The Computer In The Visual Arts

by Anne Morgan Spalter

Anne is currently an Artist in Residence at Brown University

This is a topic in education that has defied publication by virtue of the mercury like changes that have scared off good book publishers which attempt to go beyond the simple manuals for program users. The “ this is how it works” books of which there are many, fail to offer an educational structure to the new aspects of visual arts. Anne Morgan Spalter’s work transcends this problem by anchoring all of these new changes to the historic foundations of the visual arts while at the same time pointing to new thresholds opened by the computer that have yet to be crossed. She has done this through a fast paced writing style with wonderful quotes, references to historic ideas that have existed long before the computer and a clear explanation of the fundamental concepts that digital information shares. I read The Computer in the Visual Arts in one sitting and found that it filled in many gaps in my understanding of the programs and systems that I had been pushing for years. Clear diagrams illustrate concise writing in ways that leave you saying “ ok, now I have got it ”.

There is no doubt that we must reach to the Internet to keep current in understanding the new opportunities our technologies bring us in the study of visual communications but with The Computer in the Visual Arts the place we reach from is now much better founded. The development of the computer and the interfaces that link us to it through graphical masks, mouse and pad controls have made access seamless to the data bases that we now control.

The canvas which in the past held the red oil paint is now an element that holds our instructions to place the paint, it is through the “instructions to make” that we pass a work on, instead of the artifact itself. The digital artist is now like the architect, a general passing orders for others to complete. And like the architect the better the understanding of the tasks one asked to be done the better the outcome.

Spalter has broken open more than the black box of the digital age, she has worked to put the new tools of our age back into the hands of the artist. The time when a “worker” sold their time and the tools of production were owned by another are over. The seam between one application tool and another is fading to the point where an artist’s intent is the key issue. Today the tools are the software and the most important software is our own intelligence.

Although advances in technology expand the visual languages available to artists, the quality of artwork is determined by the artist.  Anne Morgan Spalter

I would strongly recommend The Computer in the Visual Arts for all classes that deal in visual communications from a high school level to college. The text is very readable, more novel like than school text, with a web site by Addison-Wesley press  to help support the book.

(   http://www.awl.com/cseng/spalter  )

The book is mostly black and white (500 pages) with a section of 22 color plates and each chapter offers a wonderful section on suggested readings that is worth the price of this book alone.

Chapters:
1. Computers and Computer Art: A Brief History
2. Digital Painting and Photo editing- 2d Raster Graphics
3. Keyboards,Mice, Tablets, Scanners and Displays
4. Digital Design and Layout - 2d Geometric Graphics
5. Electronic Color
6. Printing
7. Building 3d Worlds - 3d Geometric Graphics 1
8. Rendering 3d Worlds - 3d Geometric Graphics 2
9. 3d Input and Output
10. 2d and 3d Animation and Video
11. Multimedia and Interactivity
12. The World Wide Web

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