How Many Wheels Does It Take to Make a Bicycle?

An excerpt from my BA Thesis at NYU, written in 2020-2021.

An entirely new genre and form of art emerged in the 1980s, dubbed Digital Art. Digital artists, equipped with ever-evolving new technology, incorporated and advanced theories of Pop, Minimalism, and Conceptual Art. When examining the influence and dilemma of Digital Art, we must examine the literature and exhibition that analyzed and traced the lineage of the ever-growing field of Digital and Virtual Art. In works by digital artists, we can see the influence of previous artists who distanced themselves from the traditional value of the “artists’ hand” by outsourcing the manufacturing responsibility to others, and the focus on instructions and artistic ideas that inspired the artworks. Digital artists who are exploring themes from the twentieth century, also benefited from the development of technology when incorporating digital interactive interfaces into their artworks. In Battle of the Algiers (2006), artists Marc Lafia and Fang-Yu Lin were able to create software that responds to viewers’ act of tapping a touch screen by presenting video and audio. In other cases, artists such as Douglas Gordon utilized 3D printing technology to create realistic and accurate replicates of human skulls for his ongoing work Happy Birthday to Me…(2008-ongoing) to facilitate a modern take on the vanitas image and the topic of self-reflection and mortality. Furthering incorporating digital technology into art, Tauba Auerbach created Engin/Altar (2015) incorporated not only 3D printing but also mathematical models and digital algorithms to generate the shapes printed. Finally, the most experimental and cutting-edge would be the blockchain artist duo, Matt Hall and John Watkinson, the creators of Autoglyph (2019) pushed the limit of the blockchain platform and the digital footprint of artwork by writing a program that can generate drawings that resemble LeWitt’s Wall Drawings and housed entirely on the limited space of the Ethereum blockchain.

Before the commercial availability of computer technology, artists and scientists already began their exploration into combining scientific advancements with artistic expression. One of the earliest initiators of such collaboration was an engineer at Bell Labs, Billy Klüver. In 1966, he founded Experiments in Art and Technology (EAT). Before EAT, he had, as mentioned in the previous chapter, collaborated with Warhol in 1962 to create his Silver Clouds, and have since worked with artists such as John Cage, Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, and Jean Tinguely. This group of artists was one of the first successful projects of its kind and presented the potential of technology in the world of art that continued to diversity in the subsequent decades until the present day.

Beyond the era of artists' appropriating mass-produced objects as multiples and painting, sculpting or photographing objects that are nearly identical, contemporary art and the idea of multiples would keep evolving in the coming decades in line with changing technologies of projection and reception of imagery in the world at large. Before elaborating on the possibilities that digital processing had brought to the world of multiples, it is important to describe the new imaging capabilities that became available.

Instead of conceiving their artistic interventions in and through traditional media, artists who utilize digital tools introduced a new realm of art and also challenges the narrow perspective of viewing technology only as tools to maximize human efficiency. Beyond the sophisticated use of technology that began to appear in the 21st century, digital art explored unprecedented levels of interaction between humans and machines and allowed for a greater focus on technology’s potentials beyond its utilitarian functions. It revealed a new field of possibility, beyond the existing classification of “right” and “wrong” ways to operate a computer program, where artists can introduce new articulations of digital technology. (1)

Softwares such as Photoshop and After Effects have become commonplace, allowing for unprecedented and dazzling manipulation of photographic source material and videos with almost industry-level special effects, and impossibly complex hyper-realistic renderings of images. More advanced three-dimensional modeling software such as Cinema 4D and continual updates of Computer-aided Design software (CAD) have created opportunities for artists to create three-dimensional objects, animate characters, and complete environments using only a capable computer.

Beyond artworks created on personal computers, the development of internet functionality, in the last two decades or less, has facilitated new forms of interactive and generative art. It has opened up a vast cyber world unlimited by space or material, in which anyone can take part in real-time communication and interaction while being physically distant either geographically, in time zone, or both. These interactions have relied on algorithms capable of efficiency and accuracy of communication. Artists can explore creating their artworks on the internet through web coding, or uploading the images, videos, or virtual environments onto a server and allow for remote access. 

