Art and Technology || The Age of the Electronic Image: The Effect on Art Education

National Art Education Association

The Age of the Electronic Image: The Effect on Art EducationAuthor(s): Stanley S. MadejaSource: Art Education, Vol. 46, No. 6, Art and Technology (Nov., 1993), pp. 8-14Published by: National Art Education AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3193403 .

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SPECIAL

Illustration I: Grouping of studio areas around the Visualization Center.

THE AGE OF THE

ELECTRONIC IMAGE:~~~~ THE EFFECT ON~~~~~

I ART EDUCATION / NOVEMBER 1993



In the last decade, the computer has started to take on a different role that provides a great advantage for the art educator. It

has become not only an information handling or processing machine, but also a synthesizing device. It is central to all of the electronic media today, the hub of the electronic and visualization wheel. As the hub of the visualization wheel, the computer can receive data, process it, and direct it to a peripheral device which translates the data into text, video, movie or still photograph, with or without sound. The computer has provided a creative device for image creation and enhancement for the visual arts educator.

At the 1939 Century of Progress New York World's Fair the Radio Corporation of American (RCA) introduced the first public demonstration of television, thus ushering in the age of the electronic image. Heretofore all reproductions of moving or still images were generated from a camera and recorded on light sensitive film. Experiments with electronic imagery had been conducted earlier in the century but were limited to the laboratory and not for a mass audience. Further, the transmission of sound through radio was still relatively new, and the introduction of television, which was the simultaneous transmission of sound and image, was a revolutionary idea, even in a century which could be labeled the "electronic century." The advent of WW II delayed the dissemination of television until the late 1940s. However, after its mass market introduction, television changed the lifestyle of

The computer has provided a

creative device for image creation

and enhancement for the visual

arts educator.

everyone on the planet. Parallel to the introduction of

television was the invention in World War II of the computer, an electronic information storage and processing device. The development of the computer up to the sixties was more or less separate from that of television. But the capabilities of both inventions were becoming more sophisticated as well as experimental and started to merge into a new field of study, computer imagery. The concept was to generate images based on mathematical descriptions of shapes on a television screen or what was to be called computer monitors. The monitor differed from a standard T.V. screen in that it received its signal not from a T.V. signal transmitted through the atmosphere, and/or later a cable signal, but from a computer which defined the location of a point on the picture plane on the monitor's screen. By connecting various points on the screen or later, designating color or value to the point, lines and shapes were constructed.

The relationship between television, computer imagery, and imaging processing and transmission became less distinct as new technologies emerged. The most dramatic shift occurred when the digital format became the norm for imagery, replacing the analogue imagery which

is the image's source for broadcast television. This transition allowed for the first time a common language, mathematics, to inform the technologies used to interface for imaging. Jones describes this transition:

In the 1940's analogue computers were used to generate the earliest computer graphics and display them on oscilloscopes. Ben F. Lapofsky and Herbert W. Franke were among the pioneers creating these images. Franke's graphics were phase forms, presented as events rather than as static imagery.1

Through digital technology the screen now became a grid pattern made up of points called pixels which could be described and located numerically in a x/y axis matrix. This division of the monitor screen into a dot/pixel matrix provided a means for visual resolution of the electronic image which would be equal in quality to images of film generated imagery, i.e. the density of the pixels increased the resolution of the image. More important, it provided a precise and visually more resolute means by which images could be captured or recorded through the use of a digital T.V. camera and/or a visual scanner. Consequently, the computer has now taken on an expanded role in imaging - that of a

BY STANLEY S. MADEJA

NOVEMBER 1993 / ART EDUCATION



synthesizing and storage device for visuals. It has become the hub of an electronic wheel for generating, inventing, creating, storing, sorting, combining, analyzing, enhancing, changing visual images. It can accept images from various sources, such as a video image, a still photograph, an electronic image, or a drawing.

The major change in the imaging environment in the next decade is taking place in the types of communication networks that are either now developing or are to be developed within that timeframe. There are two major trend lines which come together and yet may also remain separate in the development of future networks or communication systems.

