There has been some discussion (worrying) that digital photography would replace traditional film-chemical based photography. Let me be two-hundred and thirteenth one to say, "I don't THINK so." However in having said this, let swing around 180 degrees and note I'm speak in terms of absolutes. Naturally there are degrees of "replacement". People still do Daggeurotype photography so is it fair to say that modern photography has not "replaced" it? I think there is a good chance, as digital photography improves during the next few years (months?) that a significant PORTION of film-based photography WILL be replaced for the technical advantages digital offers, the economic advantages, and because of improvements in quality that may one day match (dare I say SURPASS) traditional photography. Now, how MUCH traditional photography will be replaced is up in the air but I could foresee digital replacing traditional to a degree similar to what color photography has replaced (traditional) black and white photography.

Okay, having ventured to say that, the same guess might well relate to painting as well. There seems to be on the horizon no limit to the size monitors that are technically feasable for reproducing digital art if one wants to pay the price...and remember it doesn't take one monitor for each piece of art produced, and prices DO go down, especially in electronics, TV, computers, etc. Acrylics, when they came out, were chosen by a growing number of oil-painting artist thus reducing their numbers significantly, but not eliminating them. The same is likely as the younger generation, and those adventurous souls among us in the older generation, become adept at painting with pixels. The menu will read, oils, acrylics, or digital. The number of "traditional" paint-brush artists will diminish as our strength is sapped by those going digital. As of now, reproduction remains a problem. It won't be for long as size, quality, and prices improve rapidly over the next few years. And of course, digital art is not without the (slightly cumbersome) capability of reproduction using inks/pigments/collaging for some multi-media semblence of traditional canvas painting.

What has not been much discussed much is how digital is going to effect the economics and marketing of artwork in the twenty-first century. I dare say digital is going to shake up things completely. Digital doesn't need a traditional gallery, in fact quite the opposite, it looks BEST in some type of non-traditional electronic gallery. The line between marketing art and softwear will disappear. Web galleries will RULE. The entire lifetime work of most artists today would fit on a SINGLE cd-rom. But digital can conceivabley offer the chance for the artist to become perhaps TEN-TIMES more prolific, so will this flooding of the art market with digital images reduce by a factor of ten the prices paid for digital art? And with the elimination of storage limitations in art will the buyer want ten times as MUCH art for his ever-changing 6'x8' wall-hung, digital art monitor? Will traditional painting become so rare that they will ALL become collectors items affordable only by the very (conservative) wealthy and museums? God, I hope so!