Love it or hate it, technology has done a lot to improve our lives and make them easier. Without modern technology, we couldn’t communicate over long distances, access a wide variety of information, and capture moments and images in real-time. Technology has undoubtedly changed every aspect of our lives, to the point we can hardly live without it. And this is especially true in art.
Art, much like the world at large, is forever changing and transforming with the innovation of new technologies and techniques. Technology has done a lot to improve and streamline the process of creating and viewing art. Modern art is highly digitalized, and most digital artists can’t take on projects without using modern technology. But what exactly does technology do to improve the creative process?
A Better Medium
Before, when artists such as painters and sculptors made art, they had to do it traditionally. They needed a blank canvas, an easel, paint, and a chunk of wood or stone to fashion something out. While artists are still free to pursue traditional mediums, by all means, technology has provided a new medium that improves the creative process and makes it faster and easier to create.
For one, digital programs and services like Adobe Illustrator and Clip Studio Paint offer a variety of unique tools to help illustrators and painters with their work. With just the use of a drawing tablet and pen hooked up to a laptop or computer, or even an iPad, artists can create their own digital pieces with ease of access, unlike anything seen before. For sculpting, with the advent of 3D printing and 3D sculpting programs, artists can render things in much greater detail and without needing to spend too much on materials, which, depending on the quality, could be very expensive for traditional sculptors. Animators, meanwhile, practically live and breathe technology, without which they wouldn’t get any work done.
Other artists, such as photographers and even writers, find that using services such as photo editing and word processing programs, respectively, dramatically reduces their workload and gets things done much faster. For something like movies and audio-visual media, which are forms of art in their own right, you can hardly get anything done without technology.
The bottom line is that technology gives artists a better medium to express themselves. It makes things more efficient, provides easily accessible tools and services, and allows steady improvement and learning over time. Indeed, the use of particular technology has quickly become an industry standard without which most things just wouldn’t get done. It’s no longer just a passing trend; it’s here to stay.
Accessibility
Accessibility has always been at the forefront of technological innovation. Why innovate, if not to make things more accessible and more convenient for us to use? But accessibility is more than just making life easier. It’s also about catering to disabled people or people with learning or thinking disabilities, so they get to experience and enjoy the same benefits and convenience that we do.
Technology has gone through many leaps and bounds to help make things more accessible to disabled people. And this goes for artists and consumers of art alike. With built-in accessibility features, such as a color blindness filter, keyboard bindings, an option for larger text and readable backgrounds, transcriptions, and audio support, technology has helped artists with disabilities create art and view art.
High-quality Work and Efficiency
With enough practice, technology can help artists create outstanding work and work more efficiently. For example, film studios and television can utilize 3D effects and XR production to bring their ideas to life even without a proper set. It’s all about the way we use the technology that’s given to us and using it in a way that saves us both time and money while preserving its quality.
Of course, the quality of the work would depend on the artist and how much practice or skill they have. Still, with the use of technology, that skill can easily be honed and improved.
Creative Innovation
Technology has done a lot to breed innovation and creativity among artists who constantly find new and creative ways to express themselves through the technology at their disposal. Technological and creative innovation go hand in hand, for there can hardly be one without the other. After all, things like new kinds of paint and brushes used to be innovations in themselves.
With technology, the means to innovate and create even better tools and ways to create art has never been more possible or more accessible now. It’s safe to conclude, then, that technology has done a lot to help the world of art, whether it’s in the creative or viewing process.
