Art in the Sci-fi Age
Given that I’m a painter, it may seem strange that I would be interested in digital art. But I’m always looking for new sources of inspiration. I recently came across a publication in the NGV bookshop which really opened my eyes to the incredible world of art in the digital age. The impression I get is that the artists/designers who have created these images must be operating in an entirely different reality.
This book “is an invitation to partake in a voyage through the boundless expanses of the future, as seen through the eyes of artists and illustrators who have mastered the art of world-building.” Inspiration has come from Sci-Fi video games, comic books, TV shows and movies, the result of which are landscapes both familiar and alien where the viewer is invited to visit uncharted territories.
There are three portals involved in this journey; Cyberpunk Portal - consisting of neon-lit streets, Post-apocalyptic Portal - desolate landscapes, Artifical Portal - man-made wonders. Some of the artists have utilized up to five different software packages in their productions including Photoshop, Illustrator, Adobe Substance 3D Painter, Cinema 4D, Houdini and Octane Render. And no, I haven’t heard of some of these packages either.
So you may be interested to know that many of these artists use simple drawings on paper or in note books when conceiving a new project. Then they move to digital. For some, music is an inspiration, in fact, one of the artists featured in this book has a background in music composition. He found that composing music stimulates his imagination and helps him dream up new worlds. An interest in architecture also plays a role in crafting urban landscapes.
The Cyberpunk Portal features a mixture of towering skyscrapers with weird hovercraft zipping around them to images of the dark underbelly, populated by punks and rebels roaming through graffiti covered alleyways. The Post-apocalyptic portal features barren and desolate landscapes, yet there is a suggestion of the resilience of the human spirit. There are images of campfires being lit and tents erected among the ruins. The imagination is allowed to run completely wild in the Artificial Portal - a land populated by the most unlikely of space craft, cyborgs and mechanical beasts.
So why my interest in all this? What I see in this art is the free flowing of imagination and to me it’s beside the point the these images are computer generated. You need not only the technical skill to pull it off, but also the creativity. It would be perhaps dismissive to attribute these images to the use of hallucinogenic drugs, but I don’t buy that.
We also live in an unconscious world which seems to be hurtling towards some sort of apocalypse and I’m trying to imagine an exhibition of these images at a very large scale - and the impact it may have on the visitor. Bring it on - I say!!
Ref;
Futuria - Art of the Sci-fi Age, published by Victionary, 2024
Geoff Harrison