To date digital art has mainly consisted of redoing old things in new ways. We were very interested in this article we came across that posed the question, How can art bridge the digital divide?
The art instillation called "The Tree of Pascal” consists of traditional paintings, EEG brainwaves recorded with a personal brain-computer interface, smart glass, and a live tree. As we interpret it, the artist Drue Kataoka has focused her attention on posing the deeper question about whether art is more about the physical appeal or does it hold a deeper meaning to us as humans? What makes this very different from other pieces of digital art is that the observer is forced to go into partnership with the artist and becomes a physical embodiment of the piece itself. The artist is interested in measuring our experience, emotions and the affect it has upon us. This in turn then also becomes part of the art piece itself.
The intriguing aspect to this art is the digital measurability it outputs. The very nature of this output re-invigorates the age old question of; is art a science?
