Why Computer Evolved Digital Compositions

"Mono Colors" #3

I recently received an anonymous message containing the statements below. Almost laughable, considering my experience. Unable to respond directly, I decided to clarify here. Some people have yet to realize there was digital art before AI. AI is simply the newest form of digital art. Check it out: Oh look, another “I’m not using AI, either use the tools proudly or climb back on your high horse and trot off".

“Not AI-generated, AI-dictated” is the most pretentious dodge since “it’s not a lie, it’s a vibe.” If you’re going to borrow the engine, own the horsepower.  Almost laughable considering my experience."

Unable to respond, I thought maybe I should make some things clear. There was art before AI, the newest form of creation to enter the realm. The short-sightedness of the writer implied they were a newbie, not by age but by insight. And yes, many artists and I use AI in our work. It is another tool in the arsenal that includes Photoshop, Topaz, and numerous other applications. Terminology often changes, but a name change does not change the artist; it better defines them. A Matter of Terms

This brings me to a particular issue I have with the terms people use to define art created with computers. For context: I bought my first computer in the mid-1980s, and by the year 2000, I was already referring to my work as Computer-Evolved Art. This wasn’t a gimmick. It grew from my history.

Historical Background

The presence of the computer in art did not begin with personal machines but with specialized devices. In 1961, Desmond Paul Henry constructed the Electromechanical Drawing Machine by adapting a World War II bombsight computer into a tool for image-making. By the mid-1960s, most of those producing art with computers were engineers and scientists. They were not “artists” in the traditional sense but people with access to expensive, highly technical systems.

This was before the falling costs of mass-market personal computers in the mid-1970s. At that stage, the machines required floppy disks to boot, offered only an “A” drive, and had no permanent internal storage.

The next major threshold came in the 1980s. Although Windows 1. appeared in 1985, it was the emergence of a usable graphical interface that made computers accessible for creative work. Windows 3.0, released in the early 1990s, signaled that shift. Equally important were the tools that followed. Adobe’s Illustrator and Photoshop, first written by brothers Thomas and John Knoll in 1990 for the Macintosh, were converted to DOS/Windows by 1993. For the first time, an artist could shape images with software rather than code, making the computer not just a calculating device but a studio in itself. By then, the label most often applied to this practice was “computer art.”

Computer Evolved Art, my Choice of Definition

This is where my story begins. In 1999, I chose the phrase Computer Evolved Art for short and Computer Evolved Digital Compositions as a sometimes more accurate description.

Why the prefix, “Computer Evolved”? Because whether through pixel manipulation or guided AI, I use the computer to control my resources, and materialize my vision. The tools change, but the artist’s hand remains constant.

For over fifty years, outside labels have been imposed on art created via computer:

• AI Art

• Computer Art

• Digital Art

• Electronic Art

• Generative Art

• Interactive Art

• Multimedia Art

• New Media Art

• Telematic Art

Each carries the suggestion that the machine is the creative force. Yet we don’t say brush artist or chisel artist. The artist is implicit. Oddly enough, with the onset of AI we no longer call it computer art, we call it AI art.

Defining My Work

I am not offering a final definition for everyone. But I do claim the right, as any artist should, to define my own practice. My work is Computer Evolved Art, exactly that, regardless of the tools I use or the suffix that follows.