Digital art takes many forms: installations; Internet art; virtual-reality projects that use devices such as headsets and data gloves to immerse participants in a virtual world; software coded by the artist; or even "locative media" art that uses mobile devices (such as cell phones) to turn public spaces like buildings or parks into a canvas.

Digital photographs, films, and videos have been common in the arts since the 1990s; even paintings and sculptures are now sometimes produced with the aid of digital tools. But projects that use digital technologies as a medium in themselves--and that, like their medium, are interactive, collaborative, customizable, and variable--still occupy the margins of art institutions and find their audience mostly at new-media art festivals or on the Internet.