## 1. What is Digital Art?


### 1.1 The Digital Art World



In its broadest extant sense, "digital art" refers to art
that relies on computer-based digital encoding, or on the electronic
storage and processing of information in different formats--text,
numbers, images, sounds--in a common binary code. The ways in
which art-making can incorporate computer-based digital encoding are
extremely diverse. A digital photograph may be the product of a
manipulated sample of visual information captured with a digital
camera from a "live" scene or captured with a scanner from
a traditional celluloid photograph. Music can be recorded and then
manipulated digitally or created digitally with specialized computer
software. And a film is now the product of an extremely complex
sequence of choices between analog and digital processes at the stages
of image and sound capture or composition, image and sound editing,
color correction or sound mastering, special effects production, and
display or projection.



The complexity of the digital cinema workflow draws attention to a
further difference concerning whether reliance on the digital is
restricted to the way an artwork is made or extends to the display of
the work. A work may be made on a computer--say, a musical work
composed with Sibelius or a play written in Microsoft Word--and
yet meant for apprehension in a non-digital format--say,
performance on traditional musical instruments or enactment on stage.
Similarly, a film could be captured and edited digitally before being
printed on traditional 35mm photochemical film for projection in
theaters. By contrast, works that are purely digital include a film
made and projected digitally--for example, *Dune* (2021),
a piece of music composed and played back electronically--for
example, the electroacoustic works of Gottfried Michael Koenig (see
 Other Internet Resources),
 and a work of ASCII art--an image made up from the 95 printable
characters defined by the ASCII standard of 1963 and displayed on a
computer monitor.



An example of ASCII art:




```

  (\_/)
 (='.'=)
 (")^(") 

```



More recent kinds of purely digital art include Instagram art and
Chatbot fiction. An example of the former is *Land of Arca*
(2023), which is made up of narrative images created by AI and then
curated by the Instagram account's owner, IRK. An example of the
latter is any of the myriad science fiction short stories with which
several literary magazines were recently deluged.



Each of the examples above incorporates a computational process, to
some degree, in the presentation of the work. In many ways, works
belonging to digital media stand in stark contrast to those made by
completely analog means.


### 1.2 The Analog-Digital Distinction



The classical account of the analog-digital distinction is found in
Nelson Goodman's *Languages of Art* (1976). In fact
Goodman's account remains practically the only *general*
account of the distinction. While David Lewis (1971) raises a series
of objections to Goodman, Lewis' alternative account applies
only to the representation of numbers. And while John Haugeland (1981)
returns to the general distinction, he effectively qualifies and
re-frames Goodman's account in order to overcome Lewis's
and other potential objections. A few philosophers interested in
clarifying the concepts employed by cognitive scientists have
recognized the need for a general account of the analog-digital
distinction (e.g., Dretske 1981; Blachowicz 1997; Katz 2008; Maley
2011). But in this context, as well, Goodman's account is the
essential point of reference. In some ways, this is surprising or at
least striking: As Haugeland points out, the digital is a
"mundane engineering notion" (1981: 217). Yet the
philosophical context in which the notion receives its fullest
analysis is that of aesthetics. As is well-known, Goodman's
interests in this context center on the role of musical notation in
fixing the identity of musical works. But a musical notation is also a
standard example of a digital system.



On Goodman's broad, structuralist way of thinking,
representational systems in general consist of sets of possible
physical objects that count as token representations. Objects are
grouped under syntactic and semantic types, and interesting
differences between kinds of representational system track differences
in the way syntactic and semantic types relate to one another. Digital
systems are distinguished by being *differentiated* as opposed
to *dense*. The condition of *syntactic* differentiation
is met when the differences between classes of token representations
are limited such that it is possible for users of the system always to
tell that a token belongs to at most one class. The condition of
*semantic* differentiation is met when the extension of each
type, or the class of referents corresponding to a class of token
representations, differs in limited ways from the extension of any
other type; so that users of the system can always tell that a
referent belongs to at most one extension. Goodman provides the
following example of a simple digital computer, a system that meets
the conditions of both syntactic and semantic differentiation: Say we
have an instrument reporting on the number of dimes dropped into a toy
bank with a capacity for holding 50 dimes, where the count is reported
by an Arabic numeral on a small display (Goodman 1976: 159). In this
system, the syntactic types are just the numbers 0-50, which
have as their instances the discrete displays, at different times, of
the corresponding Arabic numerals. Both the conditions of syntactic
and semantic differentiation are met because the relevant differences
between instances of different numbers are both highly circumscribed
and conspicuous. This means that users of the system can be expected
to be able to read the display, or determine which number is
instantiated on the display (syntactic differentiation) and which
numerical value, or how many coins, is thereby being indicated
(semantic differentiation).



Analog representation fails to be differentiated because it is dense.
With an ordering of types such that between any two types, there is a
third, it is impossible to determine instantiation of at most one
type. Not every case involving a failure of finite differentiation is
a case of density but, in practice, most are. With a traditional
thermometer, for example, heights of mercury that differ to any degree
count as distinct syntactic types and the kinds of things that can
differ semantically. Similarly, for pictures distinguished according
to regions of color, for any two pictures, no matter how closely
similar, one can always find a third more similar to each of them than
they are to each other. Density is a feature of any system that
measures continuously varying values. That is, as long as the system
in question is designed so that any difference in magnitude indicates
a difference in type.



Returning to the digital, some commentators have questioned whether
Goodman's condition of (syntactic and semantic) finite
differentiation is sufficient to distinguish the kind of
representation in question (Haugeland 1981; Lewis 1971). John
Haugeland, for example, argues that there can be differentiated
schemes without the "copyability" feature that defines the
practical significance of digital systems. Haugeland's solution
is to require the practical and not just the theoretical possibility
of a system's users determining type membership. In fact,
however, Goodman himself would likely accept this modification. In a
later work, Goodman explicitly states that finite differentiation must
make it possible to determine type membership "by means
available and appropriate to the given user of the given scheme"
(Goodman and Elgin 1988: 125).


### 1.3 Digital Art: Production



Whether or not a work of digital art is a work of representational
art, and even with the most abstract works of digital art, there are
layers of representation involved in the complex processes of their
production and presentation. Most of these layers, and arguably the
most important ones, are digital. Where there are analog systems
involved, digital translation makes possible the realization of the
values of the final work. This is perhaps best seen with paradigmatic
cases of digital art. Consider the following two relatively early
works:


* Craig Kalpakjian, *Corridor*, 1995. Computer-generated
animation on laser video disc, in the collection of the San Francisco
Museum of Modern Art. The video leads us slowly down an empty office
hallway that is slightly curved and evenly lit, with pale, blank walls
and opaque glass windows.
* Cory Arcangel and Paul B. Davis, *Landscape Study #4*,
2002. Installation. A "reverse-engineered" video game that
aims to transpose our everyday surroundings onto a video game
platform. The work "plays" on a Nintendo gaming system and
displays a continuously scrolling landscape with the blocky,
minimalist graphics of the *Mario Bros.* game.



