Digital Art The New El Dorado

Everybody knows the extent to which the digital mode has permeated the whole canvas of art. But there are two distinct realms in which this canvas is being filled with colour, form, detail and ways of seeing. At one end is the art itself. And at the other is the market—that is, the artist as a real-world agent who sells his or her art, and the rest of us, the seeing eye, the buyer and collector and dealer…a whole circuitry that’s evolving into quite a masterpiece in itself. First, the art. Take the palette-full of digital artists out there, making tonnes of money with tech-fuelled art tools. Then pass through the next looking glass—robots that can paint better than humans. Deep-learning AI systems can now study the inner processes of a long-gone master—say, a Da Vinci, or a Rembrandt. The visual stimuli they responded to, the way they thought about colour...