Add a new dimension to your visual arts!               
 
   Images have always exerted a special power over us
humans, right from the time our ancestors looked up to
the heavens and conjured a myriad of mystical pictures in
the patterns of the stars, to the walls of caves that they
thought to contain pictures carved out by the spirits of
their hunted animals, which they have embellished further
and shaped with stone tools before they consciously set
out to create them from scratch, adding to it many artistic
elements expressing their daily life, fears and dreams.

 Two major elements have shaped this continuous output,
firstly, our visual system is so well adapted to recreate all
the physical world that surrounds us, for the eye's retina is
actually more of an active part of the brain than just a film
passively recording a visual event, to use the popular but
not so accurate analogy of the camera, secondly, the tools
that humans used, opened new horizons to artists in the
various ages across the millennia, for without certain tools
emerging and developing say, during the age of Pharaohs
how could they produce such a vastly advanced art using
a challenging array of materials like stone, glass and gold ?

Art tools have had a two way interaction channel to the
brain, the mind first conceives the artwork then the brain
executes all these abstract data into a physical object
through the controlled action of the physical human body,
then it is the brain that reassembles back all these visual
data to be reinterpreted yet again by the mind, this two
way channel interaction is continuous and takes place on
several levels of consciousness at any given time. New
art tools have, undoubtedly, contributed  to many new
forms of art and through this two way channel interaction,
these new art forms necessitated the evolution and the
creation of new tools.

 The computer is one of these new art tools that have
almost developed in almost isolation of the arts, but
has since been accepted fairly quickly , a testimony of
the adaptability of the creative human spirit !
 It is nothing less than astounding the way computers
have progressed, with the ability to interact with every
facet of our lives, arts are no exception, and computer
graphics that were once the domain of scientific data
charting, have sprouted many new fields addressing
a new breed of visual artists, who like myself, have
taken to this new medium like ducks to the water.

Computer art "off the shelf" programs have advanced
in leaps and bounds as well, combine this with cheap
computing power, and you have a formidable artistic
tool at your finger tips. Computer art is a fascinating
and vast subject that encompasses many disciplines,
which is one of it's main attractions, for you can easily
combine say photography, painting and sculpture to
produce a cyber artwork that has it's own existence
and unique characteristic world inside the computer,
that is something that couldn't be achieved in this way
ever before! Complex and imaginative environments
could be simulated using just as complex mathematical
procedures, new ways of visualisation keep emerging
and all that research, complex as it may sound, filters
down to everyday users and they range from students
to the graphic arts and printing . 

One thing though has had a profound effect on artists
 who have started out as traditional art-media users,
 is the interaction of digital computers with the user
 through a simple interface.
firstly the humble mouse, a device we all take for
granted, then through other devices like light pens with
touch screens and digitiser tablets with stylus . Devices
like these simply imitated the natural drawing ways that
traditional artists use, but with a lot more expansion
on the concept. 

As research advanced and cost reduced,
more and more artists like to dabble a bit in computer
art as an extension of traditional media and I think I can
safely say that computer art is firmly established as an
independent branch of art, with many artists opt to use
computers and digital devices solely as their preferred
media and with borders between the different visual arts
completely blurred, freedom is the order of the day. 
 Creating art on the computer is, as you might have
guessed, is heavily influenced by the way graphics
are handled to arrive at the desired image. Basically,
there are two ways to deal with graphics on the
computer, object based and pixel based. That is to
say three dimensional  and two dimensional. The
first relies mostly on the geometrical recreation of
an object through describing it's spatial properties,
typically using a three view representation that combine
to create a solid illusion of three dimensions on a two
dimensional screen, utilising all the traditional rules &
knowledge of perspective and the rendering of any