computer. Digital painting still makes use
of traditional painting mediums such as acrylic paint, oils, ink, and watercolor and also applies the
pigment to traditional surfaces, such as canvas, paper, polyester etc. But it does so by employing
computer software that drives a type of robot device (such as a plotter) or an office machine (such as
printer) that takes the place of the artist’s hand.

Digital painting also refers to a technique using a graphics software program to create
an artwork that is totally virtual. The canvas, brushes, paints, and other tools are all virtual, existing
only within the computer. And the finished work is also stored in virtual format, to be shared through
cyber space. Ctrl+Paint is an example of an online resource for teaching yourself digital painting for
free, via simple videos and mini tutorials.

Video Technology / Imaging Videos

Social media purposes - Another tremendously powerful and innovative field that digital technology
has revolutionized is that of creating and presenting videos. The explosion of social media in recent
decades has provided a new platform for video materials targeting the “netizens” of today. Not only
are there online advertisements that continuously bombard the users’ computer screens and mobile
phone displays. But there are also millions of personally produced videos that are constantly
uploaded to online platforms like You Tube—from music, dance, and stage performances to tutorials
of all kinds to recipes to documentaries to news clips to marriage proposals.
“Again, the digital technology to capture and edit such videos is contained right in your tablets and
android phones. The raw video clips can be enhanced and modified with a myriad of effects
depending on the particular video application you have installed in your device.”

Medical/scientific purposes – Another extremely valuable use of today’s video technology is that of
imaging videos in the fields of medicine and science. You may be familiar with Magnetic Resonance
Imaging (MRI), Computerized Tomography (CT scans), and the like which are used to create and
record visual images of a patient’s internal anatomy in order to diagnose and treat diseases and
injuries. There are also ultrasound tests or sonograms, which translate sound waves bouncing off
physical objects into images that can be studied—whether a baby developing in the womb (in 2D, 3D,
and 4D options), growths or malformations inside the body, structural flaws in buildings, as well as
objects in outer space, underground, and deep in the ocean.