The Digitalism Online Magazine Special Showcase on Digitalism Fine Art by Anuppa Caleekal.
Digitalism Style of Fine Art:
Digitalism Fine Art is the new revolution in Fine Art. While the definition of what art is will always be in a constant flux, the evolution of Digitalism Fine Art has come to maturity. The impact and importance of technology and digital ramifications affect every aspect of our human development and interactions today.
Art through the ages has seen Romanticism, Realism, Impressionism, Post- Impressionism , Fauvism and Expressionism, Cubism, Futurism, Supremativism, Constructivism, Abstract Expressionism, Postmodernism and Deconstructivism and now Digitalism. What is different about Digitalism is the interaction with the internet and the World Wide Web. By 2009 you could see this movement of Digitalism maturing as a form of expression. When Yahoo’s marketing chief launched Yahoo’s marketing advertising campaign with slogans such as, “There’s a new master of the digital universe. YOU” it shows us where the world is today in 2012.
Yes Everyman expects the Web to be his own. Everyman can make his digital mark. What does this all mean when it comes to Digitalism Fine Art?
Digitalism Fine Art can incorporate art styles from the past, bring new dimension and form to the present through the ability to be digitally transmitted, in a multimedia format, appealing to our various senses. The internet, the world wide web, the multimedia software and the various display screens, allows Digitalism Fine Art, a Digitalism Art Style, and a Digitalism Culture to function as a one man show and part of our contemporary times.
Not only is the style Digitalism Fine Art new and revolutionary from the past modes of Fine Art styles, a Digitalism Fine Art artist is also markedly different from past artists. The new artist can be a publisher, a gallery owner, a marketer, all in one package because of the internet and the services available to the individual. For instance follow me on Instagram@ anuppa_digitalism. Instagram has provided a portable portfolio, marketing and trending tools via hashtags# ,an opportunity to meet other artists and see their works in the palm of your hand via a smartphone at anytime,anywhere beyond the confines of gallery walls. . This is a dream come true for the artist in the age of digitalism.
In many ways we are at a point in art history similar to when the camera was first invented. Before the camera, the artist depicted the real world on cave walls, stone, murals, ceilings, paper, canvas and so on. When the camera was invented, reality became a harsh reality. It was an exact replication of what the eye saw at that moment in time through a powerful technological development, the camera. The trend then moved to the abstract and away from reality to get us out of the box and give the eye another edge.
Digitalism is part of the “independent” movement. It enables the individual to be expressive and heard by the world and not necessarily dependant on the group or established structures. For instance in the realm of Digitalism Fine Art, it allows the artist to digitally display art free from the control of museums and galleries. Digitalism is already apparent in various old establishments such as the publishing houses and the music industry with e books and i-tunes.
Today it is the internet, the services it provides through the World Wide Web and the various hardware gadgets we can transmit our digital style. The camera has become more sophisticated and with the invention of the digital camera and the various software applications, digitalism has redefined the invisible line between art and photography.
Personally, I define Digitalism Style of Fine Art as digital art and as a pure extension of the traditional form of painting and drawing. It can represent any style of art but the important factor is that the art composition is done from scratch without cloning, scanning or manipulating a digital photograph.
A piece of Digitalism Style of Fine Art is pure in that apart from the computer hardware and software, the composition is drawn by a stylus and graphics tablet rather than traditional tools. The product of Digitalism style of Fine Art can be displayed on a screen, online, or transformed into print as well as in the form of various other products, including placing it on canvas and framed on the wall.
The origin is digitally produced. There are also a multitude of Digitalism art forms apart from Digitalism Fine Art . When you take a digital photograph of a traditionally drawn painting done on canvas and display it online, the painting now exists in a digital format which then can transform as part of the Digitalism art culture. However, the original format is not digital.
Digitalism Style of Fine Art by definition is the purest form of digital art next to traditional Fine Art. For instance Andy Warhol ‘s digital pop art of Debbie Harry’s portrait is an example of Digitalism art style and not representative of Digitalism Fine Art. In 1985 using a monochrome video camera picture shot digitized by using ProPaint on a Commodore Amiga computer, Andy Warhol laid down the footprints of Digitalism.
