Artists have long toyed with the latest technologies to create pioneering works of art. In that tradition, Tom Kemp has created what he calls the first "serious" contemporary artwork produced entirely on the handheld Palm computer.

Putting aside the merits of Kemp's specific work, his claim begs a larger question: Is artwork "serious" simply because it has been done using a previously unexplored medium?

"While such pioneering work is often interesting, the question is whether novelty alone is a useful criterion for art or merely a great excuse for talking about technology," said Peter Lunenfeld, who teaches in the graduate program in Communication and New Media Design at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California.

Not everyone thinks that novelty is enough.

"What difference does it make if it has been produced with a Palm or not?" said Benjamin Weil, curator of media arts at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. "I think that deeming it the 'first serious work of art' is somewhat preposterous. I am really suspicious of techno-driven and techno-celebrating projects that desperately seek to be called art. Art is about ideas, not about technology. I would therefore suggest we stop being techno-fetishist, and getting all excited at the gizmoization of a practice that is obviously more than just gee whiz!"

While other artists have created palmtop computer artworks, Kemp insists that his piece, Analysis is different.

"There are a lot of paintings (done on the Palm). Some have been immaculately crafted," Kemp said. "But they are exhibitions of skill, not necessarily exhibitions of art."

Analysis differs from other works of palmtop art in part because of the enormous energy it took to create the work, Kemp said.

Using the TealPaint application on a Palm Vx, Kemp produced 1,000 small paintings, each the size of the Palm's screen, about two-and-a-half inches square. Each painting captures small movements made with an electronic paintbrush to create unique characters.

Kemp assembled the small paintings in Photoshop on a Macintosh computer, printed them out on canvas and placed them in a huge grid, 4 feet high and 17 feet wide.

Kemp's work is not unprecedented in that artists have long applied emerging technologies to traditional forms of media. As such, Analysis fits into a history of artworks that includes the "first" digital photographs and the "first" Xeroxed prints.

"Artists are always misusing technologies intentionally," Lunenfeld said.

Kemp's palmtop painting generated a flood of critical comments on the technology commentary site Slashdot, where an announcement about it was posted.

"What is the big accomplishment here?" said one poster. "I am sure that hundreds of people have made doodles on their Palms before, and this guy goes to Kinko's and prints them out in a large manner and he is an originator? I don't see why it's such a big deal, as every day the digital world is becoming more analog and lifelike. Eventually I hope this digital lust ends and people start to appreciate art not because of how it was made, but what it says."

But others say that while Analysis may not be revolutionary, it is an interesting use of a digital medium to explore the traditional art form of writing.

"Another collage or storyboard does not in itself make art," another Slashdot reader said. "What is interesting is the use of a Palm to talk about writing. Writing or drawing on a piece of glass is a very different experience than writing on paper or parchment or plywood or whatever ... If nothing else, the Palm allows the artist to express an emotion or thought immediately."

"Writing is a very real-time activity," Kemp said, emphasizing that he chose to create the piece using the Palm to capture hand movements in real time.

"All of my paintings are attempts to capture writing as a physical, human movement," Kemp said on his website. "The Palm painting is a record of 1,000 such attempts."

Kemp chose to restrict each painting to the dimension of the screen to convey the direct movements through individual pixels and leave no room for final touch-ups.

"If I make a mistake then I have to throw the painting away and start again," Kemp said. "The graininess of the pixels can't hide the humanity of the original movements."

Producing the piece was no easy task.

"It was tremendously difficult," Kemp said. "I had to teach my hand how to control acceleration and deceleration without friction."

Unlike conventional painting, where artists use friction to control movements between brush and paper, hand control is difficult on the Palm's frictionless surface.

"That's gone when you're writing on glass," Kemp said. "When you're writing on glass you tend to skid in a straight line. To make an elegant curve is really hard."

Kemp is currently negotiating with galleries to give Analysis its first public showing. He has already received offers to sell the piece over the Web, largely in response to the Slashdot posting.