Why digital art is suddenly sexy!?

The year 2020 is not yet over and has completely changed our world. The cause is Covid-19, a virus of mysterious origin that has become exactly what most people have been trying to achieve since the invention of the Internet: viral!

Pandemics have been played out in all science fiction films, but no one expected that in the 21st century a pandemic would cause our rapidly changing and – at least from a Western perspective – perfect world to go haywire.

The virus has shown humanity its imperfect nature. The months of standstill reveal the limits of resilience.
But there is one thing we can be sure of: technological progress, which since the industrial revolution has inexorably spread to all areas of life, is experiencing its heyday. The pandemic is its accelerator.

Because COVID-19 challenges us all to remain agile even in a state of emergency and to react actively and flexibly to the changing situation. Darwin’s theory is all about digital adaptation in the 21st century. Those who don’t have a smartphone or don’t know how to use digital media remain isolated – and this 15 years after Dirk von Lowtzow shouted „digital is better“ into the world.

Innovation
In doing so, art and culture always show a seismographic sense for the achievements of their time, even if the majority of society only appreciates this years later. Innovation comes from changing patterns of perception; in the case of art, creativity causes innovation.
Many of the works, especially modern works, that we can see in museums today were ahead of their time. The late success of some artists can be deduced from the fact that the innovative was not recognised at first, for the simple reason that there was nothing comparable. The new was thus too new to be accepted by the general public – and this has not changed to this day.

With the pandemic, the globe is thirsting for digitalisation. Media articles about digital art and culture are also overflowing.

Yet digital art has been around since the first computers were connected, that is, since the 1960s. The first internet artworks have been online since 1993 until today. Software art is almost obsolete again. Post-internet and post-social media art have attracted increased attention in recent years. AR, VR and AI are the basis of new expressive possibilities. The range of artistic possibilities is endless, the visual imagery of contemporary art as a whole can no longer be assigned to a clear style since the 1990s.

Technology-based art has become a strikingly popular theme in the art world in recent months. And yet it has taken almost five decades for it to become increasingly attractive as a collectible.
Who or what is worth collecting, what criteria to consider and how to counter the ephemeral nature of this art will be the subject of the next few blog posts.