Abstract
‘On earth, painters, sculptors, musicians, dream dreams of exquisite beauty, creating their visions by the powers of the mind, but when they seek to embody them in the coarse materials of earth they fall short of the mental creation. The marble is too resistant for perfect form, the pigments too muddy for perfect color. In heaven all they think is at once reproduced in form, for the rare and subtle matter of the heaven- world is mind staff, the medium in which the mind normally works when free from passion and it takes shape with every mental impulse. Each man, therefore, in a very real sense, makes his own heaven, and the beauty of his surroundings is indefinitely increased, according to the wealth and energy of his mind’ (Besant) (Ringbom, 1986).
TopIntroduction
Although the artist cannot recover the richness of inner visions in the coarse materials of the everyday world, digital art of today is given challenging role to continue the quest of the spiritual. Today’s generative algorithm based painting offers limitless freedom in the choice of line, shape, and color as long as artist sees to it that representational forms are excluded. Algorithm provides artists with wealth of artistically exploitable ideas and images, representing the almost ephemeral forces and manifestations that could emerge spontaneously and involuntarily.
The intent of the following is to present a series of art works, my own artist practice pursued through the process of research and discovery, the outcomes of the work done at the School of Art Design and Media, Nanyang Technological University titled: Digital Imaging in Singapore: The Integration of digital imagery with traditional art media and techniques for site specific architectural, urban and landscape settings of Singapore. The work delves into an exploration of an innovative approach toward image creation methodologies, researching and integrating emotive and subjective abstract imagery in digital, traditional and non-traditional forms.
Made at the School of Art, Design and Media at Nanyang Technological University where part of the educational mission is to provide opportunities for faculty and students to pursue art as research, the art-work is created with the financial support from Academic Research Fund (AcRF). With a focus on exploring digitally generative systems and techniques for integrated image generation, painting methods with digital technologies and integrating traditional art methods and materials, the emphasis of art practice is on exploring the limitations of the digital medium, abstract painting and other forms of visual imagery, striving to achieve greater creative levels. With it artist’s creative nature is manifested in a way and to an extend that before would be hardly realized.