Other methods of creating digital art would be to create sets of instructions or parameters with which computers can generate images or results when prompted by viewers to do so. Actions such as tapping an image, entering words, or waving in front of a motion-tracking camera can allow the computer to respond such as images, or real-time video feedback that incorporates the visitor’s movements. Complex and automating algorithms give computers the capability to create and execute commands without being operated or monitored by the artist. The involvement of such digital code-to-image translation facilitates "human-to-human and human-to-machine interactions.” (2)

With ever-developing methods of art-making, such complex and varied character of Digital Art evades effective and lasting categorization, but there has been much valuable research, that attempts to distinguish it from preexisting and more “traditional” methods and mediums. In chapter four of New Media in Art, the author Michael Rush specifically focuses on the digital element of art, by contrasting it to the previously established vocabulary and understanding of art history before the 1980s. The capability of computer technology and science exists far beyond copying and creating a digital reference to a physical object—it is capable of creating objects, imaged, and new reality whose validity does not rely on their direct connection or correlation to the physical world. Rush compared reproduction to the digital world to hot-air balloon to aviation—they are mere beginnings and the first steps into a much more complex field full of possibilities that Rush defines Digital art not as a revolution, but as an innovation in art, and rejected the simplification of digital technology as one of “reproduction,” and considered the word “interactive” to be the more inclusive and accurate. (3) Interactive digital artwork requires the cooperation of viewers to complete and initiate the work, and to give them content—which echoed the sentiments of previously discussed Minimalist, Conceptual Artists, and Duchamp. (4) These artworks were the product of concepts and ideas as dictated by artists in code, through the interaction between artist and machine, and require the viewer to not only acknowledge the existence of the script behind the image presented, but to understand the intention behind the script, and follow the instructions to interact with the work was intended. Instead of simply viewing and making sense of a LeWitt wall drawing by interpreting both a mural and a text—the audience is now being asked to, based on their understanding of the text, and the existing image, create their version or add to the existing image.

Following the lineage from readymades, then Conceptual Art, then arriving at Digital Art, the 2018 exhibition at the Whitney Museum Programmed: Rules, Codes, and Choreographies in Art, 1965-2018 presents a section named “Rule, Instruction, Algorithm” focuses on the rule-based artistic practices of Conceptual Art, which predates digital art, and the common driving force of instructions and ideas behind both Conceptual and computer coded artworks. (5) Despite the clear connection between Digital Art and the artistic practices that predate them, the exponential development in technology offers endless arrays of options both in terms of tools and medium.

Digital art, while occupying a pragmatic world of applied computer science, emphasizes the agility of codes and the elegance of such technology’s ability to complete complex tasks by combining numerous and individually simple steps. It is intimately related to our everyday life and exists in a far-reaching network already familiar to most. Viewing and accessing an artwork can be as easy as clicking on a website. The virtual communication of artworks cannot be brought to life by the artist alone; it requires an expanded field of computers, displays, servers, and viewers’ initiation actions. This complex viewing process and mediated communication from artist-to-computer, then computer-to-viewer process creates variations in presentation and interpretation. While a website's coding remains the same no matter how it is accessed, the rendered image could differ greatly. Despite the discrepancies, it is indisputable that the websites accessed are the same. This unusual variation can be attributed to the difference between tools and mediums of art. However, unlike the tangible, crafted, and often valuable materials of art through the Renaissance, or the intangible modernist media of photography and film, or the recording of the simple medium of “paint” at the height of abstraction, in digital art, the code is both the medium and tool. (6)  Artists use computers to create images, code their work, as well as to display and/or make the art otherwise accessible. The convergence of medium and tool eliminated the space of translation, reducing errors in transmission, especially when the artworks are viewed using the same instrument.

