Coding On A Canvas!
What if Picasso had a silicon microchip instead of a paintbrush? Or what if Charles Babbage used a canvas and colors? Doesn’t sound right, is it?
That is what has been the accepted viewpoint since centuries.
Arts and Science — are the two contrasting streams either of which students pursue in their higher education.
There has always been a cold fight for superiority, without understanding that these streams, in reality, complement each other.
There were times when people who pursued Arts considered the other group as machines in human form with no feelings, while the latter considered them as carefree people with no ambition. But both of them don’t realize that they are fundamentally the same — both of them are innovators and creators with extraordinary talents and the same goal of making life better. The only difference is that one uses the pen, and the other, the keyboard.
Art inspires technology and technology improves art. Both of these fields, though thought to be the opposite ends of the spectrum, are in reality the parts that make each other complete.
Art is the way an artist expresses himself and technology has provided him with new tools for expression.
How are they interconnected?
Today, these two distinct disciplines seem to be united more than ever, with technology stimulating the evolution of art.
Not just software developers and entrepreneurs, but also musicians, painters and writers, are working on designing a better future, striving to create new experiences for us.
Impact of technology on drawing/painting and other related fields
Due to the intervention of technology, art has become more dynamic. New forms are evolving and artists are trying to widen the traditional boundaries, from printing 3D sculptures that are digitally created to flash mobs.
Ollie Palmer, an artist, created a machine to control the directions given to ants through synthetic pheromone. (Source BBC news) Do you know why? Because she wished to stage a ballet performance by ants! (Innovation 100)
This is just one of the many ways which show how art and technology benefit each other.
Technology has brought the world closer. It helps artists to exhibit their art on the Web and also raise funds for their projects.
According to BBC news, in 2011, Kickstarter, a crowdfunding website raised almost $100m in pledges with more than 27,000 art-related projects. Moreover, technology provides tools and techniques, which enables everyone to create their own art, and not just stay mere viewers.
Digital art is an apt example of this, which is gaining popularity recently. It is the perfect combination of art and technology. The famous silkscreen prints of Andy Warhol would have been plain imagination if technology and science wouldn’t have led to this innovation in art.
Among various other effects, one of the most significant impacts of technology on various art forms, as mentioned above, is the development of several apps which reduce human effort, make the task quicker and easier and thus provide the artist with ample time to enrich their frontal cortex (the part of the brain responsible for creativity) and improve their ideas.
Many apps allow coloring sketches digitally. These, apart from having an artistic aspect, are also known to be stress-relieving, which improve your motor skills and help you focus as well as relax. They also allow you to transform your favorite photo into a digital version of paint on canvas. You can even print your creations on a real canvas for home display.
Apps and digital platforms have made it super easy to create mandalas, by creating the repeated patterns automatically and thus saving time and effort.
Creating pencil portraits and doodles is quite easy using such apps that allow you to transform your pictures into sketches and add to them a new look and feel.
And all these apps are ultimately innovations of technology, which help make our work easier and also help to achieve better outcomes.
Not just big names, kids too can surprise us with their creativity if we guide them properly.
Beautiful floral patterns can be drawn with a basic knowledge of geometry and angles, through coding programs, putting technology into use!
This truly unites the above-mentioned idea by using mathematical concepts, science, and technology for developing beautiful pieces of art, and has been proved by one of our students.
Turing Ninjas aims to unite such vivid disciplines together for a much better outcome. Check out such amazing courses here.
Impact of technology on music and related fields
Using apps for learning to play instruments has become quite common. Moreover, technology has provided the means to learn anything, any time, from anywhere. There are hundreds of YouTube videos and other online courses available which help to learn playing any instrument of your choice. They also help you to connect with teachers all over the world, to take up music lessons.
There are apps to record songs and edit them, helping you to fine-tune, add background music and create professional pieces. This is in fact, an integral part of the music industry which uses technology in every aspect, from recording to editing, for creating soulful melodies. They also allow you to upload such content on various online platforms, and this helps you to showcase your skills to the entire world and also to get feedback and suggestions to improve.
