Art, Technology, and the Value of Creative Process

October 16, 2020

As digital technologies increasingly shape contemporary artistic practices, discussions surrounding art and technology often focus on innovation, media, and market reception. Yet one of the least visible — and most important — aspects of technologically driven art remains the artist’s creative process itself.

In many technology-based artistic practices, the final artwork represents only a small visible portion of a much larger intellectual, technical, and material system developed by the artist over time. Understanding that process is often essential to understanding the work’s artistic and cultural value.

For many years, technology-based art remained relatively marginal within the traditional art market. However, over the past decade, major institutions, museums, galleries, and auction houses have increasingly invested in artists working across digital media, artificial intelligence, programming, sound, virtual environments, and computational systems. These developments have expanded not only the visibility of such works, but also broader conversations surrounding authorship, materiality, preservation, and artistic value.

Image courtesy of Christie's.

At the same time, the role of curators, researchers, and institutions has become increasingly important in documenting and presenting the complexity of these artistic processes. In technology-driven practices, the creative process itself often forms a substantial part of the work’s conceptual and historical significance. Slight modifications in programming logic, fabrication methods, material selection, or system construction may fundamentally alter the final result.

During the years when I collaborated with the Streaming Museum on projects involving American computer art pioneer John F. Simon Jr., I became particularly interested in the relationship between process, technology, and artistic value. One studio visit in particular left a lasting impression on my understanding of how technologically based artworks are conceived and produced.

After numerous snowstorms in New York, I finally traveled to John’s home and studio in Chester on a clear winter morning. I arrived with one question in mind: how does an artist combine meditative practice with computational systems to create visual forms?

From a distance, the studio appeared almost industrial — clean white walls, steel structures, large worktables, fragments of prototypes, and partially completed paintings suspended throughout the space. Rather than resembling a conventional painter’s studio, it felt closer to a fabrication laboratory dedicated to experimentation and precision.

John F. Simon Jr., Moment of Expansion, 2014. HDU, Trupan, acrylic paint & plastic laminate. 487.68 x 274.32 x 20.32 cm. Image courtesy of Streaming Museum and the artist.

What surprised me most was the extent to which John’s process relied simultaneously on intuition and technical discipline. His daily practice often began with meditation sessions conducted in silence before any visual form emerged. Drawings generated from this process would later become the foundation for highly sophisticated digital constructions developed through custom workflows involving multiple software systems.

Once a drawing was selected, it would be scanned, reconstructed digitally, divided into numerous fragments, reshaped, enlarged, stretched, and translated into three-dimensional structures. Different materials, densities, colors, and fabrication techniques were then tested repeatedly until the final physical form achieved the exact visual and spatial effect the artist intended.

In some works, laser-cutting technologies were used to carve subtle surface structures into raw materials. In others, computational systems were employed to generate compositional relationships impossible to achieve manually. Yet despite the technological sophistication involved, the process remained deeply connected to intuition, repetition, patience, and sustained concentration.

What became increasingly clear during the visit was that the final artwork could not be fully separated from the complexity of its production process. The labor, experimentation, technical knowledge, and conceptual structure embedded within the work all contributed directly to its artistic identity and historical significance.

When I questioned whether such an elaborate process was truly necessary, John responded that he had never discovered a simpler way to produce the results he sought. After many years of practice, the process itself had become inseparable from the work.

This experience fundamentally shaped my understanding of technology-based artistic practices. In many contemporary works involving digital systems, programming, fabrication, or computational structures, artistic value cannot be evaluated solely through the appearance of the final object. The creative process — including the artist’s methodology, technical decisions, conceptual systems, and material experimentation — often forms an essential part of the work’s meaning and cultural significance.

As technology continues to influence contemporary artistic production, understanding creative process may become increasingly important not only for curators and historians, but also for collectors, institutions, and professionals engaged in the long-term stewardship and evaluation of contemporary art.

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