It is assumed that variations do not originate from translation errors but are allowed or possible outcomes of the same set of instructions. Viewing digital artworks technically, the type is computer code—a purely conceptual idea that exists but without physical forms, such as numbers in mathematics, and the software code that the artist has created that is capable of generating an image when run by a device. The token is the script or rendition of concepts in a symbol, word, or image. For example, the idea of "two" can be expressed as "2", "二," or "II," which are all universally acknowledged and accepted tokens that represented the same concept. (7) In short, a type can be represented by multiple tokens, each in its essence an identical multiple representing the analogous concept. By creating artwork in code and as a “type,” the artist forgoes the ability to create a physical, original image, of which any reproduction by default becomes a copy. Instead, in this form of digital art, the artist must rely on the viewers’ equipment to translate and “perform” their work, realizing the from code as a visual representation—the image displayed on the viewer’s screen. (8)

Beyond the variation in machine-to-machine communication, the other space for variation in interpretation lies in the machine-to-human interaction. This variation in human response and interpretation—which by nature differs significantly. In web-based art, artists determine success by factors including the number of visitors and interactions rather than technological sophistication and innovation. (9) Technology such as motion tracking cameras, virtual reality, and interactive websites need visitors to interact and input information for the algorithm to generate a response. In digital art, it is no different. Without the interaction, the artwork is ostensibly incomplete—since it cannot function as intended. Each visitor who comes to the work experiences the work slightly differently due to the variation in “tokens” of the same type.

As each viewer approaches the work and “interacts” with it, arguably, no two visitors would receive identical feedback or image from the same algorithm. Each generated image expands the diversity and capability of the artwork to create tokens. Such as in the exhibition Programmed: Rules, Codes, and Choreographies in Art, 1965-2018 at the Whitney Museum of American Art, the artwork The Battle of the Algiers is a grid of 22 by 50 squares, some grey, some white, some filled with black and white photos, and the images and squares appear and disappear randomly, waiting for user input and provides options to “Draw New Story,” or “Alter Story Trajectory” at the bottom. By selecting “Draw New Story,” all squares uniformly turn grey and allow the visitors to interact with the artwork on a touch screen and according to the rule established in code, some action can trigger video stories. It is easy to observe a small sample of different audience interactions with this specific artwork through the exhibition photographs. While some visitors left the screen with random groups of clicked-on tiles scattered throughout the display, others used the tiles as a possibility for mosaic, using the interactive surface to draw simple figures by selectively highlighting individual tiles. (10) The two visitors undoubtedly triggered distinctively different responses from the program, and the intentions behind the two interactions were most likely different. There is no rule preventing either type of interaction from happening. This range of visitor responses proves that the system accepts various outcomes as promising signs of successful interaction between the program and the viewer where the viewer is provided with feedback and correlates logically to the input.

These variations of outcome determine the experience of one viewer and heavily influence the subsequent visitors. In cases like The Battle of the Algiers, viewers can see evidence and effects of previous participants reflected in real-time. Web-based art that allows visitor comments or archives interactions also preserves these asynchronous interactions. (11) When subsequent viewers are allowed to see the results of previous interactions, it sets an expectation or example of possible experiences, will enable them to react similarly to an algorithm or create their permutation within the same set of parameters and guidelines. Even when programs occasionally crash or generate an unexpected error message, similar to the constraints of computer-to-computer interaction, it is too an accepted iteration of the work that represents its limit rather than its potential.

Given that digital art already carries the potential to generate infinite, or near-infinite tokens from the same program or algorithm, the artwork is often represented by a small selection of tokens generated; each adequately provides an example of the numerous possibilities. Images, videos, or sounds generated from a computer program can be attributed to one server or computer. In the sense of previous definitions of multiples as mechanical reproductions, the permutation of results does not quite fit the description. 

Beyond online locations, whether it be websites, servers, or local hard drives, digital art can also take on physical manifestations or tokens with an artist’s choice of methods. Programs, algorithms, and calculations can be visualized into images and graphs, or used as instructions for machines to manufacture tangible works. As previously mentioned, CAD programs can create three-dimensional models and renderings; it also allows users to translate these images into reality through collaboration with robotic manufacturing, an increasingly accessible technology previously reserved for industrial engineering. Beyond complicated and expensive machinery that needs to be hosted in a laboratory, a more user-friendly example of robotic manufacturing that has gained significant popularity is 3D printing.