The first of these works involves digital moving imagery that is
entirely generated by a computer program. At the same time, the video
looks like it was or could have been recorded in an actual office
setting. The particular significance of the work depends on the viewer
being aware of its digital composition while at the same time being
struck by its photorealistic familiarity. According to the San
Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SF MoMA),



> 
> 
> Kalpakjian thus reveals the complete artificiality of the built
> environments we inhabit, and their aesthetic distance from more
> humanistic forms. (SF MoMA n.d.)
> 
> 
> 



The second work involves imagery that was initially captured
digitally. Arcangel & Davis began by taking 360-degree photographs
of Buffalo, New York. They scanned and modified the photographs on
their computer so that the images could be coded according to the
graphics capabilities of the Nintendo gaming system, and in order to
give the images the distinctive look and feel of the *Mario
Bros.* game. Arcangel & Davis then programmed the landscape
imagery to scroll continuously across a TV screen, as in the *Mario
Bros.* game. Finally, Arcangel & Davis melted the chips in a
*Super Mario* cartridge, replacing them with their
self-manufactured chips so that their landscape "game"
could be run on any Nintendo system. As well as all the ways in which
Arcangel & Davis's work relies on both the technology and
aesthetics of videogames, there are clearly ways in which it
deliberately removes or blocks certain key features or capacities of
videogames, perhaps most notably their robust interactivity. Playing a
videogame essentially involves the prescribed creation of new display
instances of a work. But we do not "play" *Landscape
Study #4*, and its imagery is fixed by the artist. The kind of
interactivity typical of videogames can also be found in artworks made
without computers (see Lopes 2010: 49). But this type of interactivity
is most closely associated with digital art because complex
interactivity is so much easier to achieve with the use of computers.
This suggests a high degree of self-consciousness in Arcangel &
Davis's decision to block the interactivity of their
reverse-engineered videogame. From the perspective of the philosophy
of digital art, such a decision highlights the need for further
discussion of the link between the nature of the digital and the
nature of interactivity.



What is it about the ways in which the works by Arcangel & Davis,
and by Kalpakjian, are produced that makes them digital in an
appreciatively relevant sense? Computer imaging depends on the
inherent programmability and automation of digital computers. Digital
image capture depends on sampling and subsequently on the
near-instantaneous processes of discrete coding. None of this would be
possible without a series of linked systems each with finitely
differentiated settings.



At the most basic level, the myriad transistors in a computer are
essentially tiny digital schemes, each with two types: the
"on" and "off" settings of the
transistor-capacitor switch. The settings are discrete and
distinguishable, as are their compliance classes, of 1s and 0s. The
ubiquity of binary code in computer processing is a consequence of the
fact that a digital computer is essentially a vast collection of
on-off switches. A particular sequence of 1s and 0s realized at a
particular time in virtue of the requisite arrangement of transistors
is a binary instance of a particular number, interchangeable with all
other instances of the same number and not interchangeable with any
instances of different numbers. The difference between instances of
one number and instances of other numbers is strictly limited to the
difference in the ordering of 1s and 0s. In other words,
Goodman's condition of finite differentiation is clearly met. In
turn, the numbers can refer to other values, including the
light-intensity values of an image. A computation simply involves the
generation of output strings of binary digits from input strings, in
accordance with a general rule that depends on the properties of the
strings (Piccinini 2008). The modern (digital) computer encodes both
input data and assembly languages as sequences of binary digits, or
bits, and allows for the internal storage of instructions. This makes
the computer essentially programmable in the sense that it can be
modified to compute new functions simply by being fed an appropriate
arrangement of bits.



A program is a list of instructions, and instructions are strings of
digits. The modern digital computer has components that serve to copy
and store programs inside the machine, and to supply instructions to
the computer's processing units for implementation in the
appropriate order. The outputs of a system can be dependent on
specific inputs often in tandem with the conditional if-then
statements. This is what is involved in a
computer executing conditional branching instructions such that it can
monitor and respond to its own intermediate computational states and
even modify instructions based on its own processes. Such
modifications are dictated by an algorithm--the program's
set of rules and operations. It is the digital computer's
capacity for branching, due to its digital programmability, that
allows for the kinds of higher-level automation involved in the use of
imaging applications and sequential image-generation. Our artists,
Kalpakjian, and Arcangel & Davis, do not have to enter the strings
of digits for every basic operation of the computer that underlies the
complex operations involved in describing and manipulating images. If
they did have to do this, they would never finish making their
artworks. Rather, artists can rely on open-source code, libraries, or
commercial software that automatically and instantaneously supplies
the lines of code required for the execution of their artistic
decisions.



The imaging software with which Kalpakjian works allows him to
generate architectural interiors in rich detail. Arcangel & Davis
do not require as much from their imaging software given that they are
manipulating previously captured and scanned images. The process of
scanning the photographs, just like the process involved in digital
photography, involves sampling and quantization of a visual source;
assigning an integer, from a finite range, to the average
light-intensity measured across each small area of source-space
corresponding to a cell in a grid. This process involves averaging and
rounding up values, and it involves measurement, or sampling, of light
intensities at (spatially and temporally) discrete intervals. Some,
indeed many, of the differences in light intensity across the source
image or scene (and at different times, in the case of moving imagery)
are thereby dropped by the process of digital image-capture. Among
some media theorists, this fact has led to deep suspicion of the
digitally recorded image, prompting the feeling that the digital image
is always a poor substitute for the analog. Current digital
technologies for image-capture and display have such high rates of
sampling frequency and resolution that the values dropped in
quantization are well below the threshold of human perception. At the
same time, Arcangel & Davis's *Landscape Study #4*
reminds us that digital artists may choose to exploit visible
pixellation for particular artistic ends.



A digitally recorded image need not appear any less richly detailed or
varied in color than an analog image. All the same, in the terms of D.
N. Rodowick, whereas the analog photograph is an "isomorphic
transcription" of its subject, a digital photograph is a
"data-output", with a symbolically-mediated link to its
subject (Rodowick 2007: 117-8). This ontological
divide--described by William J. Mitchell as a "sudden and
decisive rupture" in the history of photography (1994: 59), is
then assumed to have aesthetic implications: Rodowick insists that the
"discontinuities" in digital information "produce
perceptual or aesthetic effects". Despite this insistence,
however, Rodowick goes on to acknowledge that, with enough resolution,
"a digital photograph can simulate the look of a continuously
produced analogical image". This concession would seem to work
against any attempt to identify the aesthetic effects of pixellation,
even if "the pixel grid remains in the logical structure of the
image" (Rodowick 2007: 119). But if we are to interpret Rodowick
charitably, he could be implying that ontology at least partly
determines appropriate appreciation; even if a digital photograph can
look just like an analog photograph, its (known) digital status
affects which of its perceptible features are aesthetically relevant
and how we appropriately engage with them.


### 1.4 Digital Art: Presentation



The media theorists' worry about the impoverished digital image
primarily refers to the *production* of digital images with its
reliance on sampling and quantization. But there are also analogous
worries about the digital *presentation* of images, worries
about deep structural changes to analog images once they are displayed
digitally--for example, on a liquid crystal display (LCD) screen
or when projected digitally on a flat surface. Of course one could
simply be interested in investigating these structural changes without
being particularly worried about them. This shall be our approach.



