Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Technological Art

In his 1996 best-selling book entitled " Being Digital", Nicholas Negroponte, in part, talked about the prevailing view during his time concerning the perceived polarity between technology and humanities or between science and art. Negroponte cited a few examples of this such as the invention of the television. He said that television was primarily invented for purely technological imperatives. Its inventors never really foresaw how their simple invention would be used in a myriad of ways. On the other hand, some artists look at science and technology as infested with coterie of geeks. Negroponte boldly predicted that the development of multimedia technology will bridge the gap between the two discipline.

On this score, Negroponte got it right. Nowadays, artists have learned to harness the utility of today's technological advances particularly the Internet to further their crafts. In the same vein, many of today's technologists and scientists produce innovations with the view to it being used in the field of art.

In short, science and technology is not antithetical to art but the two fields can actually be complementary to each other.

One example of the science-art symbiotic relationship can be seen in the popular social networking called "Multiply". This website from the time it was launched in 2004 has been a spawning pool for budding artists with the creation of customized web layouts and many more.



Raymond R. Roque
06-78143

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