It provides a manufacturing process akin to the fabricated multiples of Duchamp’s readymades by Arturo Schwarz. The outsourcing of manufacturing to workshops or a machine altered the relationship between the artist and the artwork and changed its significance by removing the artist’s touch. Duchamp took inspiration from already mass-manufactured and machine fashioned items such as bottle dryers and clothing racks—all also subject to touch, not coincidentally—for his Readymades. Later, artisans created the multiples based on photographs of the original readymades combined with the artist's instructions and specifications. In the world of 3D printing, artists similarly dictate their preference and desired outcome of an object by creating a digital model or a set of instructions for the printer to follow, and at its maximum potential. create any shape or form. 

The most straightforward type of 3D printing involves a detailed and digitally created 3D rendering of the desired object that can be printed as many times as desired. These identical works can either be a part of the same body of work, similar to Warhol’s Brillo Boxes, or as individual editions like Duchamp’s Readymade multiples. In either case, 3D printing helps distance the artists from the final works while maintaining their independence as the sole contributor in the creative process. 

One example of the 3D printed sculpture is an ongoing project by Scottish artist Douglas Gordon. Happy Birthday to Me, a project that began in 2008, comprises 54 skulls as of March 2021, corresponding to Gordon’s age (Figure 9). The inspiration for the work came from The Evolution Shop on Spring Street, which sells primarily animal skeleton, geodes, anatomy illustrations, and even human skeletons. (12) The idea of being able to purchase and own a real human skull served as an intriguing idea of the relic of life as “trophy…fear of the future, [or] of recognition of a past event.” (13) Each year, on the artist’s birthday, a new 3D printed skull replica is made and added to the series. As a symbol of death, the skulls serve as an annual reminder of aging, mortality, and time passage. In Happy Birthday to Me… Gordon presents the symbol of death in a much more confronting manner. Each skull represents a part of the artist’s 53 years of life, and the growing ensemble serves as a self-portrait that grows over time. 

Another element of the work that increases yearly is the number of hollowed-out stars on the skull. The chosen shape, as Gordon explained, references Duchamp’s Tonsure In The Form of a Shooting Star (1919) and a photograph by Man Ray named Marcel Duchamp, Tonsure (1921). (14) In the photograph, it featured the back of Duchamp’s head with a shaved bald patch in a five-point star shape (Figure 10). Taking inspiration from the drawing by and photograph of Duchamp, Gordon took the concept further by adding one additional star to each subsequent skull. The layout of the stars varies, and the size of each star is inconsistent and gradually becomes smaller to accommodate the growing number. The changing layout and random placement of the skulls in a gallery would be interpreted as the variability in life, was some years are more pivotal, while others shrink to be smaller, less significant, and as one age and more trivial memories fade and the strict linearity of the passage of time give ways to create mistaken or misplaced memories.

Gordon’s installation speaks to the artist’s affinity for self-reflection and introspection of one’s character and mortality. Gordon certainly drew a parallel to vanitas images—still-life paintings featuring a skull surrounded by various objects such as flowers, books, compasses, and food. The contrast between the lifelessness and symbols of vitality creates a mirror to reflect on "the inevitable transformation from the beautiful outward appearance to the hideous skeleton…and the vanity of deceiving oneself about the inescapable end.” (15)

Since self-portrait and the topic of aging is a profoundly personal one focused on introspection, using genuine skulls could complicate the narrative. Those whose skulls would be used for the artwork have already lived lives of their own and pass on, and each would contain a story that transforms the artwork into a generalized idea of humankind’s aging and death. The alternative of commissioning an artisan or workshop to make sculptural skulls complicates the artwork’s intended message. The experience of birthdays, aging, and mortality can be universal. Confronting evidence of the passing of days, months, and years of one’s own life is also a profoundly personal experience unique to everyone. Therefore, to tell a person’s story and avoid generalization of mortality as a universal concept, the 3D printed replicas provide a mechanical and objective distance and emphasizes that death, just like the fabrication of the skulls, is not completely reliant on the artist’s actions, but is also an inseparable indirect consequence of his own decision and actions. It allows for objectivity in observing one’s mortality. Just as viewers would be experiencing the ever-growing work, so can the artist. 