(Video Source: http://videosift.com/video/Andy-Warhol-uses-an-Amiga-1000-to-paint-Debbie-Harry-1985)
Digitalism Online Art Gallery : The Concept at www.digitalism.org
Digitalism Fine Art has evolved. When I called my style of art Digitalism in the early 90’s, a Digitalism Fine Art Gallery on the world wide web did not exist. The word Digitalism did not exist.
It was not a common sight for artists to have an online digital art gallery. For me Digitalism went beyond the expression of art. It meant a logical stage to describe the worldwide digital culture of our times. When I first thought of the concept of the Digitalism Galleries at www.digitalism.org, I conceptualized digital art to be the technological medium to communicate the word or document.
The Digitalism online Art Gallery was started to present an online version of my expression
was created consisting of five online art galleries each with a theme.The Digitalism Art Studio gallery themes were Fine Art, Art.Documentary, Health Science and Technology, Artamation and Children’s Webtime Gallery.
The Digitalism Fine Art Gallery
consisted of my fine art using the mouse, a stylus and Painter and Adobe Photoshop Software .Using the same tools, Digitalism’s Art.Doc Gallery was designed to integrate art and the documentary research. Digitalism Gallery of Health , Science and Technology was designed to profile research using art as a medium. Digitalism Gallery of Artamation was my way to express my art in motion. The animated gifs called artamation, is a word I made up to express art with motion and emotion. Finally, the Digitalism Gallery for a web time children’s storywas a section designed for children to read a picture story online. My partner wrote a children’s story ,’The Lonely Little Peanut” probably the first children’s online self-help book to deal with life’s adversities. I integrated an educational component to the story and the digital graphical illustrations and it was made into an online picture book.
Digitalism Art Style : The Process and Birth
I had always painted throughout my life the traditional way on a canvas, or on paper using brushes, watercolors and acrylic paints.
My older works of Indo Canadian Art below were very much influenced by my mother, Molly Achamma George also an artist in Canada.
My art in the Pre – Digitalism period
Click on Image and enjoy Digitalism Fine Art Slideshow
In the early 90’s when the computer mouse first got into my hands, the click of the mouse triggered Digitalism . As an artist Digitalism was my idea to describe the culture of the times, the early nineties. Digital art in Canada like everywhere was embryonic and there did not seem much opportunity to explore the experience with others. On the internet there were the Geocities communities where my digitalism online art gallery with the concept of a digitalism style of fine art first originated.
It was GeoCities that first allowed you to put your webpage online. My partner who in those days was busy learning HTML and coding things saw my excitement with how from the click of the mouse enabled my art to enter the graphical World Wide Web. I started to draw with Paintbrush software by solely using the mouse. Then we soon came to know about the Wacom tablet and purchased one.
At that time in 1995, very few graphic designers had a Wacom tablet. Along with my Digitalism style of Fine Art, the tools that made the Digitalism Online Art Gallery happen, were the wacom tablet, the stylus, the Graphics software and my web master who made my entrance into the world wide web. In 1996 Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) started the first Online Painter Course and Online Photoshop Graphic courses. I participated and graduated from these two online accredited university courses .The digital experience in participating online with extremely talented students from various parts of the globe, sharing their files, peer evaluating their works and learning skills through an online course led by MICA’s professional instructors was a treasure to keep for a lifetime.
Using Painter software was like having the same feeling a traditional artist has when the brush touches the canvas. The various strokes I did using Painter software were the same brush strokes I used as a traditional artist not using a computer. In other words, my fine art style as an artist gets transformed digitally when using Painter’s brushes.
The only difference is now my fine art is digital and thus a product within the style of Digitalism fine art paintings. It allows me to have my own gallery, I can display it to the world online or in my home through my gallery Digitalism, 24/7. I can extend the life of a print of my art from being in a magazine or newspaper to web to e-paper to on-line. Even though there are printing costs, hardware and software costs, one is not subject to purchasing art supplies and neither do you have to be exposed to paint fumes, garbage or a mess.
The” fine art” paintings at Digitalism.org using Painter software are all from scratch and not ‘manipulated” or ‘cloned” . Many people not familiar with digital fine art painting have the misconception that by using a computer software, it is done by the computer and thus accomplished by the computer and not the artist. Not true. Your style gets digitally transcribed by your brush stroke and how much pressure you exert by the stylus onto the wacom tablet using the software brushes tailored to your specific digitalism brush stroke style. You can create your own tailor made brush for the kind of brush stroke you need. Similarly the digital medium of water and oil paints interact not just with your digital brush but with the pressure and movement of your stylus stroke which is in turn governed by your individual style.
