What Makes Digital Art Possible?
Zhou Caishu, Associate Professor, School of Literature, Nankai University
In the realm of literary and artistic creation propelled by digital technology, digital art has quietly emerged. This encompasses literary works, artistic creations, and video imagery crafted in digital formats, as well as artistic works generated by artificial intelligence. Digital art inherits the spiritual core of traditional literature while connecting with the expressive techniques of emerging arts, especially the generative models of AI art. This has led to the creation of a diverse and interactive field for literary and artistic practice. Digital art challenge traditional forms such as authorship, personal writing, and linear reading. They reflect revolutionary changes in creation, use, and consumption, and provide broader innovative pathways for dynamic, interactive, and participatory literary and artistic activities.
The possibility of digital art hinges on two conditions: logical possibility and objective effectiveness. Logical possibility means that a concept or proposition is feasible and free of contradictions in logic. It aids people in exploring the known world and venturing into the unknown. Objective effectiveness, on the other hand, focuses on whether it can exert real power in the real world. Beyond the fundamental support of digital technology, what particularly distinguishes digital art from traditional counterparts is its extensive penetration into daily life, reaching an unprecedented breadth.
Digital art shape everyday life from multiple dimensions. They fill the daily hours of modern people and reshape new forms of everyday experience. Ordinary objects in daily life—mirrors, windows, photographs, television screens, telescopes, etc.—enhance our understanding of the world. These common devices that augment our vision are familiar in use, yet we may not understand their underlying mechanisms. Today, whether we are sitting upright in focused study or lounging in a "couch potato" or "phubber" style for entertainment, our bodies are already engaged as we use smartphones or computers to browse information and watch videos. Our everyday experiences are more deeply reconstructed through the practice of digital art. The involvement of digital art in daily life can be examined from two dialectical dimensions. First, digital art expands the modes of expression of traditional literature and art, from creative experience and textual forms to reading experiences. They construct a perceptual space based on digital technology and reshape the aesthetic experience of literature and art. Second, daily life is saturated with various forms of digital art, becoming an era's atmosphere and a way of life. It is a very concrete existence; a digital image on a computer, an episode of a short video drama on a phone, or a poem spontaneously created in an electronic memo can all be aesthetic experiences for ordinary people. Digital art, having integrated into daily life, irresistibly appeals to the masses, transforming once solemn and noble art into lively and secular everyday life.
As digital art penetrates daily life, becoming a mode of behavior and spiritual space necessary for the survival and development of the masses, it constitutes a style of the times and society. It generates objective effectiveness and thus becomes possible. However, it cannot be ignored that the evolution of technology, the influx of capital, and the regulation of power—these complex factors mean that digital art is not purely an aesthetic artistic act. It is also an artistic social act involving capital competition. After becoming "possible," how digital art can be "feasible" remains a long and arduous journey.
Published on February 27, 2025