The skulls used for the work are 3D printed replicas of human skulls—using materials that match the color and texture of genuine bone. The impressive dimensionality and detail capacity of the 3D printer meant that the skulls were exactly true to life from every angle. For installation, the numerous skulls would be randomly placed in a pile in the corner of a burgundy room, and a few would be scattered across the gallery. The overwhelmingly saturated red reminds the viewer of blood, life as in a mother’s womb, and death when the warmth that signifies vitality is drained away. The skull arrangement resembling a graveyard drew parallel to the installation of multiples in representations created by Warhol's Brillo Boxes at the Stable Gallery.

From a technical perspective, the accuracy and reproducibility of 3D printing offer the fidelity and the possibility of annual recreation necessary to continue the artwork. Beyond the realistic effects, the 3D printer also offers an autonomous process that allows the project to continue by creating additional identical prints when prompted. Gordon has already dictated the rules for manufacturing the skulls and no longer have to sculpt each one personally. The 3D printing machine becomes the inorganic second party in the process of personal reflection. Each year, the printing process allows the artist to be a bystander in his own life for a moment and see a representation of himself come into physical form at a pace beyond his control.

This printing process utilized by Douglas Gorton focuses on simple digital-to-physical translation with a complete set of instructions and measurements for mechanical reproduction. However, beyond this more straightforward reproduction mode, more advanced 3D printing can create then print out geometric forms using complex algorithm-generated mathematic permutations and combinations. Whether the instructions come from codes, digital models based on computer design, or laser scans of an object, one thing remains the same. The artist does not physically create the final work.

American artist Tauba Auerbach has a long-standing interest in topology, a branch of mathematics concerned with the properties of geometric objects that are preserved under continuous deformations without creating or closing new holes, or passing through itself. (16) One of the most common examples of such a structure is a spiral or helix. Helixes cannot be superposed onto their mirror images and are often defined by their chirality—distinctively different and identifiable right or left-handedness. Auerbach has first learned about this concept in the writings of mathematician Martin Gardner and found connections between the helix, its chirality, and its role in science. (17) A helix can be expressed as a trigonometry equation in mathematics, and a computer can generate it by graphing it in three-dimensional space. This specific geometric structure is seen in many fields of study, most notably in DNA structures studied in organic chemistry and biology.

As an artist, Auerbach saw the form’s consistency throughout time. While the helix often remains a minuscule molecular structure that cannot be directly observed, Auerbach seeks to present the structure in an approachable manner visually. Presenting such academic and specialized knowledge required the artist to translate conceptual elements of scientific discoveries of nature into visual tokens. The resulting work that focuses explicitly on various forms of the helix was Altar-Engine (2015). The work consists of a large blue tabletop with carefully arranged black, gold, and white 3D printed objects (Figure 11). The sapphire blue surface resembles the color of choice for blueprints and provides a backdrop highlighting the variety of helixes in a biological context. The name of the artwork includes a word that evokes religious and mythical imagery, and in contrast with the high precision, accuracy, and scientific characteristics of an engine suggests a growth in mindset that comes with sophistication in scientific understanding. It could be interpreted as a reference to a quote from Profiles of the Future: An Inquiry into the Limits of the Possible, where science fiction writer Author C. Clarke listed his famous Three Laws, one of which says: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” (18) The alter in Auerbach’s work presents scientific knowledge that mankind used to describe as magic, and reason as God’s will. However, as we are beginning to grasp the knowledge of life and death, and the reason behind diseases and evolution from our DNA, the mystery of life, previously unattainably complex morphed into a complex machine—an engine that we are now beginning to dissect, analyze and comprehend.

Upon the altar, the methodical arrangement and inorganic colors create a futuristically metallic palette that’s been laid out to suggest “component of some kind of engine ‘powered by the helix.’” (19) These forms were first visualized through mathematical computations, then subsequently rearranged, reformed, and complicated to render a physical “vivid and embedded ornamentation that undergirds life itself.” (20)

Each of the components laid out on the table was brought to life by a 3D printer. Each coil's mechanical precision, arranged in the same orientation and perfectly parallel to each other, reminds the audience of the machine’s potential of approaching perfection. If graphed with merely a pen on paper and then sculpted by hand—the work would undoubtedly carry flaws and errors. 

In the theoretical world of mathematics, equations and plotted graphs, numbers and theories can be tested repeatedly, and if done correctly, would always return the same results. In biology, minuscule elements react and generate identical chemical structures without guidance. Genetics can render complex cellular structures and life forms within all living organisms with little to no errors. Altar/Engine uses the fidelity of machinery to highlight humankind’s effort to understand our inherent, complex strength. The journey of self-discovery is aided by human-made instruments that can mimic the laws of nature and are fueled by the desire to achieve perfection. Viewing Auerbach’s work today, the correlation between the helix, DNA, and the current coronavirus mRNA vaccine development presents the power of art in capturing memories of and inspiring reflection on the capabilities of advancing scientific discoveries.

From computer algorithms to artificial intelligence, the space occupied by digital art is both figuratively and reconfigured daily, presenting difficulties in not only categorization but also conservation, authentication, and evaluation. However, the popularization and sophistication of blockchain technology—a complex system of small files connected via maths equations and digital keys could be a solution. The most popular use of this digital authentication system is utilizing it as a bookkeeping system that guarantees authenticity and objectivity and is not controlled by any company or government entity. Digital artists who create web or internet-based images, instead of uploading the entire artwork onto the blockchain, can attach a non-fungible token—a unique blockchain address, to their artwork as an unalterable proof of authenticity and can be purchased or sold as a deed. (21) Christie’s recent auction of a collection of 5000 digital artworks by artist Mike Winkelmann has pioneered the sale of digital art using blockchain addresses as both the deed, the certificate of authenticity, and provenance.

With its currently extremely limited storage space, blockchain can store an address that refers to digital artwork, whether it be a JPEG, GIF, or more complex video or web-based artwork. While this information, once created on the blockchain, is virtually a foolproof way to determine ownership and transfer of ownership of the linked artwork, the link itself can be broken, which could then lead to owners of the work unable to prove their ownership of the work, unable to retrieve it from its source or be presented with a fake or false image that is not the work they purchased. These problems related to blockchain could potentially be solved in the future by the expansion of its storage capacity, potentially allowing blockchain to host the artwork themselves. At the moment, the capacity of blockchain is limited by both calculating capacity and concerns on the environmental impact of blockchains that use the cryptocurrency Ethereum.

However, despite the limits of blockchain, there have been artists who have managed to use the platform to store complete artworks, such as a group of pioneering artists and the creator of Autoglyph, Matt Hall, and John Watkinson. Autoglyph relies on a computer program’s ability to generate permutations and combinations of certain elements, such as the hair color, skin color, clothes, and accessories in CryptoPunk, which was also created by Hall and Watkinson in 2017. The 10,000 unique figures were created by computers, and each has its dedicated blockchain address that links to the image. 

