Experts discuss the future of digital art

By Chris Jones/The Oshawa Express

The Robert McLaughlin Gallery (RMG) hosted a symposium where digital artists discussed their field and what it brings to the table.

The symposium was called Ideas Digital Forum, and took place on Oct. 12 and Oct. 13.

Digital artists such as Caroline Langill, Niranjan Rajah and Zainub Verjee were some of many who spoke at the event.

Allison Humphrey was one of the presenters, and she discussed her time working on Shadowpox: the Antibody Politic, a motion-tracked interactive projection that provides insight into what vaccinating can do to help the world’s population.

Humphrey and her team presented Shadowpox to the World Health Assembly in Geneva, Switzerland.

Humphrey believes that digital art is “the opportunity to give the audience a chance to make choices and experiment with what those choices lead to. Find out consequences from choices.”

Humphrey says that she thinks that, as digital art becomes more accessible and the parts get cheaper, more and more people are going to become digital artists and it will join the mainstream art world.

The fact the RMG was putting on the symposium gave Humphrey hope that it is the art form is gaining respect in the art world.

“I think that one of the things that the RMG is doing here is kind of enticing people by saying, ‘Look this is kind of like a piece that is on you Playstation at home, or your Xbox, and it is something that you will understand,’” she says.

At the symposium, Humphrey says that her favourite piece of work at the event was a photograph by Rajah, where the lens on his camera had fallen off while he was making an offering to a “god of darkness” who “eats the sun” in Thailand. When the lens fell, the camera went dark. He felt that it was symbolic of the god eating the sun right when he made his offering.

The RMG’s next event is David Bastedo: Through my Lens, a look at the works of photographer David Bastedo, on Oct. 26 from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m.