The traditional method of film reel projection has been a remarkably
stable and entrenched technology, remaining largely unchanged for over
a century. But digital projection has almost taken over, particularly
in conjunction with the networked distribution of films. Although
films' audiences may not be able to see the difference on screen
between analog and digital projection, their expectations are
changing--for example, about what can go wrong in the
presentation of a film. A deeper assumption that has not changed, one
that is almost universal among film scholars, is that films
fundamentally depend on an illusion. Cinema is the art of moving
images and thus its very existence depends on our being tricked into
seeing a rapid succession of static images as a persistent moving
image. In the philosophy of film, there is a small debate about the
status of cinematic motion--whether it really is an illusion as
commonly assumed. An analysis of digital projection technology reveals
new complexities in this debate but ultimately provides additional
reasons to stick with the popular illusionist view.



Traditional and digital projection methods could not seem more
different: the former involves running a flexible film strip through a
mechanical projector; the latter involves a complex array of
micromirrors on semiconductor chips, which, in combination with a
prism and a lamp, generate projectable images from binary code.
Nevertheless, both are methods for generating the impression of a
continuously illuminated, persistent moving image from a sequence of
static images. Compared with traditional projection, however, digital
projection includes an extra step, whereby the images in the static
sequence are generated from flashes of light. In order to generate
each image in the digital projector, a light beam from a high-powered
lamp is separated by a prism into its color components of red, blue,
and green. Each color beam then hits a different Digital Micromirror
Device (DMD), which is a semiconductor chip covered with more than a
million tiny, hinged mirrors. Based on the information encoded in the
video signal, the DMDs selectively turn over some of the tiny mirrors
to reflect the colored lights. Most of the tiny mirrors are flipped
thousands of times a second in order to create the gradations of light
and dark making up a monochromatic, pixellated image--a mirror
that is flipped on a greater proportion of the time will reflect more
light and so will form a brighter pixel than a mirror that is not
flipped on for so long. Each DMD reflects a monochromatic image back
to the prism, which then recombines the colors to form the projected,
full-color image. This image--if it were held for long enough on
the screen--would be perceived as static. In order then to
produce the impression of motion in the projected, full-color image,
the underlying memory array of the DMDs has to update rapidly so that
all the micromirrors are released simultaneously and allowed to move
into a new "address state", providing new patterns of
light modulation for successive images.



The two-stage process of digital projection, by which the moving image
is created from a succession of static images that are themselves
created by motion, draws attention to the metaphysical complexity of
the question of how movies move. In particular, one is unlikely to
determine the status of the impression of motion that makes possible
the art of cinema unless one can determine the status of the imagery
that is seen to move. Given that motion involves an object occupying
contiguous spatial locations in successive moments of time, a moving
object must be re-identifiable over time. A moving image in a film,
arising as it does out of the rapid display of a succession of still
images, is not obviously a persistent object that can be seen to move.
Then again, perhaps it is enough that ordinary viewers identify an
image--say of a moving train-- as the same image, for the
moving image to persist (Currie 1996). Alternatively, the moving image
could be thought to persist as a second-order physical entity
constituted by a sequence of flashing lights (Ponech 2006).



The second proposal immediately runs into trouble with digital
projection. If the traditionally projected moving image exists as a
series of flashes of light, in digital projection, other
"intermediate" objects must be granted existence--for
example, the stable point of light consisting of the rate of flashes,
and gaps between them, of a single micromirror on the DMD. At the same
time, the moving image itself must be stripped of its existence since
it does not consist of flashes of light. This is due to the fact that,
in digital projection, there are no gaps between frames and so no
underlying, imperceptible alternation of light and dark. This leaves
the realist in the awkward position of claiming that the moving image
goes in and out of existence with the switch between analog and
digital projection technologies.



The first proposal, on which cinematic motion is a secondary quality,
threatens to destroy the distinction between the apparent and the
illusory. It suggests a way of reinterpreting any case of perceptual
illusion as a case involving the ascription of secondary qualities.
That is, unless it can be shown that there are independent means of
checking that we are mistaken about genuine illusions. But even if
this can be shown, a problem remains: While there may not be an
independent check for the motion of an image, there is likewise no
independent check for a genuine illusion of color. Given the contrived
conditions of film viewing, there is more reason to think of cinematic
motion as akin to an illusory, than to a genuine, experience of color.
With the introduction of digital projection, the conditions are
arguably even more contrived. For it is not just movement in the image
but the image itself that is constituted by rapid flashes of light.
And the technology involved is far less accessible than that of a
traditional mechanical projector in the sense that one cannot, just by
looking at the projection device, see (roughly) how it works. In this
way, an analysis of digital movie projection serves to reinforce the
traditional assumption that cinema is an art of illusion. In addition,
however, the analysis suggests that the illusion at the heart of
cinema is particularly impenetrable--akin to an illusion of
color, and thus an illusion of a mere appearance that cannot be
checked (Thomson-Jones 2013).


## 2. Digital Images



With digital movie projection, we begin to see the importance of
understanding the technology of display for understanding the nature
of digital art. Another way we see its importance is in relation to
images displayed on LCD screens. According to Goodman, images are
essentially analog. Nevertheless, there seems to be a way for
engineers to circumvent the essential analogicity of pictorial schemes
by using digital technologies for encoded subphenomenal
discrimination. Arguably, finite differentiation can be imposed on the
scheme of all possible images displayed on high-resolution LCD
screens. As we shall see, this has far-reaching implications for the
ways in which we think about and properly appreciate image-based
art.



Both in his earlier and in his later work in aesthetics, Goodman
commits to "a special relation" between the analog and the
pictorial, one that is seen when we compare "the presystematic
notions of description and picture in a given culture". Given
two schemes, *S* and *S'*, where *S*
consists of all descriptions or predicates in a language such as
English, and *S'* consists of all pictures, if we were
told only of the structures of *S* and *S'*, we
could distinguish the pictorial scheme by its being analog (Goodman
and Elgin 1988: 130). The special relation remains, Goodman claims,
despite the possibility of a digital sub-scheme made up of black and
white grid patterns all of which happen to be pictures. In such a
scheme, the differences between patterned types that matter for the
scheme's being digital do not include all of the differences
that matter for distinguishing pictorial types. Pictures are
distinguished by color, shape, and size, which vary continuously; any
variation in color, shape, or size potentially results in a different
picture. When we impose limits on the differences that matter for
distinguishing one grid pattern in the scheme from another, we are not
interpreting the grid patterns as pictures; if we were to do so, we
would have to treat them as members of a syntactically dense, or
analog, scheme.



Goodman's insight about grid patterns and pictures suggests an
immediate difficulty for explaining the digital status of images
displayed on LCD screens: Clearly it will not be sufficient to point
out that such images are pixellated, and therefore made up of small
identical building blocks that impose a lower limit on the differences
between display-instances. Remember that pictures are defined by
color, shape, and size, which vary continuously. This means there is
going to be vagueness at the limits of types - even though the
physical pixels of an LCD screen are such that there are gaps between
the possible shapes, sizes, and colors that the screen can
instantiate; and, there are a finite number of shapes, sizes, and
colors that the screen can instantiate. Any means of discretely
carving up the property spaces of color, shape, and size has to
involve grouping into types what are in fact (subphenomenally)
distinct shapes, sizes, and colors, some of which may differ less from
adjacent properties grouped into other types. This makes it impossible
always to determine unique class membership; hence, finite
differentiation fails.