At first the only aspect I found strange to coordinate was looking at the computer screen which is my canvas, while my hand does the drawing on the flat tablet on the desk to my side.
Digitalism Portfolio of Anuppa Caleekal
Click on Image and enjoy Digitalism Fine Art Slideshow
Digitalism Fine Artusing just a computer mouse
lady strawberry Copyright Anuppa Caleekal
Digitalism Fine Art using Painter Software
cyberlady Copyright Anuppa Caleekal
Digitalism Fine Art : Artamation using Painter Software
blink Copyright Anuppa Caleekal
Digitalism Art : Photoshop, Photoshop filters and digital images
david bowie photoshop poster art by Anuppa Caleekal
Bowie meets Marsgirl1 by Anuppa Caleekal
Dogsville Copyright Anuppa Caleekal
Digitalism Fine Art :Photo shop, Photoshop filters, Photoshop brushes, mouse
Tear drop Copyright Anuppa Caleekal
Digitalism Art:
Digital Images, Painter, Photoshop filters and brush
Doing it Gangnam Style by Anuppa Caleekal Digitalism Gallery 2012
Digitalism Art : combining Painter and Photoshop filter
SHOCK Copyright Anuppa Caleekal
Digitalism Art : combining digital photography , Photoshop brush and filter
She is a Diamond in the Wild Copyright Anuppa Caleekal
evileye Copyright Anuppa Caleekal
Digitalism Fine Art : Painter,Photoshop Digital Photography
switch on the shadows copy Copyright Anuppa Caleekal
Digitalism Art : Photoshop and Digital Photography
blue jay in spring
Digitalism Art : Photoshop and Digital Photography
pumpkins in the air Copyright Anuppa Caleekal
Digitalism Art : Photoshop and Digital Photography
The Angel and the Cardinal Copyright Anuppa Caleekal
Digitalism Studio later also branched into Digitalism Online Magazine at www.digitalism.ca. The Digitalism Magazine was designed to reflect the on-line world of Digitalism and the evolution of subcultures in Canada in relation to the world. The magazine reflects various points of on-line businesses and sociocultural interests using digital images and art.
The Digitalism Age and Homo sapiens digitus
August 24, 1995 Bill Gates launched Windows 95 operating system. It certainly was the best of times, the birth of exciting creative digital times. Do you remember this advertisement when the launch of Windows 95 started it up with the Rolling Stones? It was released on August 24, 1995 The thrill had come, Digitalism is here to stay.
In the early 70’s there were words to describe art and digital technology such as “multimedia” art and “digital” art. But what I saw in the early 90’s was a culture developing where technology was weaving all mankind togther. Technology acted as a medium for all fields of study, all geographical points to form web and online associations, networks and internet communities.
The early 90’s was a phenomenal time of simultaneous digital and technological innovations on the rise. It was also the start of executive downsizing with technology slowly and invisibly creeping, enabling tasks and functions replacing human thinking and labour.
At that time it was the start of the dot.com boom and it would be unlikely to imagine the future wall street mural painting a recession with bailouts downward spiralling into a chaotic financial and economic future. We are now that future.
The early nineties was a time when the World Wide Web was at stage to launch a boom. It was about to become more user friendly and available to the masses. Html coding , Word as opposed to WordPerfect, Windows 95 operating system were all being aligned like a new planetary Age which I called Digitalism.
This period of digital expression made a new kind of human being. I call this human Homo sapiens digitus, citizen of the Age of Digitalism.
I saw man was rapidly evolving as technology was becoming available to all, permitting interactive expression through msn chat rooms, connections world wide and most importantly email. Our email became significantly our digital identification which enabled us to be identified, to be anonymous or in crime impersonate someone else’s on-line identity. Everyone who had access to the internet could connect to anywhere and to anyone instantly. Remember in the early nineties not everyone had an email address and connecting to the Internet was no easy task. Dial-up telephone lines was a challenge. Looking back, the speed at which digital innovations evolved giving internet access for the everyday consumer and on-line business entrepreneurship and banking is incredible. The speed of the adoption rate on part of the consumers adapting to the digital technological revolution is also incredible.
