From computer graphics to computer art
This text is the second piece of the code, shape and meaning series: a set of articles about computer art and new media.
It’s a characteristic of artists to experiment and work with the most advanced mediums that their time presents them with. If it's intuitive for us to recognize that some periods in the past were highly marked by expression through oil-painting, sculptures, or pottery, nowadays the most experimental and innovative mediums available are essentially computational: the internet, tablets, smartphones, virtual and mixed reality devices, video games, and interactive art installations (Santaella, 2012).
In the previous article of the series, I began drafting a historical framework for computer art by discussing the practices and thought processes employed by multidisciplinary artists in different times. As I understand creative computing as a derivate of mathematical creativity, that brief historical parallel helped establish guides for understanding computer art as a product of the relationship between art and mathematics throughout history. That was the first piece of the framework.
At the same time, though, the popularity of computer art as a practice and the level of aesthetic relevance it gained in the previous decades cannot be disassociated from the chain of improvements in computer graphics happening since…
