A Computer in the Fine arts lecture room at Chancellor College, University of Malawi

By: Stewart Mafeni (Digital Artist/Graphic Designer).

Fine arts is a term that refers in its broadest modern sense to architecture, ballet, concert music, literature, opera, painting, and sculpture. Keefe argues that ‘the adjective fine is meant to emphasize the beautiful in art, as distinguished from art that is primarily intended to be useful, morally uplifting, or merely pleasing.’

The term fine arts has been defined differently in various historical periods. For example, during the Middle Ages, Keefe states that --from about 400 to about 1300--there were seven fine arts or branches of learning. They were called the liberal arts and consisted of arithmetic, astronomy, dialectic (a form of logic), geometry, grammar, music, and rhetoric. It was not until the Renaissance, which began in the early 1300's, that painting, sculpture, and the performing arts came to be considered legitimate branches of the arts.

In modern times, there have been different definitions of the fine arts and different philosophies concerning what varieties of art should properly be called fine. For example, many people today believe that ‘only those arts that appeal to the sense of sight belong to the fine arts.’ According to this view, painting and sculpture rank as the primary fine arts, followed by architecture and landscape architecture.

Fine arts are sometimes contrasted with the decorative arts. Roger Ward contends that the term ‘decorative arts is generally reserved for works of art produced for actual use.’ Decorative arts are often called applied arts or industrial arts. They include woodwork (especially furniture), metalwork, ceramics, glass, and sometimes textiles. The use of such contrasting categories ‘reflect the concept that the fine arts exist only for their beauty while the decorative arts exist mainly for their usefulness.’

Some authorities have combined the ‘traditional fine and decorative arts under the term visual arts,’ and they group music, opera, and drama under the term auditory arts. Still others group music, dance, film, and the theatre arts as the performing arts. These works must be performed by people or by the mechanical means of the camera or phonograph.

Increasingly, distinctions between the fine arts and decorative arts are being discarded. Today, people tend to ‘regard ceramics and furniture as fine arts in spite of their functional aspects and place them with literature, painting, and sculpture.’ Ward 1998 contends that whenever artists employ good design and produce works satisfying to the eye, mind, and ear, modern thought tends to classify these works as fine art.

In Malawi, fine arts is offered at Chancellor College, a constituent college of the University of Malawi. The course is offered from first year through second and third years to the fourth year. Students pursue courses in painting, sculpture, ceramics, music, theatre arts etc. For example in painting, students draw their designs or images, using line or tone, on any suitable surface.

Art students draw with chalk, charcoal, crayon, or pencil. They may use a liquid, such as ink, applied with a brush or pen. They may also scratch drawings into a surface. For example, a silverpoint drawing is made by scratching into specially coated paper with a silver instrument or silver wire. This means that handwork is the sole and only method that is used in fine arts.

Art works drawn with the above stated tools are laborious and time consuming because it is difficult to produce the artful pieces in large numbers. In short reproducibility is not attainable. It is also difficult to add more effects to a hand drawn artistic design.

The concept of integrating computer-aided art in the fine art courses has driven its strength from these hustles.

The concept of a computer in the art room was put forward way back in the 1920s. Bauhaus, a school of art and architecture in the 1920s promoted the idea that ‘artful objects should be partnered with technology to create liveable solutions to living spaces.’ Simply put, Bauhaus design offers practical, durable, inexpensive, yet aesthetically pleasing designs. To most, Bauhaus may mean a modernistic approach to architecture or art, but Chancellor College Fine Arts Department can use the concepts of Bauhaus to provide easy solutions for making art studies functional and realistic while retaining the unique aspects of art work.

Mason 2004 argues that ‘the concept of using computers in art started in a sympathetic social and political climate in the United Kingdom.’ In Malawi, it is obvious that technological advancement has impacted several fields as a tool. However, the fine arts field has not been influenced in any way by information technology. As such, if the fine art lecture room at Chancellor College integrates the concept, it follows that this impact will later be felt in the Malawi society. Craftsmen/women will be produced who will change the course of fine arts in Malawi.

The concept of a computer in the fine art room will help Malawi as a nation to achieve the following objectives:

Production of trained personnel in digital art who will contribute positively to the development of fine arts in Malawi.

Capacity building of Malawian craftsmen/women who can meet the international standards.

Quality designs or art objects that will be able to compete at international markets.

Reproducibility of digital artwork which will preserve earlier artworks so that next generations should be able to appreciate earlier art skills when it happens that the original printout has been torn or stolen.

This paper contends computer aided art and not computer generated art. The earlier means digital art whereby an artist draws or paints in a similar manner as he/she does on the piece of paper. But the whole work is done on a computer using a mouse, keyboard, computer’s LCD, scanner, drawing/painting tools in digital art software. Examples of digital art software are Adobe Photoshop, Canvas 7 or 8, Illustrator, Quark Express, Apple Works, Dream weaver, Photo Impression, or Corel Draw.

The appropriate computers for this form of doing art are iMac Computers G3, G4 or G5 with Mac OS Version 10.4/5 operating system, Laser beam scanners, Laser Printers that can print multicolour documents.

The present concept is not propounding for computer generated art. This implies that the art works are entirely created by the computer. “Computer generated” means a computer actually generating the image e.g. fractals. Wikipedia 2004 contends that under this an ‘artist writes a piece of code and feeds value into the computer, which then outputs a graphic file or printable image.’ This means taking a step into computer programming so as to acquaint oneself with programming codes.

A question would arise- how is it art if the computer makes it for you – all you do is push a few buttons and the CPU does it for you? Art uses different tools such as pencil, chalk, brush etc. A graphic design computer as an equipment is endowed in such a way that in a drawing software are icons standing for a pencil, brush, eraser, arcs, lines, etc. An artist make full use of these icons to come up with his /her art work.

Well-known Malawian artists such as Masa Lemu have argued that Malawians do not appreciate artwork. As such the art sector is not patronised by Malawians. Only foreigners do patronise art exhibitions.

This is the case because as Artists, Malawians have not added value to their artful objects. For example, an artist can produce one piece of art within 2,3,4 or more days. He/she will charge highly considering the effort and materials used therein. But it is difficult to reproduce more because there’s no other means to do so. If the artwork was digitized, there would be a possibility for reproducibility of the same. In a digitized art piece, an artist would add more effects to improve on quality thereby adding more value to the work.

Furthermore, as artists They would like to sell their products while retaining their original uniqueness produced by their hands. If their aesthetically valuable art works were incorporated into some commercial items they would make an extra value from their efforts. For example, producing yearly calendars with designs of Malawian art works, producing cards with Malawi artistic designs, banners or billboards with Malawi’s art works. This would help in having Malawi’s art work appreciated countrywide.

All these are feasible only if the concept of computer aided art is integrated into the fine art courses offered in Malawi. A computer in the fine arts lecture room at Chancellor College is feasible and would act as a motivating factor thereby drawing more students into art courses. This would eliminate the problem of having pedestrian students enrolling for art courses only in first year and dropping out as they get to second year of their studies.