Pixellation alone, no matter the resolution, cannot account for images
displayed on LCD screens belonging to a digital scheme; digital images
*qua* images thus remain stubbornly analog. But perhaps a
closer analysis of digital imaging technology can show that finite
differentiation is met after all. Current technologies for sampling
and instantiating light intensities group objective colors well below
the level of phenomenal discrimination. For example, in the standard
"Truecolor" system, a display pixel has three 8-bit
subpixels, each of which emits a different visible wavelength with an
intensity from a range of 256 values, yielding over 16 million
objective colors. Such a large number of available colors gives the
impression of a color continuum when, in fact, digital sampling
technology has been used to carve up the objective color space into a
disjoint series of wavelength intensities. On the one hand, from the
fact that display pixels can be lit at intensities between and
indiscriminable from adjacent discriminable intensities, it seems to
follow that finite differentiation fails. On the other hand, precisely
because digital technology involves microtechnology and metrology for
subphenomenal discrimination between colors, the light intensity
groupings that are expressed numerically as red-blue-green triplets
(in, say, the Truecolor system) can be *narrower* than the
objective color types that contribute to the resultant image scheme.
The key is keeping the variations in the essentially analog properties
of color, shape, and size small enough so that they cannot accumulate
to the point of making a difference to image perception (Zeimbekis
2012). The types in the scheme of digital images are technologically
segmented, transitive groupings of the same color-, shape-, and
size-experiences. The carving out of a transitive sub-set of
magnitudes has to occur relative to the needs of the users of the
system. In the case of digital color, the types are classes of light
intensities *sufficient* to cause the same color experience for
normal human perceivers. The replicability of digital images is made
possible by the gap between the discriminatory limits of the human
visual system and the discriminatory limits of digital sampling
technology.



Digital images can be replicated insofar as they are digital and thus
finitely differentiated. They are finitely differentiated because they
rely on subphenomenal sampling and display technology. In practical
terms, replication depends on the use of binary code, even though this
is not in fact what makes images *qua* images digital. Of
course binary code representations are themselves part of a digital
scheme. But the role of binary code in image-instantiation is just one
of consistent preservation; preservation for long enough to permit
reproduction. Despite the inherent replicability of digital images, it
does not appear to follow automatically that artworks involving these
images are multiples.



The SF MoMA is in possession of the original of Kalpakjian's
work, *Corridor*; they control access to the video imagery. At
present, the work is not available to be viewed: it cannot be viewed
on-line as part of a digital archive or collection, nor is it
currently on view in the physical space of the museum. The image
sequence comprising the work could be multiply instantiated and widely
distributed, but in fact it is not, nor is it meant to be. Similarly
with Arcangel & Davis's work, *Landscape Study #4*:
This work is described as an installation, meant to be exhibited in a
physical gallery alongside an arrangement of printed stills, with a
television connected to a Nintendo Entertainment System. Again, the
image sequence displayed on the television could be multiply
instantiated and widely distributed, but it is not, nor is it meant to
be. Clips and copies of the landscape imagery are available on-line,
but these do not instantiate parts of the work itself. By contrast,
works of net art are instantiated whenever they are accessed by
someone on-line.



There are many kinds of net art, including various forms of
experimental on-line literature, conceptual browser art, and works
drawing on software and computer gaming conventions. Extensive on-line
collections of visual and audiovisual net art are rigorously curated
and at the same time immediately accessible to ordinary Internet
users. When it comes to the conventions of access and presentation,
the contrast is striking between works of net art and works like those
by Kalpakjian, and Arcangel & Davis. Perhaps a digital artwork
comprising multiply instantiable images need not itself be multiply
instantiable. At this point, the philosophy of digital art joins an
ongoing debate about the ontology of art.



On the question of whether artworks are all the same kind of thing or
many different kinds of things, ontological pluralism is often taken
to be implied by the primary role of the artist in
"sanctioning" features of their work (Irvin 2005, 2008;
Thomasson 2010). A sanction can consist simply in, say, the painting
of a canvas by a self-professed artist and the subsequent display of
the work in a gallery. The artist has sanctioned those features of the
work that make it a traditional painting. But what was once largely
implicit is now often explicit: many contemporary works of art are
defined by a set of instructions for their presentation (e.g., aspect
ratio, resolution). We can find plenty of examples of non-digital
works that are defined by a set of instructions, such as Felix
Gonzalez-Torres' *Untitled (Portrait of Ross in L.A.)*
(1991). This work is given to a gallery to display by way of nothing
more than a set of instructions for constructing and maintaining a
pile of candies. Whether non-digital or digital, the instructions
determine what is part of the work and what is not, and whether the
work is singular or multiply instantiable. As a result, the
instructions guide appropriate interpretation of the work. On this
view, ontology precedes interpretation: we cannot properly and fully
appreciate a work, for the work that it is, without a prior
determination of what it comprises. This is a matter of contention,
however. On another way of thinking, artworks just are objects of
interpretation, and there is no artwork whose boundaries can be
identified before we begin interpretation (Davies 2004).



The issue of the relation between ontology and interpretation is a
complex and difficult one, but progress can be made on the issue
through an examination of digital art practices. This is particularly
in light of the high degree of self-consciousness with which many
digital artists and digital art curators specify the features of
digital art works. It is a common practice, for example, when
archiving net art, to have artists fill out a questionnaire in order
to specify which features of a work are crucial for its
preservation--whether features of appearance, timing and motion,
interactivity potentials and methods, linking to other sites, or
hardware and software. When a work of net art is individuated by its
imagery, say, the artist has chosen to make the inherent replicability
of digital imagery part of the work. That this is a choice is
suggested by the existence of singular works of digital visual art,
like the examples discussed above. The question of whether the works
by Kalpakjian, and Arcangel & Davis can function allographically
requires further investigation (see D'Cruz and Magnus 2014). But
if they can so function, the artist's presentation instructions
have a primary role to play in fixing, not just the art form
(installation, movie, conceptual work, etc.) but the basic structure
of the work - for example, in determining whether the work is
singular and thus identical with a certain kind of physical display or
multiple with no original display. Where interactive digital works are
concerned, individuation is determined by a set of algorithms. An
algorithmic account of interactive digital art suggests that, although
the code is important for adequate instantiation of the work, it is
the algorithm that specifies the crucial features of the work (Lopes
2010; Tavinor 2011; Moser 2018). Since the code is, ontologically
speaking, less relevant than the algorithm, this account makes
allowances for the variability that may be found in the code when an
instance of a program is run on different kinds of devices.


## 3. Appreciating Artworks in Digital Media



Reflection on the kinds and significance of choices available to an
artist contributes to a full appreciation of the artist's work.
For any artwork, appreciation begins with recognition of its status as
a *work*, the product of artistic activity of some kind, and
thus something to be appreciated as the achievement of an artist or
group of artists. Most commonly, this achievement is understood in
terms of the aesthetically significant effects achieved by an artist
with certain kinds of tools and materials and in light of certain
appreciative conventions. In other words, the achievement is always
relative to an artistic medium. Returning to the case of an artist
choosing what to do about the inherent replicability of digital
imagery, another way of thinking about this choice is in terms of the
artist recognizing the limits and capacities of their chosen medium.
Images conveyed digitally are always replicable and so when an artist
aims to convey artistic content through digital imagery, they either
have to accept the inevitable multiplicity of their works or resist
the tendency of the medium and somehow specify the work's
singularity in presentation. At a more fine-grained level, our
appreciation of particular effects--of color and composition,
expression, narrative structure, and so on--depends on the
effects themselves but also on background acknowledgment of their
degree of difficulty or innovation in the relevant medium. The
production of digital art relies on the computer automation of many of
the tasks, both manual and cognitive, traditionally involved in making
art. The effects achieved by computer automation cannot be assessed in
the same way as those achieved by traditional "hands-on"
artistic methods. The terms of our appreciation, therefore, need to be
adjusted in the digital age. This is certainly compatible with the
continued relevance of medium-based appreciation, as long as we can
make sense of digital media as artistic media (Binkley 1998). But
there is a strong tendency in film and media studies to assume that
the medium has absolutely no role to play in the appreciation of
digital art.



Summing up this view, it supposedly follows from the fact that modern
(digital) computers encode every kind of information in the same
way--i.e., as a sequence of binary digits--that a digital
artwork is no longer defined by its mode of presentation, whether in
images, moving images, sound patterns, or text. A work's display
is rendered merely contingent by the fact that it is generated from a
common code. By adding a particular instruction to the code sequence
specifying a work, imagery associated with that work could be
instantaneously converted into sounds or text, or just into different
imagery. This possibility alone supposedly renders meaningless all
talk of an artwork being in a particular medium and being properly
appreciated in terms of that medium (Kittler 1999; Doane 2007).



Given the considerable effects of digital technology on artistic
production, it is perhaps understandable that some commentators are
inclined toward a radical overhauling of art theoretical concepts. But
their arguments in support of such an overhaul are, at best,
incomplete. We see this once we cite some important continuities
between ways of making and thinking about art in the analog age and in
the digital age. It has always been the case, for example, that
"any medium can be translated into any other" (Kittler
1999: 1): Without using a computer, someone could manually devise a
set of rules (an algorithm) for the translation of image values, say,
into sounds or text. Moreover, a common storage and transmission means
for (moving) imagery and sound is not unique to digital technology: As
Doron Galili points out (2011), electronic image transmission going
back to the late nineteenth century--in other words, precursors
of the TV--relies on the conversion of both images and sound into
electronic pulses.



Apart from these important continuities, the media theorist's
inference from translatability to medium-free art simply does not
hold. That we could set about "translating" the imagery of
*Seven Samurai* into a symphony does not mean that the original
artwork lacks a medium; it is a film, after all, and as such, it has
to be in the medium of moving images. The symphonic translation of
*Seven Samurai* is not the same work as the 1954 film by Akira
Kurosawa. This reminds us that, in deciding whether there is a digital
medium, we must not reduce the medium to the artist's materials,
for it also matters how the artist uses those materials. Nor must we
limit the constitutive materials of a medium to physical materials.
The case of literature shows that neither the materials of an art
form, nor their modes of manipulation, need be physical. The medium of
literature is neither paper and ink nor abstract lexical symbols, but
letters and words used in certain ways. There are, of course, many
different ways of physically storing and transmitting literary works,
including by the printed page, in audio recordings, and by memory
(human or computer). But from the fact that *David Copperfield*
can be preserved in many different formats, it does not follow that
this novel is any less decisively a novel and, as such, in the medium
of literature.



Just as with a literary work, the preservation and transmission of
digital works in different formats depends on the use of a common
code, but a binary numeric code rather than a lexical one. As we have
seen, words and their literary uses constitute the medium of
literature. In the same way, binary code, along with the information
it implements, and its artistic uses constitute the medium of digital
art. This allows for the possibility that the digital medium contains
various sub-media, or "nested" media (Gaut 2010). For
instance, within the medium of digital art, the medium of digital
visual art comprises artistic uses of computer code specifically to
create images. In technical terms, such uses can be referred to as
(artistic) "bitmapping", given that a computer ultimately
stores all images (2D and 3D vector) as bitmaps, which are code
sequences specifying the integers assigned to light intensity
measurements in a pixel grid. The medium of bitmapping is thus
distinguished by a kind of digital technology, but the kind used to
produce just those items belonging to the traditional medium of
images.



Once the notion of digital media is revealed to be no more confused or
mysterious than the familiar notion of literary media, its irreducible
role in appreciation becomes apparent. To take just one example,
proper appreciation of films in the digital age depends on recognizing
that digital filmmaking tools do not just make traditional filmmaking
easier; they also present new creative possibilities and challenges.
Given the maturity and mass-art status of the cinematic art form, it
is easy to take for granted the medium of moving imagery; we may think
we know exactly what its limits are, and we may even think we have
seen everything that can be done with it. The digital medium is
different, however, and digital cinema is in both the medium of moving
imagery and the digital medium.



At first glance, it might seem odd to speak of
"challenges" or "limits" in relation to
digital processes, which allow for instantaneous and endless
modification with increasingly user-friendly applications and devices.
The high degree of automation in the process of capturing an image
with a digital video camera, along with increasingly high image
resolution and memory capacity, could make it seem as though digital
images are too easily achieved to be interesting. Then there are the
practically endless possibilities for "correcting" the
captured image with applications like Photoshop. When we take a photo
or video on our smartphones, an AI program automatically optimizes
focus, contrast, and detail. Digital sound recording is likewise
increasingly automated, increasingly fine-grained, and reliant on
ever-larger computer memory capacities. Modifying and mastering
recorded sound with digital editing software allows for an unlimited
testing of options. In digital film editing, sequence changes are
instantaneous and entirely reversible--quite unlike when the
editing process involved the physical cutting and splicing of a film
(image or sound) strip. Digital tools thus allow filmmakers to focus
(almost) purely on the the look and sound of the movie without having
to worry about the technical difficulty or finality of
implementation.



Rather than dismissing all digital works as too easily achieved to be
interesting, medium-based appreciation requires that we consider the
digital on its own terms. This means we must allow for the possibility
that certain kinds of increased technical efficiency can bring new
creative risks. For example, even though committing to certain
editorial decisions does not entail irreversible alterations to a
filmstrip, arriving at those decisions involves sifting through and
eliminating far more options, a process which can easily become
overwhelming and therefore more error-ridden. When we properly
appreciate a digital film, part of what we need to appreciate is the
significance of any scene or sequence looking just the way it does
when it could have, so easily, looked many other ways. Similarly, when
we properly appreciate an interactive digital installation or
videogame, we are, in part, appreciating certain representations,
functions, and capabilities of the input-output system, made possible
by digital media. This is undeniably a form of medium-based
appreciation and the medium to which we appeal is digital. It is only
when we think of a digital film as in a digital medium that we can
appreciate it as a particular response to the creative problem,
introduced by coding, of finalizing selections from a vast array of
equally and instantly available options.



