The digital images you'll find at EyeInvent have been produced using a camera, computer hardware, and software. There's something that disconnects the audience in that statement - perhaps it is that for many, our connection with art is made stronger when we relate to its physical production. When we appreciate art, we bond as much to its production as to its message.

For a painting, we not only take in the dance of light on the stage, but also the texture of the medium used, and the manner in which the artist has expressed themselves. We gather these gestures of the artist's hand and body and hold that in our response as much as the work's form, or the ideas and feelings the painting unfolds within us.

Although the tools we use to create are not the primary reasons for a work's effectiveness, we resist the call to connect with the cold medium of digital art. By "cold medium" I refer to tools that are removed from the human hand and reside in the virtual realm.

Touch is our most emotive sense. Although it is our eyes and ears that are dominant in our physical experience of art, our need to touch is held close by our imagination. We imagine ourself as the painter, the dancer, the actor, the writer. Art is a physical experience.

In contrast, keyboard clicks and mouse movements do not inspire, they do not move us. The audience is not predisposed to connect with digital art as it is for the majority of art forms. For digital art to work at all it must transport us despite its limitation as a cold medium - it must make the jump to the human, physical realm.

I have a strong connection with light and movement - it touches me. I take a photo in the field and work on recapturing the essence of what I experienced at that moment. My digital darkroom is a private place where I mold the light with virtual tools - it is a magical realm where at best I meet light face to face. My aim is that the saving of that light and presentation here reaches out and connects with you.

Mike de Sousa
Artist/Photographer
EyeInvent