During our digital illustration tutorial, I remember someone asking why there were different software programs for certain tasks if all of them had similar tools, and professor Serrano explained that we could think of this specialization “like a modern scriptorium.” I thought that this was a funny and interesting insight. Whereas the lone artist would not have been able to complete a manuscript because he was insufficiently trained in all of the various arts needed to produce a true masterpiece, so too can no one software be expected to handle vector graphics, pixel or raster graphics, photo editing, written content, and multipage layout formatting and excel at all concurrent tasks. In software, a degree of specialization is needed in order to provide the most relevant and powerful tools, while still maintaining usability. Yet it is still true that certain tools prevail across these specialized softwares. Like the illuminators who specialized in one decorative art but were quick to realize excellence or shortcoming in others, there is crossover. But the nature of the crossover is different; these programs are aimed at a user who might prefer one program over others, but could theoretically use all.
The specialization of the scriptorium focused more on the singularity of the art being produced than on the singularity of the artist: teams of masters and apprentices would lay the gold leaf, for example, and if they were skilled enough it would appear to be a single and unified work in the style of the scriptorium. Perhaps our artistic focus or concept of an artist has moved towards the singular. Even though plenty of modern artists produce their works through collective effort and even sometimes employ apprentices, the public concept of an artist seems to center on a lone figure. The scriptorium is now to be found in the specialized tools used to produce art, and not in the collective of specialized artists working to create a unified masterpiece.