The fiberoptic cable network, primarily used for telecommunications at present, is a major area for expansion in the next decade of computing. Many businesses, universities, and government units are developing fiberoptic networks and backbones which transmit 25,000 times as much information as is now carried over four conventional phone lines. The fiberoptic system also provides channels for transmission of sound and images which heretofore were difficult to transmit over conventional systems. Consequently, fiberoptic cable provides a new type of highway for imaging that was described in a recent New York Times article on how lasers may eventually directly personalize the home or the office. Both major telecommunications groups in the United States and in Canada, AT&T and Northern Telecom Limited of Canada, were described as being able to bring laser technology through fiberoptic networks into every home in the United States and Canada.

Scientists atAmerican Telephone and Telegraph Company said they developed a way to transmit 6 billion bits of information a second on glass strands about the size of a piece of angel hair pasta. That is enough capacity to provide every phone service for 100,000 calls or for nearly all the fans in Yankee Stadium and Can- dlestick Park on sell-out days. It will work over a distance of about 520 miles in a field where signals are tricky to sustain even in a few miles.2

The capacity available for networking within the imaging environment has significant implications for all levels of learning in that the education community will have capabilities for col- laborative research and development, direct access into the personal computing environment of students, researchers, and/or direct access to or data bases worldwide. This includes still and moving images as well as print material. It also implies that this is an interactive system between individuals and/or groups in a global context. The ways in which we transmit and develop imagery and soundtracks may drastically change because of this ability to communicate with a world audience.

The other trend, which is related to the fiberoptic system but provides the opportunity for communication through airwaves, rather than through cable or wire systems, is also being explored. Coupled with the fiberoptic systems it will create a total communication network worldwide.

Illustration 2: Floor Satellite systems

plan of Visualization have changed the communication of Center showing light- communication of imagery and sound

ing, sound, and con- i

o e s on our television

trol areas. networks. Cable

News Network makes the most dramatic use of that technology, wherein they actually connect multiple sites worldwide instantaneously and immediately report on events or activities within a geographic region. The Gulf War recently demonstrated the capabilities of CNN to react immediately to a crisis situation and create a world network of information and on-site reporting on one event. An airwave network would preclude the necessity of wiring every home or institution, and have the capability to connect the most remote individuals or regions. A variation of the airway system is that of laser

ART EDUCATION / NOVEMBER 1993



Illustration 3: A wire

frame drawing of the

Visualization Center.

technology, which offers a transmission system capitalizing on the capacity of lasers to carry and read visual and sound data which is beyond the capabilities of traditional radio/video wave communication nets. A description is given by Barnaby Feder of what he terms "the future phone," a design for a 21st century combined telephone and work station that is being developed by a Dictaphone Corporation.3 Mr. Feder says that designers expect post- millennium executives to need keyboard features such as a built-in headset, a voice recognition unit, a communications tower that communicates with the computer, a port for downloading information from the computer to diskettes, and a clear display panel. The panel would actually hang or be suspended in space and would become opaque, but would

display messages being dictated into a voice recognition unit and other data and video images. The screen also acts as a video monitor and splits into multiple windows like today's computer displays, and the computer would be connected to a communications tower by radio transmissions instead of wire. This speaks to the nature of what a workstation for visualization might look like in the future, combining these two types of networking capabilities.

Knowing these technological advances, what are the implications for art education theory and practice? The obvious conclusion is that electronic imaging can no longer be set apart from the basic constructs of art education. Electronic media have changed the process and the technique for creating images in almost every field in which

artists and art students engage. Electronic images and imaging are no longer peripheral to the content of the art program K-12 or in university art programs. To emphasize this point: it has not only become essential that a student engage in the process of electronic imaging, but it has become a prerequisite for entry into almost every field of study in the visual arts. At the university level there has been in the last fifteen years a dramatic shift in emphasis to design related fields of study within schools of art. In many schools over fifty percent of the students are enrolled in visual communications, graphic design, multi or intermedia programs, interior design and architecture programs, all of these fields requiring competency in computer imaging at the entry level. Students who do not have these




competencies are working at an extreme disadvantage. The need for computer literacy is applicable to all students in the visual arts at the college level. Painters, sculptors, and crafts persons are utilizing the computer in a variety of ways both in the artistic process and the management of their business as artists. The development of multi-media and interactive units based on the new windows and hypercard formats is proliferating in the field of art education.

