The Digital Art Revolution

As technology governs contemporary lives, the realm of art, despite long being known as a stickler for tradition, opens it arms.

- Kames Narayanan

Housed within the Singapore Art Science Museum is the city’s largest permanent digital art gallery “Future World”, the brainchild of Japanese tech-art collective, teamLab. Inside the sprawling exhibition space resides a digitally immersive universe of 16 diverse art installations, each strategically designed to prompt interactivity with the museum’s visitors.

Since being unveiled three years ago, the exhibition has transported more than a million visitors to the foot of a virtual waterfall where each drop of water reacts to the human touch just as it would in nature; a seemingly infinite man-made celestial universe; and a digital oasis of serenity, amongst others. Just as its name suggests, the capacious exhibition foreshadows a conceivable digitised future. Yet, at its core, what it speaks of is the present state of art.

Long understood as a mirror of the cultural zeitgeists during which it was born, art is largely reflective of greater societal shifts beyond its insular realm. For that matter, in the age of technology, contemporary art has perceivably graduated from the traditional medium of putting a paintbrush to a canvas. As technology continues to steer ahead of time, the artist’s repertoire of tools has also grown alongside it.

This intersection of art and technology is loosely parked under the umbrella term new media art — which essentially encompasses all artworks created with digital technologies from computer graphics to virtual art.

“The convergence of art and technology has certainly become more pronounced in recent years. In fact, video is almost ubiquitous to contemporary art in Singapore these days,” says Dr June Yap, Singapore Art Museum’s director of curatorial, programmes and publications.