The historical beginnings of digital arts in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia: البدايات التاريخية للفنون الرقمية بالمملكة العربية السعودية

The aim of the research is to get to know digital art through a historical account of it, and to know the first beginnings of digital art in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia through an art exhibition, to identify the artists and artists who turned to digital art in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and the researcher followed the historical approach, and the research dealt with: the first beginnings Digital art in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in the first plastic art exhibition, and artists and artists of digital art in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, in addition to the reality and future of digital art in terms of (pros and cons), and the results of the research showed that the beginnings of digital art was in 1998 AD as the first plastic exhibition, and was the first Personal digital art exhibition in 2008 AD in an exhibition without appointment for the artist Dr. Manal Al-Ruwaished, and the first collective digital art exhibition in 2009 AD in an exhibition for the digital art group consisting of Manal Al-Ruwaished and artist Hana Al-Shibli and artist Hoda Al-Ruwais and Fawzih Al-Mutairi and Aisha Al-Harithi My digital calligraphy in 2010. Based on the results, the researcher recommended documenting the beginnings of digital art as the first formative exhibition in specialized references for digital art, and counting the digital artists and writing them in references specialized in digital art.

Biometric Capture

The current system of the surveillance of migrants relies on biometric capture. To be captured is to be codified into machine-readable representations. This paper merges technological codifications with political discourse to explore the disproportionate capturing of black migrants in the UK. Using the historical treatment of Nigerian migrants in the UK as an illustration, this paper interrogates how contemporary technologies are used to codify and confine black migrants. This paper explores works from digital artists – Keith Piper and Joy Buolamwini – to address this codification of blackness using biometric technology. It calls for new technological cultures of coding that centre the disruption of violent systems of capture. Failure is defined as this disruption of hegemonic systems of codification and capture that aim to subjugate black communities. This paper stresses that it is only when technologies of capture fail that black and migrant communities can truly experience digital freedom.

Divine Violence: The Ethics and Aesthetics of the Goddess-woman in the Abused Goddess Ad Campaign

In the fall of 2013, an ad campaign from the Mumbai-based agency Taproot exploded in popularity on social media and was featured on a variety of news sites, particularly in India and the United States. The campaign, known as the Abused Goddess ads, depicted an iteration of the Goddess most accurately characterized as a Goddess-woman, a divine-human hybrid figure possessing both the divine power of shakti and the vulnerability of human women. Stylized in the “canonical” images of the Goddesses Lakshmi, Saraswati, and Durga, the Goddess-women were shown as bruised victims of domestic violence. The Abused Goddess ads precipitated and codified the contemporary depictions of the Goddess-woman whose later iterations appear in the work of numerous digital artists. In particular, the ads exemplify an aesthetic that harnesses the power of shame and the mingling of gazes to further a secular-humanist ethic at the expense of devotional experience.

Going Underground

This chapter charts the birth and growth of the demoscene, an online community of digital artists and musicians who create and share real-time procedural artworks. Part of the digital underground, the ethos was, and remains, one of pushing systems to their limits and so became a natural home for chiptune. The chapter begins by exploring the roots of the demoscene in the computer hacking scene of 1970s California, a community who believed strongly that computer software should be free. As software protection systems were introduced to prevent unauthorized copying, highly skilled ‘crackers’ removed them, highlighting their achievements with elaborate audiovisual digital graffiti. Over time, competition to create the most extravagant artwork and music became an end in itself, creating the demoscene. Today, this vibrant community thrives and has become bigger and slicker than ever, although, as some interviewees suggest, in so doing it may have lost some of its countercultural charm.

Data visualization as creative art practice

This article begins by tracing the evolution of data visualization from the fields of aesthetics to areas of creative practice, arguing that the emergence of big data presents creative potential for digital artists. Whereas conventional information visualization emphasizes the effective understanding of data, aesthetics considers the possibility that visualization can enhance the experience of data and support the acquisition of knowledge. In expressing an artistic intent or form, data-based creative practices synthesize and build upon techniques in communications and aesthetics. The article provides a review of recent digital art projects involving big data and suggests further directions for creative practice in an era of data proliferation.

Remaking Tank Man, in China

Tank Man, the image of the lone protestor who faced down the tanks near Tian’anmen Square in 1989, leads a vibrant afterlife in political cartoons, memes, and YouTube remixes. In an era when staying memorable increasingly means being searchable online, these digital remakes have helped to keep his image fresh – outside China anyway. In China itself, though, Tank Man is a famously verboten image, mostly policed out of online sight. The digital artists who have repurposed his image are typically so harried by the censors that their work cannot hope to endow Tank Man with mass viral visibility, let alone the iconic status he possesses abroad. But precisely because of their fugitive character – which produces audiences who are alert, amused, and on the qui vive – these repurposings ensure that Tank Man remains the grit in the clam of public secrecy about 1989.

Free Software Beyond Radical Politics: Negotiations of Creative and Craft Autonomy in Digital Visual Media Production

Free software development and the technological practices of hackers have been broadly recognised as fundamental for the formation of political cultures that foster democracy in the digital mediascape. This article explores the role of free software in the practices of digital artists, animators and technicians who work in various roles for the contemporary digital visual media industries. Rather than discussing it as a model of organising work, the study conceives free software as a production tool and shows how it becomes a locus of politics about finding material security in flexible capitalism. This politics is ultimately contradictory in that it extends creative and craft autonomy of digital artists but does not mobilise a critical project. Instead, it nurtures further precarious labour. Empirically, the article draws on ethnographically collected material from the media practices of digital artists and programmers who engage with two popular free software production tools, Blender and Synfig.

COREL PAINTER: FOR THE WHOLE SKETCHING AND COLORING

Corel Painter is a raster-based digital art application created to simulate as accurately as possible the appearance and behavior of traditional media associated with drawing, painting, and printmaking. It is intended to be used in real-time by professional digital artists as a functional creative tool. The current version is Painter X3, released on July 2013.Corel Painter emulates the visual characteristics of traditional media, such as oil paint, pastel sticks, air brush, charcoal, felt pens, and other traditional artists' materials on various textured surfaces. Many of these emulated media types work with the advanced features of Wacom tablets. For instance, the airbrush tool in Painter responds to pressure as well as tilt, velocity and rotation. Corel History: