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Digital transformation is such a global phenomenon in the technology-driven world that we live in every day that almost everything from simple tasks like staying connected via email or social media to more advanced and complicated tasks like diagnostics are digitalized. Walking hand-in-hand with the development of technology, digital art, a progressive artistic trend, has changed the way that art is being created, shared, and experienced. Instead of only using technology as an assistant in the art creation process, many art professionals have leveraged innovative technology and transformed the art world into immersive and highly engaging media art pieces and art installations. Digital art not only pushes the pushing of the boundaries of people’s perception and understanding of art but also enables artists to reach whole new groups of the audience beyond the conventional boundaries of the art world.

What is digital art?

So, you might wonder: “What is digital art?”. Digital art used to call new media art, refers to any artistic work or practice that made use of digital technology (software, computer, projectors, etc.) as part of the creation or presentation process. For instance, animation, digital painting, and illustrations produced on digital media can all be classified as digital art. With the help of the technology revolution and especially the internet, the digital art era has started blooming and made artwork more visible and accessible to audiences. Advanced technology such as AI (artificial intelligence), VR (virtual reality), AR (augmented reality), 3D printers, and digital designs together with the rising of social media has disrupted the contemporary art world and changed how art is created, consumed, and shared in our connected world. These technologies enabled artists to transform and manipulate their artwork so that they can gain more visibility and stay connected within the artistic community. On the other side, the online art platform gives people easy access to digital art pieces and can also build their own art collections or projects to share with others.

How does digital art change the way people see art?

There are many ways and aspects that digital art has touched on but this blog will mainly focus on the reinvention of museography and the exhibition of artwork, which are the fundamental elements connecting visitors with the art. The art professionals have realized that it is no longer enough to just expose the artworks on a wall in a glamorous museum hall where the visitors passively view and contemplate the art pieces. Nowadays, the new generation requires some new experiences that enable them to interact with the artwork, to immerse and live from the inside of the world of art actively. Therefore, there have been several attempts by cultural institutions to attract a wider and younger group of audience by grasping the latest technologies and forms of media in exhibiting the artwork.

One of the widely known technologies applied in museography and art exhibitions is immersive digital technology which uses digital images and tools for installation programs to create interactive and highly-engaging digital art environments. The original art masterpieces first get transformed into digital images. The digital art will then be projected in the surface area extending from floor to ceiling with the support of multiple video projectors, spatialized sound system and multimedia equipment. The audiences are engaged with multidimensional and multi-sensual immersive art experiences in which the interaction between the viewer and the art is encouraged and the visitor can become part of the pictorial world of the artist. This makes every visit a unique experience so that you won’t step into the same museum twice. In some of the art projections and installations, the art is dynamic that it can react to touch or motion. This interaction enhances the emotion and experience of the visiting journey, especially for younger audiences.

The art world is undergoing an inevitable transformation as it enmeshes with digital technology. With the rapid development of technology together with the new perception of art by both artists and viewers, we can expect more innovative experiments in how art is created, transformed, and exhibited in the future. Thus, we can have a more comprehensive view of the impact of digitalization and technology on the creative world.

Digital art centers: https://www.culturespacesdigital.com/en/centres-art-numerique

References

ARTDEX. 2022. How Technology is Changing the Art World – ARTDEX. [online] Available at: <https://www.artdex.com/how-technology-is-changing-the-art-world-2/> [Accessed 10 October 2022].

Culturespacesdigital.com. 2022. Digital art centres | Culturespaces Digital® – Site officiel. [online] Available at: <https://www.culturespacesdigital.com/en/centres-art-numerique> [Accessed 10 October 2022].

Eden Gallery. 2022. Digital Art: What is Digital Art Definition? – Eden Gallery. [online] Available at: <https://www.eden-gallery.com/news/what-is-digital-art> [Accessed 10 October 2022].

Future, H., culture, D. and Art, N., 2022. New technologies: pushing the boundaries of Art. [online] Hello Future. Available at: <https://hellofuture.orange.com/en/interactive/new-technologies-pushing-the-boundaries-of-art#theory-practice-digital-is-democratizing-art> [Accessed 10 October 2022].

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For the past two decades, the world has seen its population increasingly concentrated in urban areas. Urbanization and megacity are two “hot topics” in the 21^st century and these trends speed up rapidly. More than 2.5 billion people are expected to add on the world’s urban population by 2050. From two megacity (New York and Tokyo) in 1950s, the number have emerged to 33 megacities across the planet in 2018. Megacity – a city with a population of 10 million or more together with the growth of urbanization have leads to unprecedented problem: lack of energy and water resources, air pollution, wastes disposal safety, threat of food shortages, pollution, insufficient education facilities, inadequacy of infrastructure failing to cope with increasing flow of citizens. Clearly, the capacity of the current cities can not sustain the pressure of urban population growth and raising a new concern for the government. An attempt to find the solution to these problems is triggered since the 1990s and a new concept so-called “Smart City” was established.  

What is smart city?

Smart city is concept indicating the use of information and communication technology (ICT) as well as Internet of Things (IoT) solution to improve operational efficiency, share information with the public and provide a better quality of government service, managing city’s asset and citizen welfare. The primary goal of smart city is to optimize city functions, boost the growth of economic and at the same time improve the quality of life for citizen by using smart technologies and data. The value of how these technologies is used lie at the heart of the smart city concept.

Stage of smart city

There are three stages of smart cities identified:

• Stage 1 – “Smart City 1.0”: technological revamping of the city through modern information technologies implementation. For example: urban services electronic payment systems.
• Stage 2 – “Smart City 2.0”: intellectual infrastructure formation. For example: increase of number of wireless Internet access points or creation of city service platforms.
• Stage 3 – “Smart City 3.0”: completely integrated infrastructure using to exercise on-line management of all city processes. For example: unmanned vehicle control, circular economy.

What are the applications of smart city?

There are many applications of smart city that have been explored in the recent year. A few popular examples are namely:

• Smart energy: the efficient consumption of clean, low-cost energy through he facilitation of peer-to-peer energy production and consumption. Smart blockchain-based contracts for solar-powered households to automatically trade surplus electricity with other members of the grid.
• Smart Mobility: An efficient transportation network which improve access to modernized transportation systems, continuous real-time tracking of transportation vehicles and passenger, optimize routing strategies and plan for the differing needs of commuters. Mobility-as-a-Service solutions, where various additional services can be delivered to citizens such as car-sharing, payments, insurance, and maintenance.
• Smart Government: public administration and service such as identity management, tax collection, etc. can be automated and delivered more efficiently through the use of smart contracts, enabled by the blockchain.

What are the forces to shape the future of smart city?

The smart city seems to be a promising solution to help the government on the urbanization problem, but we might wonder how smart cities can achieve its goals or what technology and process supporting the smart city concept. There are eight core forces identified to shape the future of smart city in which some can directly address the urbanization problems:

• Sharing economy: the new economic model is changing the way that people consume and access to product and service. Being supported by the online ecosystem, digital platform and Internet of thing, the sharing economy practices such as share drive service (Uber, Grab), crowd funding (Go fund me) become more popular.
• Industry 4.0: Industry 4.0-led digital transformation of manufacturingreshape the entire value chain and supply chain from design, production, delivery to customer service. The future factory will be operated by robots and worker who being supported by augmented devices and tools.
• AI: Living in the era of data generated by smart devices, these technologies like AI, big data analytics, cloud, connectivity and machine learning would enhance the way people live and work with better prediction and information for decision making as well as off-load simple and repetitive tasks.
• Urban Predictive Operations: real-time intelligence centers combine data, technology, and human expertise shared across various essential public service and department (police, fire department, hospital, security) can help to predict and response quickly to the emergencies situation.

Despite the development and maturity of smart city concept, yet there are challenges and concerns that do not lie in the availability of technology itself but rather on how these technologies is being used and governance. Sharing information and being more connected can brings many benefits to people but would it outweigh the concern on the threat of cybersecurity and privacy violation? Would there be new emerging technology or new regulation and policy to address these concerns?

References

Blockchain for Smart Cities: the future of Urban Mangement – Iberdrola. (2022). Retrieved 5 October 2022, from https://www.iberdrola.com/innovation/blockchain-for-smart-cities-urban-management

Nazir, S. (2022). National Digital Transformation and Smarter Cities: Eight Forces That Will Shape the Future [Blog]. Retrieved from https://e.huawei.com/en/eblog/industries/insights/2021/eight-forces-will-shape-future

Smart Cities Series: Blockchain and Smart Cities. (2022). Retrieved 5 October 2022, from https://www2.deloitte.com/za/en/pages/financial-services/articles/blockchain-for-smart-cities-article-3-of-3.html

Vishnivetskaya, A., & Alexandrova, E. (2019). “Smart city” concept. Implementation practice. IOP Conference Series: Materials Science And Engineering, 497, 012019. doi: 10.1088/1757-899x/497/1/012019