The case of digital cinema is perhaps a useful starting point for work
in the philosophy of digital art. Digital cinema is a multi-media art
form, after all, involving 2D and 3D moving images as well as sound.
It also has the potential for robust interactivity, whereby audiences
select story events or otherwise modify a film screening in prescribed
ways (Gaut 2010: 224-43). Many of the digital tools developed by
the film and video game industries are now available more widely to
artists interested in making other forms of digital art, including net
art, digital sound installations, and virtual reality art (Grau 2003;
Chalmers 2017; Tavinor 2019). In terms of how the use of these tools
affects proper appreciation, there are important continuities between
the filmmaking context and the wider digital art world. In addition,
the philosophy of film is a well-established subfield in aesthetics,
one that engages with both film theory and cognitive science in order
to explicate the nature of film as a mass art (Thomson-Jones 2014,
Other Internet Resources). For many of the standard topics in the
philosophy of film, interesting and important questions arise when we
extend the discussion from analog to digital cinema. There is a
question, for example, about the kinds and significance of realism
that can be achieved with traditional celluloid film as compared with
manipulated digital imagery (Gaut 2010: 60-97). The philosophy
of film can provide some of the initial terms of analysis for artworks
in a broad range of digital media. At the same time, it is important
to approach each of the digital arts on their own terms under the
assumption that the digital is an artistically significant
category.


## 4. Interactivity



More and more, contemporary artists are taking advantage of the
dynamic and responsive capabilities of digital media to make art
interactive. The experimental online literature, conceptual browser
art, and videogames mentioned above all require user interactivity,
but they do so to varying degrees. Therefore, if interactivity plays a
distinctive role in the digital arts, there are good reasons to
analyse the nature of these works more deeply.


### 4.1 Defining Interactive Works



Not all digital works are interactive, and not all interactive works
are digital. However, since computers are inherently interactive, much
of the early philosophical literature on interactivity arose from the
emergence of computer art (also see Smuts 2009; Lopes 2001; Saltz
1997). The distinctive character of interactive digital art is best
considered in tandem with the work's ontology.



Before analyzing interactivity any further, first, consider the
following description of the digital installation "Universe of
Water Particles on a Rock where People Gather" (henceforth,
"Rock where People Gather") by TeamLab:



> 
> 
> "Rock where People Gather" is reproduced in a virtual
> three-dimensional space. Water is simulated to fall onto the rock, and
> the flow of the water draws the shape of the waterfall. The water is
> represented by a continuum of numerous water particles and the
> interaction between the particles is then calculated. Lines are drawn
> in relation to the behavior of the water particles. The lines are then
> "flattened" using what TeamLab considers to be
> "ultrasubjective" space.
> 
> 
> 
> When a person stands on the rock or touches the waterfall, they too
> become like a rock that changes the flow of water. The flow of water
> continues to transform in real time due to the interaction of people.
> Previous visual states can never be replicated, and will never reoccur
> (TeamLab 2018).
> 
> 
> 



"Rock where People Gather" illustrates that interactive
works permit us to appreciate both the work and the properties brought
about by the interactions. To define these characteristics of
interactive art, Dominic Lopes states, "A work of *art*
is *interactive* just in case it prescribes that the
*actions* of its *users* help *generate* its
display" (Lopes 2010:36, original emphasis). The display is
anything that is instanced in a work, or the perceptual properties
that come about via interactivity. Users help generate these features
making interactive works distinctive. However, at this point, one
could imagine reading the chapters of, let us say, a digitized copy of
*The Brothers Karamazov* in random order, thereby changing what
properties get instanced from the original work. Does this example
qualify as interactive art in the Lopesian sense? Although some
stories, such as choose-your-own-adventure books, allow readers to
shuffle the narrative arc, most traditional stories do not; if the
randomized *Karamazov* example is interactive, it is only so in
the weakest sense of the term because users are not
*prescribed* to change the properties as described. Another way
to think about these differences returns us to a work's
structure. Readers who decide to roguishly randomize a story merely
change how they *access* a work's structure simply
because the medium does not prohibit it, whereas readers of
choose-your-own-adventure books and other interactive works can change
the work's *structure* in a prescribed manner (Lopes
2001:68).


### 4.2 Display Variability



That users are responsible for generating certain features of an
interactive work means that their displays, unlike those of
non-interactive works, can occur in a couple of different ways (Lopes
2010: 37-38). The less standard of the two occurs when the displays of
an interactive work are generated in a succession of states over a
period of time, but where none of the displays can be revisited. One
such example is *Telegarden*, a temporary work of computer art
that users accessed from a networked computer. The work was comprised
of a table with an attached mechanical arm that dispensed water and
food for the plants via the users' inputs. As one may imagine,
the garden took shape in a variety of ways over the span of its
exhibition, but each state of the garden, or its succession of display
states, could not be repeated. Although not common, videogames can
also exhibit this kind of display variability. Consider the
experimental game, *Cube*. For a limited time, players could
explore a large cube and its nested smaller cubes while racing to be
the first to reach the center. As with *Telegarden*, players
generated different properties of the game displays by interacting
with it, but once a new display was generated, the previous ones were
gone.



The more standard of the two variable structures for interactive works
are displays that can be repeated, such as most net art and videogames
that can be accessed many times, from multiple locations, to generate
different displays. Although repeatable works are more common (at
least with videogames if not museum-housed works), more needs to be
said about the changing properties of these works and how the
repeatability trait distinguishes interactive digital works from
non-interactive digital images.



If the display properties of digital images can vary from instance to
instance due to even slightly different settings on different devices
(e.g., brightness, resolution, intensity), then the aesthetic and
structural differences of many works could be misconstrued as
interactive. Since the example just given is not an interactive work
of art, it is worth looking more closely at what is going on with
non-interactive repeatable works versus interactive repeatable ones.
Consider traditional performance works such as works of theater and
music. Each performance might differ to a slight degree due to
different performers and other varying conditions of the environment,
and these may certainly affect our aesthetic experiences each time.
However, those changes, in principle, do not reshape the structure of
the performed play or song. In the same way, the subtle changes made
with a digitally displayed image do not change the structure of the
image-based work. Compare those slight artistic or aesthetic
variations to the display variability of interactive works. For
example, many videogames permit players to choose which route to take,
quests to accept, characters to kill or save, personalities to adopt,
and the like. These sorts of in-game player choices are not merely
generating features such as varying the brightness or resolution, nor
are they as straightforwardly interactive as a game of chess that ends
in a win or a loss. Rather, the degree of variability permits multiple
endings. Again for comparison, while traditional tragedies will always
end on a tragic note, some highly variable works can end either on a
tragic note or on one that is not at all tragic.



