Interior for a Flash movie, drawn in Adobe Illustrator on a Wacom Tablet 

My fun in learning Illustrator and Photoshop was about the way it extended consciousness.  I am not aware of any way that it altered or expanded my imagery or my narrative, but more that it opened possibilities as a new extension of my eyes and hands.  No matter what current theory proposes, Art is always an extension of the corporeal, specifically of touch.  This is especially true for the painter.

So what do these other interfaces do, in their abrupt reduction to the flat screen?  They trigger off ideas that may not have been released otherwise.  To draw on a tablet or with a mouse gives an Other kind of experience that is thrilling and re-equilibrating, not equivalent to a piece of charcoal in hand, a brush or a pencil as it caresses a page, not better, never more sensuous, but in a delicious thrill unique and its own.  No artist should deny himself that experience.

The two modes aren’t in competition.  They are just different.

I am much less interested in seeing the work that computer interface produces than I will be retrospectively in looking back at the way the consciousness of the artist will have changed.  If it does.