ABSTRACT
In Chapter 3 it is argued that the real breakthrough towards three-dimensional digital space occurs in artists whose work is mainly abstract, and who took advantage of the invention of the color frame-buffer – a complex tool which enables real time work upon the emerging digital image. This allows the artist to work much more efficiently on those nuances of color, shading, and texture, which create emphatic three-dimensional illusion. The chapter focusses on this digital plasticity and the works that embody it. Part One addresses early steps taken in the 1970s by Edward Zajec, and also by Ruth Leavitt and Duane M. Palyka. Part Two explores the amplifications of this in David Em’s innovations of the 1970s and 1980s and beyond. Attention is then paid to William Latham’s evolutionary programs. Finally, some further sophisticated expressions of digital plasticity and the virtual object are considered in the work of Gerhard Mantz.
