Influence of Technology in Visual Art Essay

How does technology influence visual art? And how does photography influence the development of painting? This essay considers the impact of technology on the visual art and how this technology accelerated the development of the art and how people respond, adapt and incorporate modern technology into their own work. The impact of technology in visual arts has been in photography. Willian Melin stated that, â€Å"the dominant forces during the past century has been modern technology and has affected virtually every aspect of modern life – social, political, economic and cultural† (Melin p. 3). Photography has influenced many painters and has admitted its impact on their work. Their art was greatly affected by this new medium. The effect of this technology was not only to alter the world of painting and the role of the painter but also to use it as a new method or tool to develop their work. Some Artists uses photographs as the basis of their painting or as a reference or guidelines. One of the photograph’s first benefits to the painter was its possible use as a sketch. The photograph could capture exactly a face, a pose, a scene and even actions of different motion. The earliest work by photographers Eadward Muybridge and Etienne-Jules Marey influenced among many painters such as Edgar Degas, Giacomo Balla and Marcel Duchamp. â€Å"When in the late 1870’s, Muybridge’s snapshots of the animal locomotion, specially the studies of horse’s different gaits, came to be known in France and the United States† (de Duve p. 114). Eadweard Muybridge was known for his early use of multiple cameras to study motion. Muybridge’s photographic motion study shows by separating motion into a series of stills. Each subject shows us series of motion as parts in the subject. These cameras capture the image, introducing a single moment from all possible movements of the subject in motion. Taken as a whole, he presents us with an idea of the motion; when projected rapidly on a screen in proper sequence creating rapid consecutive intervals of number of images following one after the other, the motion becomes clear. â€Å"With this demonstration at a meeting of the San Francisco Art Association on May 4, 1880, moving pictures were born† (Newhall p. 336). Muybridge’s motion studies are considered to be a vital step in the development of photography to motion pictures as we know them today.