Digital Design in the Art Classroom

1. Use the computer as a creativity tool
   - not just as a typewriter, library, presentation kit or television. Creativity and innovation are the key 21st century skills we need for tomorrow’s work place. Instead of just playing a video game, children can use their imagination to design the next game or create a character for a video game. We want our kids not just to be consumers of new technologies, but lead the creation of new technologies.
2. Digital art brings back the artist in everyone.
   Digital Art is another art medium, and a medium that is easy to learn for today’s Digital Kids. Many kids stop drawing and creating as they get older. Digital Art gives them another chance to be an artist and express their creativity.
3. Digital art helps brings excitement into learning the basics.
   Digital Art integrates easily into the standard school curriculum, giving teachers an exciting new approach to any subject matter. Drawing and manipulating shapes on the computer for example is an exciting way to learn geometry.
4. Digital art helps bring ‘STEM’ to the schools through the medium of Arts.
   Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) education has been recognized nationwide as imperative for preparing students for future success. Incorporating the Arts into STEM education will further empower students to be the innovators of tomorrow and give them the key 21st Century skills of creativity and innovation.
   Digital art incorporates all the ‘STEM’ subjects while bringing in the creativity element.

Excerpt from Digital Art for All

Math + Art

The connections between Math and Art have been well established and accepted. There are many college courses that introduce Geometry through art or discuss the mathematics behind art.
Example - http://www.math.nus.edu.sg/aslaksen/teaching/math-art-arch.shtml#Objectives.

Artists like Escher have shown us the beauty of mathematical structures like tessellations.

Math + Programming

The connection between Math and Computer programming is obvious to any computer scientist. Computer science is built on foundations of mathematics and logic. The language of computers is the language of math.

Programming + Art

The connection between computer programming and art may be less obvious, unless one wonders why the definitive books on Computer Science from Donald Knuth are titled 'The Art of Computer Programming'. Programming is an art form, and much like a poet writing a poem or an author writing a story, programmers are creating something tangible from lines in a computer language. There is no one correct answer, there are many different creative approaches to writing a program and the end result is creating something original (and beautiful!). Art for many is a systematic programmatic method of creating something beautiful, it can and has been done by computers. Computer generated art ( perhaps mathematical patterns, but even abstract non symmetrical art) is an established field. An artist creates an internal algorithm to create an artwork, sometimes inspired by random abstract forms, and sometimes by very structured mathematical forms.

Excerpt from Computers for Creativity.