Digital Art Museum

Mike King
London Guildhall University
41 Commercial Road
London E1 1LA UK
+44 20 7320 1833
www.dam.org

ABSTRACT
Digital Art Museum aims to become the world’s leading online resource for the history and practice of digital fine art. It already houses over a dozen of the world’s leading practitioners, including Manfred Mohr, Roman Verostko, Jean-Pierre Hebért, Joan Truckenbrod, Yoshiyuki Abe, Laurence Gartel, Mark Wilson, James Faure-Walker and A.Michael Noll.

Keywords
Digital fine art, computer art, algorithmic art, digital art pioneers, online resource.

INTRODUCTION
Digital Art Museum [DAM] is the result of collaboration between two galleries specializing in digital art and London Guildhall University. The galleries, one in London England and the other in Wiesdbaden Germany, are in contact with the digital artists in a commercial capacity and understand on a day-to-day basis how these artists survive within an often misunderstood medium. The University provides the scholarly background through its contacts with art and media theoreticians, the electronic arts organizations and conferences such as SIGGRAPH, ISEA, CADE, and of course Creativity and Cognition. The aim of Digital Art Museum is to make available the near 50-year heritage of the discipline for the benefit of artists, theoreticians, the art-going public and educational institutions. [DAM] carries this out through the development of the online resource and the promotion of exhibitions of digital artworks. It has received funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Board of the United Kingdom in order to focus on the early history of the discipline. 

The online resource exhibits the work of leading artists in this field since 1956, supported by a wide range of background information including biographies, articles, interviews and a bibliography. [DAM] also includes an Essays section with articles by artists and theorists specially selected to place the works in context (many of them by special arrangement with Leonardo journal). A History section lists key events and technologies in date order. [DAM] is intended for the enjoyment of all visitors, curators and collectors, scholars of art, and for an emerging generation of digital artists wishing to understand a 50-year heritage of innovation and experimentation. The period 1956 – 2006 is divided into three sections, which roughly correspond to major changes in the way that the computer impacted on visual art practice. These phases are only a guide: artists in Phase I for example pioneer some of the technologies that became widespread in Phase II, and techniques that define the discipline in Phase I are still in use right through Phase III.

Phase 1: 1956 - 1986 The Pioneers 
This includes the pioneers of digital art, some of who were not primarily artists, but whose visual explorations were crucial to the emerging medium. The writing of computer programs was central to most of the work during this period.

Phase 2: 1986 - 1996 The Paintbox Era 
In this period art software became available (slowly at first), attracting artists who could create works without programming. The principle software to emerge during this period was the paint programme, underpinned by affordable computers and devices such as the scanner and film recorder.

Phase 3: 1996 - 2006 The Multimedia Era
With the growing availability of technologies of interactivity and Internet access, we see both a democratisation of the medium and new interactive and online artforms.

THE EXHIBITION
The exhibition for Creativity and Cognition 4 focuses on artists from Phase I whose work is algorithmic. Although the developing digital artists of today rarely learn the computer languages used in the creation of these works, they have access to a greatly enhanced programming environment through scripting languages like Lingo. An appreciation of the digital art Pioneers provides a sourcebook of visual experimentation that deserves to be pursued into the 21st century. Scripting facilities within the major 2D, 3D, animation and interactivity software packages of today are easily available and allow the exploration of algorithmic ideas in a richer and wider set of visual media than the plotter of the early artists.