INTRODUCTION
Arts
and culture are social phenomena, consequential of the social interaction, of
the individual and collective imaginary manifestations, that together establish
a common communicational and informational space embracing artifacts said to be
cultural and artistic. These artifacts, where some are possibly non-tangible,
constitute, in fact, the resulting product from the artistic and cultural
phenomenon. They are expressions of our imaginary.
In
this respect, the common communicational and informational space is created by
the process of collaboration among a group of people who communicate and
operate together by sharing the same interests and goals. Information or
information content, meaning the intended message of each artifact, is a
central constituent of the common communicational and informational space.
Accordingly, artistic artifacts, may these be of digital or physical nature can
be defined as informational objects (CASPAR, 2005).
Art
objects might be described as symbolic objects that aim at stimulating
emotions. They reach us through our senses (visual, auditory, tactile, or
other). They are displayed by means of physical material (stone, paper, wood,
etc.) and combine some patterns to produce an aesthetic composition. Like any
art object, digital art objects are informational in nature; they are symbolic
and purposeful built. Their creator intends to convey some message, normally to
suggest some state of mind or to induce an emotion and the consequent feeling.
They differ from conventional art pieces by the use of computers and
computer-based artifacts that manipulate digitally coded information, what
opens unlimited possibilities in interaction, virtualization and manipulation
of information (Depocas, Ippolito& Jones, 2004).
The
computer medium is defined here as the set of digital technologies ranging from
digital information formats, infrastructures to processing tools that together
can be observed as a continuum art medium used by artists to produce digital
artifacts.
When
we consider the creative process itself, we can establish its beginnings when
the creator gets a hold of the first concept or idea resulting from his/her
subjective vision, gradually modeled into a form of (un)tangible artifact. It
constitutes the message, this about something, the artist wants to transmit to
the world. When digital content is used in this process, it can be both the
means and the end product. On one hand, the digital content can be explored as
the means to create non-digital artifacts, as for instance, digitally altered
paper-based photography, and, on the other hand, be the end-result intended as
it is the case in animated comics (Grau, 2003).
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