I’ve been creating and manipulating media digitally in a variety of formats for over 20 years. For most of what I do, the mouse and keyboard are my main tools. Every tool – digital or analog – influences the creative process to some degree. That said, the digital experience still lacks the immediacy and transparency you can get when using just paper and pencil. In the same way that a tool like PowerPoint shapes the way you think about presenting information – and ultimately what you present – most digital media tools I’m familiar with seem to channel your creative energies in certain preordained directions. I know first hand that you can do some awesome original things in the digital space, but the technology behind it does seems to leave a lot of its own fingerprints on the creative process.
But this might be changing.
Touch based platforms are letting digital tools come closer to replicating the analog experience most of them are modeled on. The video below is an example I found on YouTube of an iPad based art program called “brushes” in action:
The video is really a bit too long, but it is worth skipping through it to see how things are starting to evolve in this space. Both the process and the end result are impressive. What makes this so significant is that everything in the video is happening on a basic portable device – the iPad – that costs just $499, running an inventive drawing program that costs just $7.99. You don’t need to be a digital artist to appreciate just how revolutionary this could end up being.
And this is just the first generation of these tools. Imagine where they’ll be in a couple more years.
Touch computing will be transformational.