To articulate the above more clearly, Dominic Preston says,



> 
> 
> for any given artwork, each possible set of structural and aesthetic
> properties F is a *display type* of that artwork. (Preston
> 2014: 271, original emphasis).
> 
> 
> 



From the above, we can briefly infer the following scenarios: works
like digital photographs are ontologically similar to plays and music
because they consist of one prescribed display type. While the display
type might permit multiple displays (duplicates, performances,
instances, etc.) consisting of subtle variances between the particular
tokens, there is still a single correct display that should be
maintained or achieved. Works that instance a succession of states
such as *Telegarden* and *Cube* consist of multiple
potential display types where only one display type is instantiated at
any given time. Now, compare such works with those like videogames
that present us with the strong degrees of display variability
mentioned earlier. Because some repeatable works can end drastically
differently from one "playthrough" to the next, there is
no singular, correct display. Instead, these sorts of works consist of
both multiple display types and multiple displays, which means users
will generate one of the possible display types (and their displays)
each time they repeat the work.



According to Katherine Thomson-Jones (2021), there is a problem with
Preston's claim that interactive artworks -- at least ones
that are digital -- have multiple display types, as well as
multiple displays. This is because the digital is inherently
replicable and replicability requires a transmissible display --
a single display type that can have multiple, interchangeable
instances. This seems to introduce a problem of incompatibility: How
can we have an image whose instances still count as instances of the
same image-based work when those instances, in virtue of users'
actions, look very different from one another? There are various ways
one might overcome this problem -- for example, by distinguishing
between the display of an image and the display of an artwork that
incorporates the image in question. Preston's distinction
between display and display type can continue to play a role here.
While the concept of interactivity with high variability is mostly
applicable to videogames, one can imagine interactive digital
installations, net art, and table-top roleplaying games to which it
also applies.



It is important to reiterate that the strong interactivity just
described is not restricted to the digital. Whilst interactivity is a
standard feature of many contemporary digital works, and the
responsiveness of such works is remarkable, non-digital appreciative
categories can also exploit a similar degree of display variability.
For example, literature, theater, and tabletop role-playing games can
be strongly interactive in ways similar to many digital artworks. What
is unique about all such works are the ways in which things like
immersion, agency, identity, and fiction, to list a few features, are
impacted by interactivity, due to the user's role in the work
(for more, see Robinson & Tavinor 2018; Patridge 2017; Meskin
& Robson 2016).



A noteworthy point about the concepts presented above is that they are
all conceived with the norms of traditional art and art practices in
mind, meaning, works of art that are predominantly object-based.
However, as described, interactive digital works can be said to have a
"behavior" based on prescribed interactions. While
traditional artworks typically emphasize a work that is complete prior
to audience engagement, interactive works emphasize the
moment-to-moment unfolding of the works by way of audience engagement.
One recent approach to the ontology of art suggests that interactive
works (among other kinds) are better conceived on a process-based,
rather than on an object-based, model (Nguyen 2020). A key difference
between the two models is that the former focuses on the user's
actions and experiences or "inward aesthetics", while the
latter focuses on the "outward" aesthetic features of the
self-contained object (Nguyen 2020: 25). While a process-based account
prioritizes the internalizability of a user's actions, it does
not completely give up the idea of an artistic object. Rather, it
renders the object's significance secondary insofar as any
appreciation for a work's objecthood is in service to the
activities it permits (Nguyen 2020: 20).


### 4.3 Interactivity and Creativity



Just as the case of digital art can enrich our understanding of
interactivity, so it can enrich our understanding of artistic
creativity and creative attribution. This is in part because the
issues of interactivity and creativity are closely related. In making
a work that is strongly interactive, an artist cedes to the user a
certain amount of control in determining the look, sound, or structure
of the work's display(s). This raises a question about the
user's opportunities to be creative -- to engage in
creative interactions with a work -- and how these opportunities
can be supported or constrained by the artist's design. In order
to answer this question, we need to unpack the notion of creative
control. In addition, we need to consider how creativity can be
attributed to multiple agents involved at different stages of a
work's production. As it turns out, the case of AI art is
particularly useful when considering the conditions of creativity and
creative collaboration.



There is already a robust debate about the nature of creativity as it
occurs in many different areas of human activity (see, e.g., Gaut
& Kieran, eds., 2018; Paul & Kaufman, eds., 2014) There is a
case to be made, however, that this debate can be enriched by drawing
on work in the philosophy of AI. In everyday life, sophisticated AI
systems are now being used for all kinds of purposes: We rely on these
systems when we use Internet search engines, play strategic
videogames, accept purchasing recommendations from online retailers,
and check for viruses on our computers. In addition, we can use AI to
generate new images and text, some of which can be incorporated into
works of art. One can type a series of prompts into a chatbot like
ChatGPT in order to generate a new screenplay in a certain genre.
Similarly, one can assemble a set of images on which to train an
"artbot" like MidJourney in order to generate paintings,
drawings, or what look like photographs. It is common to attribute
creative agency to the person who purposively initiates, and then
monitors, the program used to generate the images or text that make up
a work of AI art. A question remains, however, as to whether this
should be the *sole* creative attribution when AI is involved.
Some artists describe the AI system with which they work as a creative
"partner", and not just a sophisticated artistic tool.
This is particularly the case with recent artworks that rely on
"Deep Learning" (DL) to generate images or text in a
remarkably independent way. Both chatbots and artbots rely on deep
learning to categorize huge datasets (images or text) according to
previously undetected patterns. To do this, a DL system must give
itself new instructions -- ones that depart from the initial
instructions of the program -- for the kind of image or text
segment, and for the particular image or text segment, to be
produced.



Among AI artists, the ones who write their own DL programs are the
most likely to describe AI as a creative partner rather than just a
creative tool. This seems particularly fitting when there is a
synchronous collaboration between the artist and their DL system. For
example, the works of Sougwen Chun are the result of Chun drawing
alongside and in response to the actions of a mechanical drawing arm
that is controlled by Chun's custom-made program, D.O.U.G. (short
for "Drawing Operations Unity Generation *X*").
Chun and D.O.U.G. take turns adding to a single drawing. During this
process, it is harder than one might think to say what makes the
difference such that Chun is a creative agent, engaged in a creative
drawing process, and D.O.U.G. is not. This is the case even though it
is Chun alone who comes up with the idea for the work and initiates
the drawing program.



As Margaret Boden has argued (2014), when philosophers deny the
possibility of a computer ever being creative, they tend to
underestimate the capacities of computers to produce items that are
genuinely new as well as valuable in some domain. Still, many
creativity theorists argue that novelty and value are insufficient for
creativity; a third condition is needed, one concerning the manner of
production. In order for something novel and valuable to count as
creative, it must have been produced in a way that is agent-driven.
The agency condition can be filled out, or broken down, in a variety
of ways. At its core, however, the notion of agency is generally
assumed to be opposed to the notion of having been
'programmed', or simply instructed, to perform certain
tasks in a "mechanical", or blind, fashion. Thus, the most
basic objection to the possibility of creative computers is that they
can only do what they are programmed to do, according to the
intentions of a human agent. This objection needs clarification,
however, since no set of rules completely determines the actions
involved in following that set of rules. Since the advent of DL and
other kinds of generative algorithm, it is possible for a computer
program to change itself, to detect independent phenomena other than
the ones that it was designed to detect, and to mimic spontaneity
through randomness. Is this an instance of creative rule-following? If
it is, we might expand our notion of creative collaboration. Perhaps
creative collaboration is found, not just between human beings, but
also between human beings and machines. In so far as the machines in
question support strong interactivity, a work of digital art might
involve three-part collaborations between human artists, human users,
and AI.


