NFTs? Crypto-art? Digital art? Just art? The contemporary digital art scene has been unable to define itself. But why can’t it see the obvious?

Digital art has been around since the 1960s but for a long time it was mostly contained within the constraints of access to machines, constant aging and obsolescence of software and hardware, as well as absence from ordinary life up until the early to mid-90s.

With the popularization of the home computer and the internet, and the availability and ease of use of Photoshop and other creative software, the public at large truly started to experience technology as a new way of life. Fast forward 30-something years and we are faced with relentless, almost non-stop changes in the way we work, communicate, consume and interact as a society.

We’ve been in constant transition, pawns at the mercy of the network (we can’t live or function meaningfully without it, but as it turns out it’s beginning to gain life without us with fast-evolving AI agents). How do we contend with this upheaval? How do we make sense of it? Through art. But what art?

The art of our generation is part creation through traditional methods or existing digital methods, and part experimentation within a highly connected environment with very distinct characteristics. It’s intrinsically linked to the blockchain as a distribution method but also, on occasion as a canvas. It can pull on networked aesthetic, which can also be blissfully absent from it. It can simply be an artwork created manually using digital software or a painting that has been digitised and tokenised. As an art movement, it has struggled to define itself amidst the chaos of available variety.

“As an art movement, it has struggled to define itself amidst the chaos of available variety.”
SELKIE

In a world where approximately 6 billion people – 73.2 percent of the global population – are connected to the web and 5.6 billion – 68.7 percent – make regular use of social media, the experiences of connectivity, constant flow of information, computer aesthetics, and the behaviours elicited by all of these are currently common to the majority of humankind.

Granted, there are different levels of adoption of new technologies still at play – the blockchain itself is yet to reach the “mainstream”. It always takes longer than technologists and early adopters realise for mass use of their products or innovations to come into force. The popping of the dot-com bubble is a clear example of that, and the likely upcoming AI bubble burst should be further proof.

Much like the general technologists and early digital artists, this movement is also contending with a lag. While it has wholeheartedly made the leap into web3, most of the connected world still operates in web2. Current artists express joy, anguish, an analytical eye, scathing criticism and blind adoration while riding a market-dependent rollercoaster within a niche amusement park. A market many of them see as central to this movement’s existence, which makes for another defining and isolating characteristic.

This is an art movement that is at the centre of everything, while still very much locked away from reach – partly by design, because it cherishes and hangs on to what sets it apart, partly by being at the mercy of the slowness of widespread societal change.

The truth is that digital artists of the current age are no different than artists of any other era. They are record-keepers and interpreters of their own age – reflecting the inward human condition and the environment where it thrives or dies.

This movement found itself through its ability to convene around niche and innovative technology, starting a whole new chapter in the history of art. Does is have a defining aesthetic like, say, cubism or pop art? No. Is it an amalgamation of aesthetics facilitated by artists having knowledge at their fingertips and supported by ease of dissemination? Yes. Is it a reflection of the network and what it’s brought to us as a society – unfiltered information, convenience, constant innovation and nowhere to hide? Also, yes.

When art critics like Jerry Saltz take aim at AI art, for instance, they entirely miss the point. They are looking at today’s art with yesterday’s eyes. Saltz and other vocal critics view art in silos, but contemporary digital art needs to be examined as a whole. AI, generative, 3D, animation, illustration, painting, photography – the medium is not the message. The whole is.

“The new digital artists are purveyors of neo-connected art, to coin a term, and the drivers of a movement where everything goes as long as it’s breaking barriers and never standing still.”
SELKIE

Which brings me back to the aforementioned obvious: what defines this movement.

The art we see now is the loud cry of a set of generations who have experienced more changes faster than any other generation in history.

Its existence is defined by connection, visibility, accessibility, an intrinsic relationship with the market, a variety of media, and artists who are able and willing to create meaningful artworks within those systems. All that alongside a system of permanent record and immutability of ownership.

The new digital artists are purveyors of neo-connected art, to coin a term, and the drivers of a movement where everything goes as long as it’s breaking barriers and never standing still.

Editor’s note: Selkie (Thais Portilho) is a curator, business and PR strategist, as well as the founder and director of Hash Gallery.