Inspiration and Originality Underlined

Today while randomly perusing art sites, I came across LACDA -the Los Angeles Center for Digital Art.  This institution shows exhibits and holds regular international contests for digital artistry.  Upon further research I discovered that this digital art museum is one of many (just Google "digital art museum" - you will see what I mean). 

“Digital art defines the contemporary” it says at the head of one of the paragraphs on their site.  How well that could have once been said about photography and even colored glass was at one time a technical advancement that found application in art form. This really got the gears going in my head thinking about digital art in a different way, within a new context.

"The Dream Decor of Oblivion"
Monumental, Digital Mural at LAX Depicts Vast Los Angeles Skyline
Artist: Susan Logoreci , 2011

Digital art originated in the 1970s and therefore could be described as fairly new which plays into how it is not embraced as traditional art, in a sense. Some suggest that it takes away from the artist's essence, that it falls short due to the lessened physical interaction the artist has with the medium. However, if one were to try to discount the digital art process by saying it is easy as if assembling something with step-by-step instructions that would be an incorrect viewpoint. A digital artist utilizes many different traditional skills during their creative process. The digital artist sculpts a subject, much the same as how figure is sculpted with clay. Then color and texture is added the same way a painter would for a traditional painting. Lighting and angle must be represented as if using a camera for photography, adjusting for the desired effect. Everything taken into consideration, it would seem that one cannot be just simply able to manipulate digital, but know how to do so with a combination of artistic skill sets.