SCENE & HEARDSCENE & HEARD
Measured by the way we judge the onset of styles, trends and movements
at the twilight of the twentieth century, when speed and compression are
keys to the game, it's taken a very long time for a sizeable number of artists
to begin to engage with computers in their art. It is finally happening
in our decade. It took a fascination with immersive Virtual Reality--with
its awkward graphics but convincing simulation of an environment we can
move around in--and even more, the Internet, to bring artists to the mouse,
keyboard, and stylus. Yes, CD-Rom has helped, too, but it may ultimately
be more of a nuisance or simply takes its place as just one more form of
digital storage better for research and business purposes, than for art-making.
Perhaps it will soon abdicate its role to digital video, or to other formats
of the future. Already much of the artistic aspiration about the CD-Rom
has been channeled toward the Internet.
So, in the art world, what are the wares and what's in the windows? Windows
it is--whether we think of Microsoft's, the Mac equivalent, or the way most
of the computer's output is reduced to the small "windows" of
monitors. Think, too, of those many small windows within the display windows
which galleries and museums may be on their way to becoming--sites for the
latest work by artists playing with software, mimicking the multimedia industry,
caught in the mirror of yet another obsessive iteration on the media in
one of its many, many forms. The dream of postmodern populists may come
true--that galleries and museums will attract a more general audience, which
is less trained in art. But will the populist vision metamorphose into a
bad dream--or even a nightmare?
In New York this past season, two gallery shows in Soho set the tone. At
Code, a "multimedia" group exhibit at Ricco/Maresca
last fall, the gallery teemed with visitors. I heard a gallery staffer exlaim
how wonderful it was to see so many children there. Preparing the next generation
of buyers, perhaps? If so, what will they buy? Code's centerpiece
was a virtual environment, Osmose, for which visitors eagerly awaited
their appointed times to be outfitted in the wired garments of VR. The gallery's
enthusiasm for this work by Char Davies (of SoftImage, a Montreal-based
software firm) was apparently shared by curator Barbara London of the Museum
of Modern Art, who had the artist appear in her "Video Viewpoints"
series. While a cut above many VR installations, Osmose is nonetheless
laced with a hefty dose of intellectual pretension. Its imagery of leaves
and trees shares a home in virtual space--or, if you prefer, virtual nature--with
a text of computer code and words by Martin Heidegger and Gaston Bachelard,
all drowned in New Age audio. The gallery also housed monitors mounted in
a circle playing CD-Roms and other digital materials; some of the programs
requiring prodding by a mouse, others running passively, while videotapes
showcased glossy computer graphics that aspired to the state of art, but
rarely attained it.
Moving forward five months to the nearby Postmasters
Gallery, the contrast in physical layout is stunning. Walking into
Can You Digit?, I was struck by the solemnity of the oval arrangement
of 23 monitors, mice available where needed, and headphones insuring tranquility
in the hushed and darkened gallery. Twenty-two different works represented
in the oval of monitors were complemented by a pair of work stations, two
wall projections, and The Dead Souls, Janine Cirincione and Michael
Ferraro's goofy 3-D projection feigning non-immersive virtual reality. In
a smaller, adjacent gallery an installation calledVariations on Cryptography,
by i/o 360, seemed to have so fully embraced its subject that it lost this
audience-member with difficult-to-decipher projections and reflections.
The hush in the gallery suggested the cathedral-like atmosphere of an old-fashioned
modernism in which viewers were expected to spend time with works--pondering
them, moving on, and returning. It was to the credit of the show's curators,
Tamas Banovich and Ken Coupland, that they designed an installation conducive
to seriousness, but it was in stunning contrast to the show's unfortunately
silly title. More to the point, it was in even sharper contrast to so much
of what we saw on the screens.
As I walked around and looked at each piece, probing with a mouse where
called for, I heard, in response to someone's bewildered query about the
nature of the show: "It's subversive, questioning the medium, pushing
boundaries." I only wish I'd agreed with this characterization of all
the things these works were not--expressed in all-too-familiar cliches about
contemporary art. Here, in the crowded but very respectful setting, we found
windows alive with tricks redolent of off-the-shelf software, uninspired
variations on games, (more) cartoonish creatures, New Ageism (again) rearing
its awful head; in short, designers showing off their
latest electronic ploys, sometimes to comment on multimedia itself. Unfortunately,
such appropriations were made not to critique nor to examine, but to showcase
a world of clever little inventions, and even cleverer conventions familar
from the converging entertainment and computer industries. The window-screens
of Can You Digit? expressed very little difference between art and
the mosaic of industries we call "multimedia."
A few things stood out. The two-screen Parallel Doubt on the Distinction
Between Truth and Beauty by Erwin Redl is intended to be seen on two
monitors facing one another on opposite walls, each showing the face of
a Japanese actor appearing on split screen as the color slowly changes along
with the audio. Unfortunately, Parallel Doubt was poorly installed
on opposites sides of the oval bank. Alan Keahy's screen saver, HolisticSofa,
projected large, was witty and simple. Simplicity can be winning and even--simultaneously--low
end. Witness Tirtza Even's small collection of narrative fragments, City
Quilt. Using Quick Time video, Even softly plays with space and emotion,
attempting to eke out a dynamism through a little bit of interactivity.
Is it odd to criticize a show for being too large? I don't think so if we
ask what function quantity serves. Why were many than 30 particpants included
when their works were often little more than exercises, and sometimes very
incomple ones at that? Why so many windows with so little to show in them?
Size does not necessarily equal comprehensiveness or breadth, as Can
You Didit? demonstrates. These are issues for the gallerists at Postmasters--or
for any gallery or museum choosing to exhibit digital art en masse.
To artists I'd pose these questions: Why the obsession with the computer
and its bags of tricks? Technicians do what you're doing, but they do it
better. We used to criticize modernism for its self-reflexiveness. Your
work doesn't even approach this genuinely interesting level, but still manages
to share modernism's worst, even pathological, tendencies in that direction.
Why has entertainment become a value and its products models for art--especially
when a computer is involved? Why does emulating, rather than criticizing
the mass- and multi-media pass muster these days? When will we see more
artists finding new themes and ideas made possible through the computer,
its interactivity, and its telecommunications potential, rather than repeating
a tired round of concerns about technology and media itself?
Yes, works like those presented in Soho do attract audiences. True, there
is little, if anything to sell--a subject worth reams of electronic space--but
for now, exhibiting computer-works brings galleries a certain cachet and
concommitant media notice. But did the kids come because they wanted to
see more computer games? Are some of the adults there because they know
how the technology works and find it comfortable and reassuring? Other adults
are still at the "gee whiz" stage of computer culture. When they
get beyond it and their children become bored with such low-end art games,
they will depart for the next hot, new theme park offering them more. Then
it will be time for the art world to cultivate another kind of audience.
Or, perhaps to move on and to think again--or think for the first time--about
the profoundly difficult issues involved in making art with a computer.
Regina Cornwell is a New York-based writer who specializes in issues around
art and technology. E-mail her at cornwell@interport.net
