From my opinion as a student of computer arts/digital arts, the first
thing you have to ask yourself is how to include the computer in your
artistic work.
I can recommend the Book
"Composing
Interactive Music" from Todd Winkler, as I found it not only
interesting for re-thinking how to use Computers in artistic
installations, but also how to completely rethink computer interaction.
Winkler proposes a
framework
of 5 stages which i think can also be adoped for any digital works,
not only music.
The book is inteded for composers working with max/msp, a visual
programming language where object boxes can be "patched" together; this
style of working shows fast results, as this kind of software is working "realtime", meaning you get constant ouptput of the things you are doing or the parameters you are changing.
I am working with this kind of "patchable software interfaces" for more
than five years now; and this is also teached on the University of
Applied Arts in Vienna/Austria, where I am studying.
If it comes to interaction (sound-visual, sound-dancers,
graphics-interface, whatever) in the field of artistic work, these
tools such as
PD Pure Data (windows/mac/linux) -
Audio/Video/3D (
GEM,
Framestein) -opensource-
Cycling74 max/msp (windows/mac)
- Audio/Video/3D (also see
Nato and
Jitter)
-free 30days demo-
Native
Instruments Reaktor (windows/mac) -commercial, but has education
pricing-
vvvv (win) -free-
are used from lots of the people around.
there are hell lots more, you might want to take a look at the
audiovisualizers.com
tool shack, or
pawfal.org for
example.
For some visual examples and also works, you might want to take a look
at
http://www.harvestworks.org/maxreel/
http://puredata.info/community/
(mostly audio)
talking chair
(vvvv+hardware)
http://www.realtimearts.net/
or you might also want to take a look at the
department of digital art in the
university of applied arts/vienna.
currently we are a group of people trying to bring opensource and arts
together. there are also workshops and lots of projects going on:
http://5uper.net
for sure there are also "standard" programs teached, which are good for
working with business and advertising companies -- but if we are
speaking about digital arts, that's going beyond the standard approach
of software use. at least for me.