Panel Statement
Panel: The Big Bang of Electronic Art: Merging Abstraction and Representation in the Age of Digital Imaging
Visual computing has irrevocably blurred the lines between representation and abstraction. Just as photography with its innovative realism changed the nature of painting, so digital image capture and computational creative processes are changing the relationships between previous traditional art media and directly influence our frameworks for interpreting new media works. In my work, I begin by taking digital photographs, manipulate them on the computer, create traditional drawings based on these works, re-digitize the works, and then create geometric, computationally based compositions that could never have been drawn by hand but retain the hand-drawn marking of the original drawings. The works are often further developed by adding a time-based element to create computational video drawings. The final combinations of old and new media, representational elements and mathematically inspired abstraction, and still and time-based explorations take advantage of the new visual relationships and ways of thinking made possible by the computer.
- Anne Morgan Spalter is a graduate of Brown University and The Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), US, and created and taught the first fine art digital media courses at both schools. Her book, The Computer in the Visual Arts, has become a standard reference text. Spalter has lectured around the world and in 2010 was invited to speak at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, UK, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, and at her alma mater, RISD. Spalter’s traditional and digital work is included in leading contemporary collections in New York, Paris, Dubai, Geneva, Singapore, Boston and Providence, RI. Spalter is also a practicing martial artist and has a black belt in Kenpo Karate.
Full text (PDF) p. 2293-2295 [Title slightly different]