Later Hall and Watkinson had experimented with a different form of Crypto art. They had managed to write an extremely short and succinct code for an automated artwork that lives entirely on blockchain (Figure 8). The 72-lines long program is just small enough to be able to operate on the blockchain without other servers. The contained mathematical drawing code can generate, theoretically, infinite Autoglyphs. The creators themselves reference the Wall Drawings by LeWitt as a source of inspiration for their coding, while the set of instructions, as given by LeWitt remains the same, different drafters in different environments could produce theoretically infinite interpretations of the same script, and the Autoglyphs function very similarly. However, they prevent an excess amount of images that have virtually the same patterning, and therefore decreasing the value of each glyph, the creators chose to cap the number at 512 to ensure plenty of variation and diversity in their patterns. (22) The list of 512 images, now viewable on Autoglyph’s website, has a strong resemblance to LeWitt’s Wall Drawings. In keeping with Geometric Abstraction art, these images, while seemingly random, have the clear logic of using simple geometric shapes to form nonobjective compositions. All of the images are squares of the same dimension—all of the black markings are bound by a white border. While some are more simplistic, such as Autoglyph #50, which resembles concentric diamond shapes radiating from the center, Autophyph #216 (cover) contains not only short lines but also black blocks of various dimensions that when observed from a distance, resembles the pattern of an intricate Persian rug that has four symmetrical and mirrored quadrants. While many share the same overall structure and points of symmetry—it is difficult to point out two that are similar. 

This new use of blockchain explores both the maximum capacity of the technology at its current stage and also the minimum amount of instructions required to generate an image that can be considered as art. While artists are testing the current capacity of technology, the existing structure, much like the wall size in LeWitt’s exhibition, is challenging artists to adapt and overcome ideological and practical restrictions of the medium.

The possibility for artists’ to dictate their artwork with instructions is not new to contemporary technology/art. Duchamp’s arm’s length artistic proposition, the model of the factory-or “machine-” made, and eventually—from the Boîte-en-valise through the et Gaz and the Schwarz multiples—the notion of production assistants into his artistic process; Andy Warhol employed his “Factory” to produce large volumes of work, as in the of silk-screen prints; Claes Oldenburg too employed a workshop to create his forever fresh, “pure” white cake slices. And more recently, artists have explored related modes of delegated practice through the new scope and the new limits of digital technology. Redirecting Pop, other artists emerging in the 1960s, like Sol LeWitt, produced instructions for his artworks that assistants could easily execute. It is not such a leap, then for artists now working in digital media, on computers, and on the web, to create instructions in the digital code format for their computers to follow. Digital interactive art such as The Battle of Algiers, requires viewers’ input to complete their experience. These viewers of interactive art now became the artists’ assistants in bringing to life a finished work—a new chapter of the continuous transformation of the relationship between artists and their work. Whether it be the large-number editions allowed by the factory and workshop-fueled mechanical production or computer algorithm’s post-mechanical iterations, the emphasis placed on the “artists’ hand” has completely changed, and, in many cases, has simply ceased to be an issue. The absence of the artists’ direct contact does not necessarily mean diminishing value or significance but instead added a new layer of reflection on our everyday sense of value, uniqueness, mass production, and technology. 

The transition of labor in creating artworks also transformed the relationship between the viewers and the artworks. The viewers’ preexisting perception of the art’s innate nature of uniqueness is challenged by the exhibition of identical multiples. In the context of Pop Art, the vast array of similar or identical artworks displayed together draws a powerful parallel between consumerism and fine art by elevating popular images and factory-made symbols. With digitally generated art, the audience interacts becomes a mediator, and the machine communicates different experiences based on the artist’s original conception and input of rules. Each viewer may leave with a different perception of the work based on their decisions or choice at the moment of its encounter. The variation in digital representation explores the capability and limits of both the artist and the computer program.

Whether it is digital tokens, physical reproductions, or batch-produced multiples with no dedicated original, or “first edition,” the “multiplication” of the work of art has  expanded and transformed the possibility of its display, exhibition, and collection. At one level, it seems that artists have subtracted the element of uniqueness previously tied to the value of art. However, when it comes to the case of digital images—which often can be copied and downloaded freely from the internet, and or the subject of pirating, digital artists adopted a new system of provenance to protect their work against unauthorized use and sales. New platforms such as the blockchain can now be used to shore up authenticity and the limited edition of previously unregulated digital works. While the concept of physical manifestations of Digital Art is much easier to grasp and define, the broader field of pure digital art encompasses a wide range of artworks that evades accurate or precise categorization at the moment.