This is a great help not only to the artists whose art can now reach far and beyond with a few clicks but also to the commoners who wish to learn such skills and improve upon them.
These apps and websites also help people to access such pieces of art. Listening to music was never so easy, as it is now, thanks to all those apps like Spotify. This helps not just the creators but also the consumers, to cherish those beautiful art pieces at any time.
Impact of technology on photography and film making
And not just painting, sketching and music, technology has a powerful impact on other art forms like film-making and photography as well. The various apps for editing the pictures and videos are a great help to the artists. They help to make necessary edits, remove noises, cut out unwanted parts from the videos, thus saving the person from the trouble of recording it all over again.
These innovations are widely used in the film making industry to provide all those special effects and animations which entertain and engage you during those 3 hours at the theatre.
Photographers use such apps to add contrasts to their pictures, and beautify their portraits. These apps also help them to sharpen or blur the vision as required and emphasize on what’s needed. This also helps to zoom in or out to capture a picture which would have otherwise been quite difficult. All these technological innovations help to improve the art pieces in some way or the other. They are so common that you’d probably even find a bunch of them on the screens of the gadgets of common people as well.
Impact of Arts on technological innovations
If we see the other side, art through its vivid forms drives the innovative mindset of technologists. The need to understand human anatomy for sculpting, added to the stimulus for development of several apps which help to visualize the human body in a 3D view.
This is how arts and technology complement each other, helping each to evolve. They are interconnected and that’s what needs to be the accepted notion.
So, are you ready to code on a canvas? Read on to know what I mean, in case you didn’t get it.
Artistic pieces through technological innovations — some examples
STARRY NIGHT EXHIBITION BY CULTURESPACES where they brought Vincent van Gogh’s paintings to life, through the use of technology. It appeared as though visitors were stepping into those paintings.
Fake images that look completely real, are now possible, thanks to AI. Icons8 is a company that has created Generated Photos, a resource of 100,000 AI-generated faces that are royalty-free.
ALTERNATIVES BY ESPEN KLUGE is a perfect example of code generated art. The algorithm he developed, turns input photographs into colorful, vector-based portraits. This creates a strange yet intriguing 3D thread effect. (These are just a few examples belonging to a long list. Read more such examples here at My Modern Met.)
Yashraj Mukhate became a star overnight, owing to the music videos he uploaded on his YouTube channel Dialogue with Beats. This was possible due to his talent and also his ease with technology. He tweaked speeches and dialogues, did certain edits, and added background music composed by him, and a hilarious yet soothing music piece was composed, owing to the help provided by technology!
Why should kids be encouraged to experiment with these two disciplines combined together?
The main reason put straight and simple, is developing interest and making the learning process fun.
Combining arts with technology can lead to new and exciting ways to keep students motivated and engaged in the learning process and also have an observative attitude towards their surroundings.
In today’s world, students are advised to focus exclusively on technology and science for securing a decent job, and it is always emphasized that arts is not a good career option. Contrary to this, many kids are inclined towards arts and enjoy it.
Due to this very reason nowadays, STEM has become STEAM with an A for arts. This ensures all-round development of your kids and helps them develop soft skills essential for life.
Combining both together makes it easier to learn and enjoy simultaneously.
What matters is the experience that is delivered and its impact on people, their thinking and their mindset. It doesn’t matter what tools the artist chooses to do the same.
Instead of nurturing the irrational notion of a rigid distinction between these two disciplines, we should try to imbibe both together for an even better outcome.
We ought to encourage the young ones to combine both the approaches and pour out their creativity at double the pace. This would be a good initiative in providing ‘education’, in its true sense.
Maybe next time, try coding on a canvas! You must have guessed it till now. Yes. It refers to using programming skills for developing your own artistic pieces!
