IT and society: IT and the arts

IT and the arts

During the past half century or so, technology has revolu­ tionized communications media, bringing into being radio, cinema, television, records, and audio and video cassettes. Each one of these forms of communication has had a considerable and obvious impact on the arts. Not only have they made the major forms of art universally and freely available, they have profoundly influenced the art forms themselves. Radio drama, for instance, is a quite new art form, as is much of the art of the cinema.

Today, the main thrust of information technology is centred on computers, and the present generation of com­ puters with their graphics and multimedia capabilities are having a major impact on the production of works of art. We can summarize their influence as:

• Increasing the tools available to the artist, so offering him a new range of artistic possibilities. Electronic music is one obvious example of this.

• Increasing the productivity of the artist, so enabling him to work more quickly. Modern computer animation techniques provide an example of this. To produce an animated cartoon, the artist need only draw a relatively small number of key frames, for the computer is able to construct the intermediate ones (see page 162).

Computers are now being applied to all the main forms of art.

1 Music. Hardware and software for the production of synthesized music are important applications of computers, providing features such as a wide range of musical sounds and effects, the ability to instantly alter, in a composition, musical variables such as pitch, tempo, loudness, and the automatic generation and printing of sheet music for music composed directly on the keyboard.

2 Animation and visual effects. Computer animation, which made possible a number of films such as Star Wars and its sequels, is now becoming an art form in its own right, and a number of short films made entirely by computer have now been released. Computer graphics, video titling, and other computer-based techniques are also being widely used in TV and video production.

3 Writing. Computer software is available for expressing a writer's prose in crisp, straightforward English. You can, for example, process paragraphs taken from the works of Dickens with this software, with remarkably effective results. At a more mundane level, electronic thesauruses are now included with many word processing packages.

4 Games. The computer game, especially the adventure game, is becoming a quite new form of art. The more sophisticated games incorporate the most impressive com­ puter graphics, and the quality of the synthesized music that is used with some of them is also impressive.

The application of computers to the arts can only grow in the future, not only in the areas listed above but in quite new areas also. For example, 3-D modelling on computers may be applied to sculpture and other solid-object art forms, and some attempts have already been made to use com­ puters to aid the production of poetry.

IT and privacy

In all countries there is a conflict between the need on the one hand to maintain public records and public order, and the need on the other to maintain personal freedom, on the other. We all desire efficient public administration and policing, but few of us relish the infringement of personal liberties that may result. The problem is becoming increas­ ingly acute as the information processing capabilities avail­ able to government bodies and the police become ever more sophisticated. They include such things as:

• The on-line retrieval of information on all citizens from a variety of government and business databanks, such as those held on Social Security and Inland Revenue computers.

• Developments in personal movement monitoring, such as car recognition systems which, if installed on high­ ways, could allow the police to track any vehicle.

In order to safeguard personal freedoms, the EC has laid down codes of practice regarding the storage and retrieval of personal data on electronic systems. In this country, these principles are embodied in the Data Protection Act 1984.

The main aim of this Act is stated by the Data Registrar to be to meet the concern 'arising from the threat which mis-use of the power of computing equipment might pose to individuals. This concern derives from the ability of comput­ ing systems to store vast amounts of data, to manipulate data at high speed and, with associated communications systems, to give access to data from locations far from the site where the data are stored.' (Data Protection Act Guideline No. 1.)

The main provisions of the Act are that all public and private organizations which hold data about individuals or companies on computer systems must register this fact with the Data Registrar, and they must register the purpose for which the data is held. The data must not be used for any other purpose, nor may it be disclosed to other bodies. Furthermore, anyone can find out from the Registrar whether an organization holds data about him, and he can obtain a copy of that data.

In detail, the Act covers what it calls 'data users' and 'data subjects'. It defines data users as 'organizations or individuals who control the contents and use of a collection of personal data, processed, or intending to be processed, automatically'. A data subject is 'an individual to whom personal data relate'. Data users must register the personal data they hold, and how they use it, obtain it, and disclose it.

The Act states that personal data must be:

• Obtained and processed fairly and lawfully.

• Held and used only for the specified purposes.

• Adequate, relevant, and not excessive to those purposes.

• Accurate and kept up to date.

• Deleted when it is no longer needed for the specified purposes.

• Stored in a system with security measures taken against unauthorized access, alteration, or destruction of the data.

There are some exceptions to the Act. These include personal data held for managing household affairs or for recreational purposes. So there is no need for you to register names and addresses of friends that you hold for your personal use on your home computer.