Hello There!
I am breaking the entire Artist vs Techie chronicles into multiple posts so it is easier to read. This series of posts aim to cover some topics about art and tech objectively and general conception about the two I have noticed around me.
In the last post, I aim to unite the divide between being an artist and being a tech guy.
From making RGB lights to creating Digital Art
Imagine you are in the year 1996, smashing away at the bleeding edge Windows 95. You see how a box of metal can create amazing, interactable graphics and get the bright idea, “I can use this to make paintings, reducing the cost of raw materials and enabling artist to make huge real-time edits for free!”. However, nobody has ever made anything like this before, so you try to understand how the hunky-dory world on the motherboard is doing this Windowy magic in the first place.
For starters, the CPU has to be able to interact with the screen in order to send it the RGB information of each pixel to display and manipulate. Seems, pretty straightforward right? HOLD YOUR HORSES, you must ensure that all CPUs have the compatible interfaces open for you to code on (lest you code different versions of the same app for different hardware), every possible screen has the same interface and methods for receiving and displaying RGB data, and the RGB data format to be standardized across the world so handling it and processing it do things with is actually possible. Thankfully, windows has that figured out for you, and hopefully they have all the tech open sourced or interfaced for you to build with.
If this is not the case, good luck building all the software, hardware and standardizing of tech from scratch! For the screen alone, making the RBG lights work out of pure 0 and 1s, making an interface for it to accept data and display it 60 times in one second seems like pure magic, but it has been solved and then some more. Now, these screens power the most creative industries today (When I realized this, it blew my mind thinking about far our 0 and 1 tech has come).
Assuming you have all the APIs figured out to interact with OS which can handle accepting user inputs, run your code, display the data generated by it (and acceptable for the system to send to monitor), you can finally start making your solution.
Let’s start by figuring out how you would actually hold and display the data. Let’s say you go with a document style canvas that can hold multiple layers. This way, the artist can draw on multiple layers and move the art around or shift the layer order to make changes to their masterpiece. It will essentially boil down to three main things you need to do:
- Create a way for the user to add RGB information to a layer, for example with brushes.
- Let the user save their layer information and manipulate it.
- Convert the layer information into a single RGB image for the monitor to display 60 times every second.
This would essentially be your rendition of a very simplified version of photoshop. If someone likes your product, they may use their expertise of vector math to make filters that manipulate the RGB vectors. Someone else may make changes to the brush’s data operations to allow user to make custom brushes for different textures.
In the end, by understanding and painstakingly creating the low-level technology you have passed the baton to build on top of your product. More importantly you have created a way for anyone in the world to create any work of art without having to leave their room to buy another canvas or a box of paint. All of this started with your desire to make art more easily and cheaply.
This is how the world of Digital Art has come to thrive. Someone wanted to improve the experience of making art, went on a technical odyssey, and changed the world forever. Maybe something to think about next time you fire up Photoshop to make a monkey NFT.
Do you really want to use that?
Every craftsman enjoys making art. None of them inherently wishes to sit and calibrate their tools for hours. From them making machines for others, to using machine built by others. No matter how tech savvy you are, do you really want to spend 30 hours learning an esoteric skill because it allows for a more optimized solution for 1 problem?
It is imperative to offer the most intuitive way for you users to solve their problems. If you come up with something that people must jump through hoops to use, it is unlikely to be a successful product.
What makes any solution adoptable?
It is no surprise that artists ranging from Da Vinci to people at Adobe come up with some of the best products. Afterall, they know best the difficulties that come up when they want to create what they are passionate about. The best solution, is always the simplest one! This may seem like common sense, but when it’s time to create anything, people never fail to come up with the most convoluted solution they can conjure. This happens more so in tech, where people always end up making all sorts of Clay-Doh spaghetti code with no clear forethought. You should not be an evangelist either, and avoid forcing down your meticulous opinions on others view of solving problems. If either of these issues creep into your product, they will make it absolutely unusable, for both the users and the developers.
You need a good understanding of fundamental design principles to be able to design a product that people enjoy to use. However, that understanding needs to be backed up with the skills and tools to actually execute the vision. The tools themselves need a colossal understanding of technology to be brought into existence. The technology behind the tools is made on the products designed by others. The creators of these products will have to have made a good UI with an intuitive UX for you to want to build with it. The cycle continues.
Artech for the Win!
With this series, I have tried to highlight the big fat line that exists between art and tech, at least inside our perceptions. I have seen both ends of the spectrum. An artist being scared of technical know-how, and the technical guy being scared of art. Through my own experience, I think it is art that enables us to use technology in a simple way and technology that enables us to create art in a simple way.
While you may not be a one man army soloing entire projects, it is still beneficial to be on both sides of the line. It will allow you to get the whole picture and transcend all limitations to create the ultimate masterpiece.