## 5. Locative Art



Digital media can also be used for the purpose of connecting physical
locations to virtual ones by using locative media. The phrase
"locative art" is traced to Karlis Kalnins who applied the
phrase to experimental projects coming from Locative Media Lab, a
collective of international researchers and practitioners working with
locative media. (Galloway & Ward 2005 ). Since the term
"locative" is connected to location, site-specificity
plays a significant role in our appreciation of locative works. Unlike
with non-digital cases, however, site-specificity in locative art is
both physical and virtual. The general concept is this:
locative-specific media connect physical spaces with virtual ones, the
perceptual features of which are generated from a digital device by
human interactions. We often experience locative media in our ordinary
and daily lives through navigation systems like Google Maps or Waze,
and also creatively through augmented reality apps like Pokemon Go, AR
graffiti (an app that allows users to visualize what their graffiti
will look like *in situ*), architectural simulators, and more.
These are location-based works, often called locative projects or
locative art, that use locative media. While locative technology has
been around for decades, it is a relatively new subcategory to be
recognized within the arts. Even so, locative art is more broadly
acknowledged in the fields of technology, games, and sociology.



To understand the many ways locative media might be used for artistic
practice, consider the following three examples.


* What Was There (2010-2023) was a website that allows users
to type in the coordinates of their current location (via their
digital device) to see how certain geographical locations look
throughout history. By typing a specific address into the application,
the user experiences the physical location in front of them and
represented images and facts of that location as they appeared in the
past, from the same vantage point. Data on the site relies on regular
citizens to upload historic images and connect them to specific
locations, making them accessible to others; the greater the
participation the richer the experience when navigating a particular
place. Not only can guests gain a deeper connection to their specific
localized places, but such applications motivate people to explore and
appreciate locations outside of their normal destinations.
* The Transborder Immigrant Tool has been used in a number of
artworks and exhibitions.



> 
> 
> The Transborder Immigrant Tool, devised by Electronic Disturbance
> Theater 2.0/b.a.n.g. lab, was a mobile phone application intended to
> guide individuals who were making their way to the United States
> through the deserts of the U.S./Mexico borderlands to water. The
> application delivered poetry to its users in an effort to assist in
> their emotional and mental well-being while offering information about
> survival during the dangerous journey.
> 
> 
> 
> The creators of The Transborder Immigrant Tool considered it to be a
> performance intervention that included the app itself, its API, public
> reactions, and an ensuing government investigation. By the time TBT
> was ready for distribution in 2011, the border crossing had become
> more dangerous, presenting the risk that carrying a TBT phone might
> put users in danger. While the project was never distributed to its
> intended users, it still succeeded in confounding systems of political
> control, creating a call to action that resonated internationally, and
> using poetry to "dissolve" the US-Mexico border
> (Electronic Disturbance Theater 2.0 et al 2007).
> 
> 
> 


* KlingKlangKlong is played with smartphones that translate the
players' locations into sound. This is achieved in a
straightforward manner: By moving through the physical space, the
players simultaneously move on the surface of a virtual sequencer. One
dimension (usually the latitude of the player) corresponds to pitch,
the other dimension (longitude) is mapped to the time-position on the
sequencer. The interface allows a manual switch to other audio
parameters, although this feature is experimental. Each device
receives the location and state changes of the currently active
players almost instantly. The devices are connected by a central
server, which also sets the boundaries of the playing field and
manages the virtual players.



> 
> 
> KlingKlangKlong serves as an experimental arrangement to explore the
> idea of playful (social) systems, a construction where human and
> virtual subsystems play with each other. In addition to the human
> participants, it therefore deploys a number of virtual players
> (>>Virtuals<<). Humans and Virtuals meet each other in mixed
> reality, a concept that was realized in early locative games. The
> commonly created soundtrack is the primary medium of communication
> between the players. Musical structures may temporarily arise through
> synchronized movements or be destroyed by any player's
> intervention (Straeubig & Quack 2016).
> 
> 
> 



  

In each of these examples, users synchronize geographical locations
with virtual ones, granting mobility for users while also further
challenging the paradigm of museum-driven works and art appreciation.
The interactivity described in section 4 factors significantly into
each of these projects, but also of importance are the social,
economic, environmental, and political implications that factor in the
design, development, and use of such works. Most of these projects are
intended to bring about positive change, one way or another, by using
locative media and by borrowing certain gaming mechanics for the
purpose of engagement and interactivity. In fact, much of what is
written about locative art is from fields within digital media studies
on the media's 'playable' qualities (avoiding the
idea that artists are trying to merely gamify public spaces).



On the playable nature of locative art, Miguel Sicart says,



> 
> 
>   
> 
> the data produced and used in smart cities should not necessarily be
> presented as a utility for citizens. It should be presented as a prop
> for play, as games but also as the source for toys and playgrounds.
> Data-rich cities can become playable cities, and, by becoming such,
> they can become more human, more inclusive spaces (Ackermann: 2016,
> 27).
> 
> 
> 



  

Once again, the process-oriented and performative nature of locative
works is central to appreciating the spaces they create. In connection
with the playability of locative media, locative projects are also
modifiable and typically intended to be hackable by the public in the
communities where they are displayed. While the terms
"hacker" and "hacking" may carry negative
connotations, in its original conception, the practice of hacking was
meant to improve upon existing computer programs, acknowledging the
achievements of both the original creator and subsequent revisionists
(Levy:1984). It is in this vein that locative projects are usually
intended to change and improve over time given how users
"play" with the data and inputs. In other words, local
communities can play with these projects and even modify them, making
locative works as relevant and reflective of the community as
possible.



The above suggests that locative projects often have broader goals
than mere entertainment. Although often intended to motivate play and
playful attitudes, which, as indicated in the examples above can occur
to varying degrees, the goal-oriented nature of locative works often
makes the kind of play involved a "serious" kind. Serious
play occurs when the enjoyment and pleasure that come from play do not
just comprise entertainment but also serve some meritorious,
real-world goal. A work can be said to support serious play even when
users are not aware of the social or political goals of the work.



The customizable nature of locative media lends itself well to the
altruistic aims of many locative artists. However, inclusivity,
climate protection, social change, and any other desired effect of
locative projects requires a given community to have sufficient funds
for, access to, and user-knowledge about digital locative technology.
This concern can also be understood, not just in terms of community
requirements, but also in terms of technological requirements, for
successful locative art. One way of putting it is as follows:



> 
> 
> For any technological device to be "aware" of its
> context--physical or otherwise--it has to be able to locate,
> classify, collect, store, and use "relevant" information,
> as well as to identify and discard or ignore "irrelevant"
> information (Galloway & Ward 2005).
> 
> 
> 



There are numerous political and economic factors affecting access to
local and global spaces. With locative art, these factors are
concerning for both ethical and artistic reasons.