Art interface

"High art has been brought into the domain of
computer media, but now it is merely a style"
Richard Wright, 1995
(Remediation,140).
I am sure this point will be argued for a long time to come. It is true as Bolter and Grusin point out that the old rigid hierarchy of the evaluation of art has dissolved... an oil painting is not "always superior to an ink-drawn illustration for a comic book" (140). However, computer generated "art" and graphics look very odd to me. something is missing. There is a hollow sound or tone I hear when I look at them. A perfect example of this is the "nave of chartres" by John Wallace and John Lin on page 125. It is kind of creepy. When I saw the movie "Toy Story" I experienced hypermedia because I was constantly aware that the eerie surreal world unfolding was computer generated. Fascinating and slightly unsettling-- like watching a snake-- and beautiful too like a reptile, or cute like an armadillo-- but odd nonetheless. The description on p.140 about the process of creating digital art tells this cyborg story, art that is a hybrid of machine/human:"The digital artist intervenes again and again, defining digital objects in the image, mixing and adding colors in layers, subjecting parts of the image to a dozen different algorithmic filters, an so on. Although some actions may require nothing more than choosing a menu item, others need considerable manual dexterity. All of them at some point will release the computer to perform a programmed action".( italics mine) My question for education is what will this art-form do to the next generation? Picasso was a classically trained artist before he discovered Cubism.Can art students grow up knowing only this interface with a computer, and what will that do to Art as we know it? Do you think as deeply when choosing a menu option as when pulling something out of your immagination, or filtering a vision through the skill in your fingers and looking to your mind's eye rather than a tool bar? Are we fixing to dumb ourselves down as we get ever 'smarter', or maybe as they- the machines get smarter, they won't need us? Won't want us at all?