Digital/concept art as an artistic movement?

[N D Hill]

After attending one of my drawing classes where we visited the local art museum, instead of doing in-class drawing, we looked at an exhibit called the "Flat Files." Basically, it was all artwork produced in a largely polish community in brooklyn. It was a rare example of an entre community of artists and art admirers and the exhibit was not only the work but the idea itself. This exhibit has been around the entire country and recieved a great ammount of well-deserved validation and appreciation from the art community and it got me wondering, why doesn't digital or concept art get the same attention?

I find it very strange and almost contradictory of the art community that this occurs. Look at the work we do, and the interest we generate in what has almost become an internet subculture, yet you'd never see any artwork in a museum that suggested of the themes (sci-fi, fantasy, characters, machines etc.) which we commonly work with. It recieves no attention as a valid genre despite the hard work, original ideas and expressions we invest in it. Does this seem right?

[endregan]

oh it will be recognized in time my friend :)

[Isric]

We *are* the contunuation of the history of art.

I've been thinking about this lately, and all throughout history art has been entertainment, story telling, and the life enriching extra bits that raise us from 'survivnig' to 'living'.

Galleries, exhibitions, critics, these are all pretty new ideas, relatively speaking. The stuff that we do, working in the 'entertainment' genre, is the continuation of heiroglyphic tales, friezes, greek and roman murals, theatre design, and grande scale master oils paintings. If they had the movies, graphic novels or video games a few thousand years ago, *that's* the stuff we'd be studying in art history today.

so yeah, while it may seem like we're in some obscure corner, we're probably as mainstream as you can get, it's just that right now people think 'art' means something else.

[madster]

The biggest hurdle in the appreciation of digital art is its very existance...it's digital. Short of having a hundred monitors, each with the appropriate slide show of an artist's works, the vast masses will never know of most works short of those they see on their gameboys...
It is only those digital artists who then produce posters, book covers, and the tangible like that who then gain in reputation...

[nil]

wow Isric, thats pretty much exactly how i feel about it. thanks for articualting it for me. :chug: