Multi-Touch finger paintings merge art with tech

Anybody can fingerpaint -- it's pretty much a standard part of kindergarten curriculum -- but artist Evan Roth took it a step farther with his Multi-Touch finger paintings. (Heads-up: some salty language on his site). By putting tracing paper over his iPod touch, paint on his fingers, and performing some routine tasks, Roth created six paintings that show the details of the actions he took with his device.

This struck me as similar to the work Design Language News did several months back when it analyzed fingerprint patterns left behind on an iPad's display after using several different apps. It also reminded me a bit of a keyboard frequency sculpture that Mike Knuepfel created around the same time.

In each case, artists are taking something that's seemingly mundane -- our day-to-day interactions with devices -- and creating something of possible analytical value that's also uniquely artistic. That marriage of geeky attention to detail and artistic aspiration is really what Apple's all about, and it's projects like these that really highlight the art behind the technologies we use every day.