Homo sapiens digitus moved from dial up, to high speed cable, to wireless and switched from Netscape browsers to Microsoft Internet Explorer and then jumped on search engine’s giants like Google to share and store files on clouds of digital life. What an unimaginable scope it implicated for our modern technological culture and economy that we see evolved today.
Now 20 years later, we see ourselves fully emerged in Digitalism. Our communication is rapidly growing, far reaching, speedy and getting more and more silent. With emails and texting,our digital actions do not require the voice.Twitter and Facebook allows a medium for self promotion and marketing to steer and create the herd of followers. We can or seem to think we can function in silence and secrecy and deliver digital files in speed via YouSendIt.
We are wired to connect. We have the options now of being digitally wired with or without the human voice and sound. There are multiple consumer choices which offer variations and options in the choices for us to express ourselves. The danger will be when there is a technological overload of digital choices. If there is digital boredom or digital stress from the replication of products and information overload, companies will not profit as the result will be a consumer mental and creative breakdown.
The paradox is that Digitalism culture allows you to experience what I find is a state of “empowered loneliness” To be silently together and have cohesion without needing the human voice. This can be a powerful force to build a tacit agreement among masses and form a political consensus or spiritual strength. However it can also have the negative downturn where a person can silently cry for help, to no avail but only to broadcast the common man’s “suicidal reality show”. Cyber bullying spread through the abusive use of memes has shown to destroy and terminate lives while breeding morbid evil humour. It can be also highly dangerous when used for subversive terrorist cohesions. The use of digitalism is far reaching, the abuse can eventually leave mankind alienated with the diminishing usage of innate basic instincts such as speech and hearing.The eyes and finger dexterity will be over used because we have a history of being predators, conquerors, voyeurs and consumers programmed to think, act, grab and consume what attracts us. We look. We take. We grab. We hoard. We are capable of being greedy and at the same time …We can give but will we share?. Will we become incapable to love?
We as humans have the flaw of evolving into a movement away from the reality we have around us making our orientation and natural compass no longer utilized. All our primitive senses are now enhanced individually and not in concert. Our addiction to the screen overpowers our natural instincts to coordinate all other senses in harmony. When we are on the screen the addiction and not the focus will make us ignore environmental signals arousing our senses like fire alarms, toxic smells and other red flags.The screen on our cellphones , ipads , and computers will dictate our focus areas unlike the sky, stars, the tides, weather, animals and other natural frontiers of nature as used by our prehistoric forefathers and ancestral DNA.
Digitalism: The Digital Divide and Homo sapiens digitus
Homo sapiens digitus, the evolutionary product of Digitalism is a wired human with all senses capable of being enhanced to maximum potential. The problem being, our own addiction to be wired will affect our focus of concentration and moods and ultimately move us away from productivity rewarded by monetary schemes.The more alienated we become from our natural instincts, there will only be a rise of mental illness, drug dependency and senseless violence and suicides. The digital divide will partly be the reason for this disparity.
Some people will have more knowledge and technological control and will be able to have more leisure. The digital divide will also have groups of the human race dividing from those that are more technologically wired with those that are tuned and influenced by their natural instincts and by other complexities governed by their language, culture and thinking .
Monetary reward schemes will not solely be the means to keep the labour force motivated to be productive. Digitalism age will dictate the right for every man to want to play and have their digital release.The digital gaming industry will flourish like it already is and so will digital art, music, social media, e reads, anything that digitally relaxes and amuses us. However Homo sapiens digitus wants pleasure and not technological pain. Whatever is easy and relaxing will be the trend. Google with Google Play trying to put all this play into one digital multimedia distribution service operated by Google will be well received. The challenge will be for the educational system to integrate Information Technology starting at the kindergarten level so that children will all have an equal chance to apply the IT language and communicate in all fields of interest.The life span of a child’s brain to engage in traditional play with imagination and innocence will be acutely shortened and the adult brain will start to evolve much earlier with the new IT language imprinted early in our human development. Play will involve children engaged in adult realities.
Homo sapiens digitus has no other choice but to introduce curriculums in IT to children at a very early age. They will need to learn about encryptions and security just as much as programming and coding. This can be done by digital peer group IT teaching and mass global education to accelerate their chance in participating as innovators and not merely as consumers in the world of digitalism. If they cannot because they do not have the means or do not have the know how, the digital divide will only widen at a faster rate than it already is.