This demand in the workplace and in teaching accelerates the synergistic positioning of electronic imaging as a part of the art curriculum at the college level, and this will have a ripple effect for the visual arts in the elementary and secondary schools. Therefore, it necessitates rethinking the content domain of the visual arts; a new model or paradigm for art education that includes new imaging and sound technology must emerge to equip students for the next century. Technology should be thought of as facilitating the artistic and creative process in which the artist or designer engages. It is a delivery system for instruction in art, and an art form itself. For art education, it implies a total rethinking of how we deliver instruction in the visual arts and the content of the art curriculum at every level. Technological devices geared to young people are available now in the form of video games of electronic sketch pads which are vehicles for presentation of visual content and ideas. We must address how the student will be systematically engaged with technology from the earliest age. The art teacher would be taking on the task of teaching not only in the tradition areas, but also in imaging technology.

At the K-12 level, the curriculum would include major units of study that engage the student in creating images with various output devices, i.e., print techniques that include documenting the electronic image, video pieces which include electronically developed imagery, two and three-dimensional animation techniques which would be documented on film or video, plotted imagery which uses electronic imaging as a base, or 3D images in virtual space.

The student would be generally educated in the visual use of technology just as he or she is now educated in and about the content of the studio arts, aesthetics, art history, and art appreciation. Therefore, I propose that one more content domain, electronic imaging, be added to the accepted art history, criticism,

aesthetics, and studio content

Illustration 4: The 2-D areas of future art imaging area in the curricula. This

Visualization Center. objective which I

alluded to some ten years ago in an article in this journal, can now be readily accomplished.4The computer is now accessible to most students and to most schools, and the capability of the computer in terms of its memory and the programs which are now available can be adapted to various levels of instruction within the art curriculum. Further, the ability of art teachers to develop their own curricula in this area is increasing. Many curriculum projects already under way in schools are experimenting with multi-media formats for various subject areas, and a number of individuals in the visual arts are working on curricula that can be adapted for this purpose. Consequently, we now have the necessary hardware and software to implement electronic imaging programs. Price and accessibility are no longer the barriers they were a decade ago.

In addition, many visual resources will now be accessible for teachers and

| ART EDUCATION / NOVEMBER 1993



students which were not available in the past. Visual disk libraries of images are being developed by most museums. The National Gallery of Art has developed a number of video disks of their collection which give the user instant access to art imagery for instructional or presentation purposes. The Getty Trust has made a major effort to assist museums in documenting their collections and at some point these images will become electronically available to user groups. Further, commercial data banks that contain large repositories of images, such as National Geographic Magazine or Time Life, may soon become available to individuals or to institutions for a fee for educational purposes. The National Archive and the Library of Congress have visual data banks which provide historical images and resources useful for a variety of educational applications in the visual arts. These are just a few of the resources that are or will be available to teachers of art from the new technology for adoption into a new model for art education. This new visual library will be delivered to the user at a relatively small cost which will expand the use of images for students and teachers in visual arts instruction. The networking systems that are now being proposed will be the delivery mechanisms for the imagery, and it is not unthinkable to envision that students either at school or even in their homes would have access to these images through their airwave, telephone, or cable connections on a twenty-four-hour basis. This, obviously, will not be a system at no cost. It will probably be delivered somewhat like cable television in which a user fee is charged for certain services, but the costs will be relatively small as

... it has not only become essential that a student engage in the process of electronic imaging, but it has become a prerequisite for entry into almost every field of study in the visual arts.

compared to what now exists. Further, it will have significant implications for the slide library, print collection, or media resource centers in schools which now collect slides, filmstrips and videos for instructional purposes. The video disk and/or a network-based visual database will be the vehicles by which we will have access to the images. The computer, combined with the television set, will become the presentation device either for large- scale group presentations or for individual student use in a high definition format.

A more tangible implication for art instruction will be in the space that we will be designing for the art programs of the future. The technology will dramatically change how art spaces for instruction and the making of art are designed. A recent study which I conducted suggests what we might expect in the future.5

The art space of the future will be designed with an electronic visualization center as its central architectural space. The space which is envisioned will be synergistic to the art complex or art room. (see illustration 1.)

