Digital art is based on digitally encoded information. The information is usually digitally processed by computers and presented in an artistically usable way. The digitisation of information can be done through input devices such as scanners, keyboards and measuring devices. Many forms of digital art are characterised by the difference between the purely digital work, the binary files, and their audible and visible representation. If works exist in digitally encoded and stored form, for example as image files, sound files, algorithms, hypertexts, executable programmes or code for Internet pages, we can speak of digital art in the narrower sense. In certain cases, the files and digital processes are even the actual work of art. An artistically significant digital code, handwritten, can already be digital art.
If works of digital art are not complete without their representation in a medium, the representation can be artistically influenced by selected hardware and software. With software that leads to artistic results that are not exactly predictable when variables are changed, even open-ended design is possible. The representation of a file need not be limited to playback through loudspeakers, monitors and projections: it can include three-dimensional material sculptures, light installations or multimedia events. In the case of biennale.py, the virus for the 49th Venice Biennale, representation consisted of a collective multimedia performance in which the audience and the media became indispensable actors, often without realising it.
Computer-generated digital art and media-generated digital art are distinguished in art historical observation:
Computer-generated art is created on the basis of traditional art genres and art forms using the computer as a tool. Formerly analogue areas of visual art such as printing, painting and photography are being continued digitally. Likewise, works of art in the field of moving images, video and film and the transmission media of radio and television are increasingly being generated digitally, following conventions from the analogue tradition of media art. The same applies to "electronic or digital music". "Media digital art", on the other hand, uses computers and networks, or other digital devices, such as mobile phones, as an independent medium, based on the internet, among other things, so that its own art forms such as net art (Net Art), (Software Art), digital installations and artworks in the field of virtual reality are created.