Is Digital Imaging a Valid Substitute?

"The activity of Art has always been the interpretation and re-creation of reality, an exercise of human imagination creating virtualities which embody tentative structures of meaning... The traditional activity of art has been the representation of reality - manipulating materials to create tangible mirrors of our experience and desire. Now with the mechanisms of the new digital technologies, the artwork can become itself a simulation of reality - an immaterial digital structure encompassing synthetic spaces which we can literally enter." - Jeffrey Shaw

The interactivity created by digital imaging technologies reminds me of such programs as Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, iPhoto, GIMP, Microsoft Paint, etc... These programs make it completely possible for the viewership of artworks, and even the making of them, to take place daily. Millions of people own cameras, which they take around to capture moments they want to remember. Transferring these into the computer and having the freedom to edit them however the person chooses turns such ordinary pictures into an artwork of sorts.

Jeffrey Shaw's essay hinges on the idea that people are able to experience walking through cultural institutes, like museums, from the comfort of their own home. And this is true. Even on Google Image alone, people are free to search up any artwork they wish to study, and if the image size is large enough, are able to zoom in and out of it. Websites like JSTOR also make it possible for people to search up works of art that hang on the walls of museums, on the internet, and with just a zoom button, they are able to see the details of a painting. But I wonder if these digital imaging technologies allow for the viewer to fully experience the artwork - or even a museum.

Artworks like the David by Michelangelo cannot be fully comprehended, much less experienced, from the comfort of one's own home, through the means of cyberspace. Yes, a picture of the statue can be seen on screen, but the overwhelming sense of beauty is lacking. It is almost like watching a commercial for hiking shoes on TV. The audience will most likely be taken through beautiful sceneries as the brand model is "hiking," the camera focusing on her shoes. While this commercial might convince someone to purchase the shoes and go hiking, unless he actually goes hiking in these shoes - even if he were to just purchase them, he would not know how it actually feels to go hiking in these shoes. In the same way, digital imaging technologies make it so convenient for people to view artworks that might be in different countries - and, in this sense, digital imaging technologies bridge that cultural and physical gap. But it does not excuse the audience from visiting an actual museum and spending hours to take in the physical majesty of the artworks hanging on the walls - or maybe even of the museum itself.