With the maturing of blockchain technology and its increasing popularity as a method to authenticate and trade digital works, significant institutions have begun to recognize the value of editioned digital art. Digital multiples were born from a combination of technological advancements and artists’ stance against the value assigned to uniqueness and physicality. In the coming years, it will undoubtedly thrive—beyond the tens of millions realized by Winkelmann’s work—and continue to expand the definition of “the multiple” by challenging the networked relationships of creating, experiencing, and collecting art.

(1) Branden W. Joseph, "My Mind Split Open": Andy Warhol's Exploding Plastic Inevitable." Grey Room, no. 8 (2002): 95

(2) Alison Colman. "Constructing an Aesthetic of Web Art from a Review of Artists' Use of the World Wide Web." Visual Arts Research 31, no. 1 (2005).13

(3) Michael Rush, New Media in Art. London: Thames & Hudson, 2005. 181

(4) ibid. 183

(5) https://whitney.org/essays/histories-of-the-digital-now

(6) Lin, Po-Hsien. "A Dream of Digital Art: Beyond the Myth of Contemporary Computer Technology in Visual Arts." Visual Arts Research 31, no. 1 (2005): 8

(7) Ippolito, Jon. "Ten Myths of Internet Art." Leonardo 35, no. 5 (2002): 487

(8) Lin. ”A Dream of Digital Art: Beyond the Myth of Contemporary Computer Technology in Visual Arts." 7

(9) Ippolito, Jon. "Ten Myths of Internet Art." Leonardo 35, no. 5 (2002): 487

(10) Programmed: Rules, Codes, and Choreographies in Art, 1965–2018 | Whitney Museum of American Art, accessed March 10, 2021, https://whitney.org/exhibitions/programmed.

(11) Ippolito, “Ten Myths of Internet Art." 487

(12) “From the Issue: Douglas Gordon,” Musée Magazine (Musée Magazine, January 28, 2021), https://museemagazine.com/features/2020/7/13/from-the-issue-douglas-gordon.

(13) Ibid.

(14) Ibid.

(15) Gordon, Douglas., Görner, K., Gaensheimer, S., Museum für Moderne Kunst (Frankfurt am Main, G. (20112011). Douglas Gordon. Bielefeld: Kerber.

(16) Jenny Gheith, Auerbach, Tauba. Tauba Auerbach -- S V Z. (San Francisco: D.A.P./Distributed Art Publishers 2020) 115

(17) Ibid. 116

(18) Arthur C. Clark, Profiles of the Future. London: Pan Books, 1964.

(19) Linda Dalrymple Henderson, Auerbach, Tauba. 2020. Tauba Auerbach -- S V Z. (San Francisco: D.A.P./Distributed Art Publishers, 2020) 127

(20) Alex Fialho, “Paula Cooper Gallery: 534 West 21st Street,” Paula Cooper Gallery | 534 West 21st Street - Artforum International, January 22, 2016, https://www.artforum.com/picks/paula-cooper-gallery-534-west-21st-street-57564.

(21) Amy Whitaker. "Art and Blockchain: A Primer, History, and Taxonomy of Blockchain Use Cases in the Arts." Activate 8, no. 2 (2019): 29

(22) Jason Bailey, “Autoglyphs, Generative Art Born On The Blockchain.” Artnome.

Figure 8: Autoglyph #1

Figure 9: Douglas Gordon, Happy Birthday to Me…, 2008 (ongoing). © Studio lost but found / 2019, ProLitteris, Zurich. Photo: Matt Grubb

Figure 10: Man Ray Marcel Duchamp, Tonsure, 1921, Vintage gelatin-silver print, original contact © Man Ray 2015 Trust, France

Figure 11: Tauba Auerbach, Altar/Engine, 2015, 3D printed nylon and plastic on table of aluminum, wood and paint, n array of 126 elements ranging from 18 x 18 x 10 inches 45.7 x 45.7x 25.4 cm to .0625 x 1 x 2 inches .16 x 2.5 x 5.1 cm. Table: 15 x 108 x 108 inches 38.1 x 274.3 x 274.3 cm. Photo: Steven Probert