Technology and Art
Did you think that using technology to create images started with Photoshop and other photo editors on your PC? Guess again. It happened as far as back as the 1600’s! Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, because of his improvements to the microscope and being the first to observe and describe single celled organisms, was considered to have been an expert on gadgets that used light. Jan Vermeer, a painter world-famous for his use of light and considered one of the Old Masters, was considered a good (but not great) artist until the mid 1660’s. Then Vermeer met van Leeuwenhoek, and soon his career took off. Which led some to suspect that van Leeuwenhoek gave Vermeer high quality lenses to make a camera obscura , a device that allows an artist to simply trace (or paint) an exact copy of an image. Like take The Girl with the Red Hat : Notice the light on her nose, earrings, eyes and parts of the chair? That brilliance with light was Vermeer’s speciality. And also what a camera obscura coul...