The question is, do we want this as the direction for Digitalism as a culture? The answer is Homo sapiens digitus has no choice but to keep evolving to the technological demands that have started him up. Already we are moving far away so far from holding a pen and scripting the handwritten word, hearing the voice of our dear ones, the time to tell and hear a story from past history or to read and hold a book.We are moving away from our seed. Even the seed is genetically modified. The original seed is almost gone.
This is when Digitalism as a culture will mature and creativity in thinking and innovation will be impacted by how we use and relate to technology.
Homo sapiens digitus is empowered digitally to participate more expressively in society through blogs, Instagram, via the internet by PC’s, laptops, cell phones, ipads, tablets, digital cameras, and high definition digital video broadcasting. We have services on the world wide web to do online shopping, banking, read ebooks, socially connect with Facebook, Twitter, and promote ourselves with viral marketing.
We are all digitally addicted as a way of life and unknowingly suffer from Digitalism dependancy and Digitalism withdrawals.The opportunity to digitally display to the world what we write, think, draw, create, invent and sell to the world is available with enabled speed. Speed is the selling factor. Everything is timely when it is in the right spot at the right time. We are so much more preoccupied with this need in the world of Digitalism, for the good or the bad, we do not realize we are getting addicted to time and speed. We need to learn faster and faster, we need to produce faster and faster, we need to live faster and faster.We need to catch the wave of memes, detour the herd of followers onto our innovative cloud. So there is a constant innovative urge to come up with the new digital idea faster and at the right time to maximize profit and the herd of followers. When the internet connection is withheld from us, we are at a loss of a digital pulse, which can literally kill us and cripple our society’s infrastructures and world economy.
Digitalism is how I saw the future in the early nineties. Digitalism is how I describe the evolution of man and his culture today. It is a revolutionary, significant movement of our contemporary times. It encompasses everything and how all domains of life will mesh into one Homo sapiens digitus via a digital medium.
In Touch organization for instance has used technology called The Messenger, a device that looks like a cell phone for using God’s word in various languages to reach places like the front lines of war zones where missionaries cannot reach and extend spiritual aid.
Digital technology, science and cooking have merged to make a cooking simulator that will help you cook a perfect steak every time.
At The Silk Bureau Ltd, artists, fashion designers and fabric digital printing has combined to make art masterpieces on the fashion runway.
Olfactory digitization or digitization of smells, fragrances and aromas as a release of digital media is being experimented by the Digital Olfaction Society
The Raspberry Pi, the cheap, credit-card-sized computer recently developed will probably entice us now and until we get bored wanting and needing another WOW fun digital play factor.
P.S. Peace Speaks at Digitalism ; Digitalism and Peace
Like all history of man there is war and peace. Homo sapiens digitus and the Age of Digitalism is also experiencing war and peace. This stage of human evolution is peculiar in that it is so highly creative and powerful to create spiritual peace, magnificent art and beauty just as much as it is powerfully equipped to create war and destruction.
The Watson Institute’s Information Technology, War, and Peace Project (InfoTechWarPeace) track and analyze IT’s influence on current global politics.The project is headed by principal investigator Professor James Der Derian, a Watson Institute professor of international relations.
The project notes, ” in the past decade and especially since September 11, very different global actors have emerged ranging from fundamentalist terrorists to peace activists, who gain advantage through the broad bandwidth of information technology rather than through traditional state-centered sovereignty. The project interrogates how these individuals and groups make use of IT to influence world politics. ”
Professor James Der Derian further goes on to state the efforts of the Project (InfoTechWarPeace) attempts ,” to understand how information technology not only enables the continuation of violence through infowar, but also provides the means to prevent, mediate, and resolve conflicts through infopeace.” (Source ReadMore: http://www.watsoninstitute.org/project_detail.cfm?id=1)
Information Technology is the fulcrum of Digitalism. It has the potential to tip the lever or as stated by Archimedes, “Give me a place to stand, and I shall move the Earth with a lever”. The Age of Digitalism, is probably the most significant stage of human cultural evolution. It will either make a superior superhuman being humble enough to realize the essentials and urgency for Peace to speak. Or break us to be insignificant as though we never were.
