"yeah, they're digitised renderings of the surfaces facing the virtual camera.
the surfaces represent the computer's calculations of the relative locations
of virtual 3D objects in a virtual 3D space, and the appearance is altered
by calculations involving virtual lights, texture maps, reflection maps,
shadow maps, etc.

as it stands now, art snobs often say they're not art, since they're entirely
computer-generated, but 100 years from now they'll probably be recognised
as art, as they currently require at least some minimal amount of human
intervention to create digital images. that won't be the case in the future,
when similar renderings will be an wholly automatic machine process, with
absolutely no human involvement required."

2 points here...

1. When photography was invented, for many years "traditional" artists decried it as "not being art - it wasn't painted!". It became accepted as being art, because of the effort still required to light and frame a photograph, and, if necessary, pose any "figures" in the photo. Photography is now considered an ar, when the result is artistic (whatever that means)t. And when "moving pictures" came along, the same thing happened.

Now we have a digital equivalent. But you still have to light the scene, frame it properly, and in our case add figures (if required) and pose them..

2. Computers will not equal humans for art creation (in any media) until they evolve (or are programmed) to the point where they can understand aesthetics, and that requires a very sophisticated level of  "artificial intelligence". AI for computers is, at present, somewhere near the level of the intelligence of a bacterium. A tremendous advance over what was true only a few years ago, but there's no sign of a break-through on the AI front at present, mainly because nobody knows how the human mind works, how it processes "data", nor what extarnal influences really influence thinking. Which is why psychiatry(SP?) is more of an art-form than a science...

And until the human brain is fully understood, there's no way that a lump of silicon can be programmed to emulate it. (If you don't know the destination, then any paths out from where you start from are random.) Of course there's always the (very remote) chance of a fluke...

I'll shut up now...(before I show how little I know)

Cheers,
Diolma