by Wands, Bruce.

Educational institutions began to teach computer art on a formal level during this period, and the 1980s ended with the establishment of the first Master of Fine Arts in Computer Art degree programme in the United States at the School of Visual Arts in New York. Books on digital art began to appear. 

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Interest in the digital arts continued to increase throughout the following decade. Computers were now making considerable inroads into creative professions, particularly the field of graphic design. The rapid growth of the internet in the mid-1990s dramatically changed the way in which people communicated and conducted business. 

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A global sensibility was evolving among artists, and the internet was regarded as new creative territory, allowing them to reach international audiences

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Interactive art using digital technologies became more prevalent during this period as well. Sonata, an interactive cinema work, was created by Grahame Weinbren and Roberta Friedman in 1991 and explored new ways of perceiving cinema. In 1994, Christa Sommerer and Laurent Mignonneau created A-Volve, an interactive real-time environment, while Char Davies explored similar virtual reality environments with Osmose in 1995 (see image at right) and Ephémère in 1998 (pp. 104-05). This was a very fertile time for digital art, as new creative frontiers were discovered and technology continued to develop at an astonishing rate.

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The year 2001 brought attention to digital art through several major museum exhibitions in the United States, such as the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art's '010101: Art in Technological Times'. Including both digital and traditional artworks, the show was conceived as an investigation into the effects of technology on our lives. The 'BitStreams' and 'Data Dynamics' exhibitions, both held at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, were significant American museum shows of digital art.

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