New techniques change art
A technology is a tool or method people invent. When artists get a new tool, they can make things that were impossible before.
- About 1450 – printing press: woodcuts and engravings could be copied hundreds of times. Prints were cheap, so art reached homes, not only churches and palaces.
- 1700s–1800s – Industrial Revolution: factories made new pigments, cheap paper, iron and glass. Steel and glass buildings changed architecture.
- 1841 – paint tube: paint could be carried. Painters such as the Impressionists worked outdoors (en plein air) to catch changing light.
- 1839 – photography and 1895 – cinema: see the next section.
- 1960s onward – computers: digital images, video art, the internet, games, 3D printing, virtual reality, and now AI image tools.
Art and reality: photography and cinema
Before the camera, painters were paid to record faces and places exactly. A camera does this in seconds: a lens bends light to form an image (upside down) on film or a sensor.
So painters asked, "What can painting do that a photo cannot?" Answers included strong colour, visible brush strokes, many viewpoints at once (Cubism) and pure shapes (abstract art).
Photography also became an art of its own: choosing the frame, the moment and the light.
Cinema shows about 24 still frames per second, so the eye sees motion. Film added time, editing and sound. India's film industry grew from 1913 to become one of the world's largest.
Reproduction, digitalisation and the 'original'
Reproduction means making copies of an artwork. Printing, photography, recordings and the internet each made copying easier.
Some thinkers argued that a copy loses the special 'aura' of the original, the one object in one place. Others saw copies as good news: everyone can now see great art.
Digitalisation turns images and sound into numbers (pixels and samples). A digital file can be copied perfectly and for free, edited without limit and shared worldwide in seconds. New questions follow: who owns a digital work? Is an AI-made picture art, and who is its author? How do artists protect their work and give credit to others?
Artists using science and artistic research
- Perspective: Renaissance artists used geometry (lines meeting at a vanishing point) to show depth.
- Anatomy: artists studied the body to draw it correctly; Leonardo da Vinci's notebooks mix art and science.
- Colour science: a prism splits white light into a spectrum. Painters used ideas about complementary colours and dots of pure colour that mix in the eye (Pointillism).
- Optics and light art: Op Art uses patterns that trick the eye; light artists use LEDs and lasers.
- Bio art and data art: some artists work with living cells, sound of the sea or climate data.
Artistic research means the artist investigates a question (for example, how a city sounds at night) by making and testing, much like a scientist, and shares the process as well as the result.
Key formulas and definitions
- Key terms – technology: a tool or method people invent
- Reproduction: making copies of an artwork (print, photo, recording, file)
- Frame rate: frames shown each second; cinema ≈ 24 fps
- Pixel: the smallest square of colour in a digital image; image size = width × height in pixels
- Perspective: using geometry so a flat picture shows depth
- Digitalisation: turning images and sound into numbers
- Artistic research: investigating a question through making art
- Timeline: print ≈1450 → photo 1839 → paint tube 1841 → cinema 1895 → computers 1960s+ → internet 1990s → AI images 2020s
Worked examples
1. Why did many painters stop trying to paint exact copies of reality after about 1850?
The camera could copy reality faster and cheaper. Painters looked for what only painting can do: bold colour, visible brush strokes, feelings and new ways of seeing.
2. A digital image is 1200 pixels wide and 800 pixels high. How many pixels does it have?
1200 × 800 = 960 000 pixels (about 1 megapixel).
3. A 3-second animation runs at 24 frames per second. How many frames are needed?
24 × 3 = 72 frames.
4. How did the paint tube change where painting happened?
Before, painters ground pigments in the studio and paint dried quickly. Sealed tubes kept paint fresh and portable, so artists painted outdoors and captured real light at different times of day.
5. A museum puts a famous painting online in high resolution. Give one gain and one loss.
Gain: anyone in the world can study it for free. Loss: you miss its real size, texture and the experience of standing in front of the original.
Common mistakes
- Thinking photography killed painting. It changed painting's job; painting became freer.
- Thinking technology alone makes art. The artist's ideas and choices make a work art, not just the tool.
- Mixing up the order of inventions. The camera (1839) came slightly before the paint tube (1841); printing came about 400 years earlier.
- Believing a copy and an original are the same in every way. A copy shares the image but not the size, material or history of the object.