critical response to the introduction/chapter1 of "digital art"

Via considering the congruencies between Paul’s descriptions of the conceptual substrate of digital art and my own infant interactions with the media, a number of points become rather salient. Specifically, in the introduction, he describes digital art as being similar to Dadaist poetry due to the overarching element of found randomness following a distinct protocol. So, although appropriation (collage for the most part) has always been something that I somewhat disliked within a studio art context, its merit became more readily apparent relative to digital art.  Indeed, the concept of artwork as a succession of complimentary layers (at least within PS) took precedent, and the process started resembling painting with the added element of instantaneous bitmapping. Moreover, interfacing with PS brought to mind the symbiotic interaction of discrete components present within both music and art. The terminologies of PS and digital music composition programs are even similar; that is, layers create the whole, and such things as “flattening layers” represent a gestural acknowledgement of at least a portion of the piece that has reached a desired state/symbiosis.