Traditional studio spaces would not be changed but may be configured in a different way to best utilize what technology now offers, like a hub of a wheel with spokes which connect to an outer ring of work spaces. The hub or center of the configuration would be the visualization space or center.

The visualization center I envision will have four major spaces which are integrated into the plan: a two- dimensional imaging area, a three- dimensional imaging area and sound/image control area and a work station area. (see illustrations 2, 3, 4, and front cover)

* 2D/AREA: This space has as features, a large project wall for video or still image displays, a video wall multi-image cube, and a 3D sound system. The space will have a viewing/seating area.

* 3D/AREA: The space has as features, a semicircular projection wall, a holographic platform for 3D imaging, and a space for virtual reality experiments or other types of 3D simulations. This space will have a viewing/seating area. *

* SOUND/IMAGE CONTROL AREA: The space has as features the controls for the media which will be used in the 2D/3D areas. It is envisioned as a bridge located above the 2D/3D AREAS which provides visual access and views of both spaces.

*WORK STATIONS AREA: Individual portable work stations will be located under the bridge area of the visualization center. This will be an enclosed space but have visual and physical access to the 2D and 3D areas. Also, remote stations will be located in classrooms or studios.

The work station for the visualization center may be considered




a "next generation" work station, which will no longer have a conventional video monitor, but an interactive electronic surface termed "the electronic drawing surface." It will be a digital video screen similar to a light table on which the student or artist can call up images from the visual library. The artist/designer/ student will be able to draw directly on the surface

Illustration 5: A 3- with a stylus to create

D rendering of the images, use an

electronic drawing existing program, or create a program which generates images. The work

station will permit instantaneous retention of the image on a disk which can be stored temporarily or permanently. The artist, designer, or student will be able to transfer the image to print, video, or still photographic images. The work station

will be connected to extensive visual display capabilities in the visualization center. (see illustration 5.)

The implications of the design of new spaces suggest that art education will take place not just in school, but also in the home and in other sites within the community such as the museum or cultural center. The student will be connected electronically

to the school, the museum, not only in his or her community, but nationally and internationally. Students will be able to access information that heretofore was delivered from an institutional base or by a teacher. This arrangement will confirm that art education not only will need to expand its content base, but its target audience and the methods by which it delivers instruction. Art teachers should be educated in ways of delivering instruction in the school setting, to the home, and to the world. Marshall Mcluhan6 suggested some twenty-five

years ago that we are living in a global village, and the global community will be the future audience for educational or commercial enterprises. This is the attitude and mind set that art educators must have, that we are educating a world audience and we have the potential to reach that audience which heretofore was not available to us. This thought alone implies that art education must take on a broader content base, and it must think through the various priorities within the field for the content it is going to teach. It will be possible for the master teacher to reach an audience of millions, engaging them creatively and inventively in the making of art. This could cause art education to become primal to the education of all youth within every country on the planet. This may seem utopian, but for the first time we have available the means to accomplish that goal, and it should not be minimized.

Stanley S. Madeja is Dean, Visual and PerformingArts, Northern Illinois University, DeKalb, Illinois.

NOTES 1Jones, Beverly, J. Computer Graphics: Effects

of Origins. Leonardo Digital Image-Digital Cinema, Sept. Issue, 1990, p. 23.

2Ramirez, Anthony, Laser Benefits Now Closer to Home. New York Times. Thursday, July 23,1992, p. C3.

3Feder, Barnaby J. I See Memos in My Crystal Ball. New York Times. Thursday, July 23, 1992, p. C3.

4Madeja, Stanley S. Computer Graphics, The New Subject Matter for the Art Curriculum, Art Education, Vol. 36, No. 3, May 1983, pp. 15-17.

5Madeja, Stanley S. The Art Space and the New Technology. Monograph, Northern Illinois University, DeKalb, IL 1993, p. 48.

6Mcluhan, Marshall, with Quentin Fiore and Jerome Agel, War and Peace in the Global Village. New York: Bantam Press, 1968.

ART EDUCATION / NOVEMBER 1993



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Art and Technology || The Age of the Electronic Image: The Effect on Art Education