Now Open for International Artists to Explore
by Patricia Tanumihardja
Low-cost digital video and editing equipment, as well as computer animation programs have enabled an increasing number of artists to produce highly refined moving images. Rapid prototyping has allowed sculptors to harness the computer’s ability to model three-dimensional forms. The Internet, meanwhile, has opened up an entirely new arena for artistic endeavor–the creation of interactive works accessible to anyone with a computer and modem. One amazing aspect of web-based digital art is that space and time are not separated by geographical distance. Artists across the globe can be linked simultaneously to give online performances, and viewers in any city of the world have access to art originating from thousands of kilometers away.
Digital art has its roots not in the academies of art, but in military defense systems when the Cold War energized rapid advances in the technology in the 1950s and 60s. The first computer, the ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer) was introduced in 1946. Research centers, often supported by governments, fostered intense experimental investigations in computer technology, some of which involved music and art. The first digital artists were in fact scientists! The Ars Electronica Festival in Linz, Austria, which was founded in 1979, recognizes the important link between science and digital art and encourages an open interaction between artists and scientists. Ars Electronica has developed into the world’s most renowned forum for art, technology and social questions. The theme for this year’s festival, which will take place 1-6 September, is "Takeover–Who is Doing the Art of Tomorrow?".
An important component of art in the digital age is interactivity. Artists interact with machines to create further interaction with viewers who either summon up the art on their own machines or manipulate it through pre-programmed routines, which can vary according to the commands or movements of the viewer. Interactive art is a new form of experiencing art which extends beyond the tactile. Viewers are essential active participants. No longer mere viewers, they are now users. The exhibition "Y E S YOKO ONO," at the Walker Art Center (10 March — 17 June 2001) was accompanied by an online event based on a score by Ono. Over one hundred days, responses were captured via telephone and compiled into an online timeline of contributed sounds. These scores invite the individual interpretation and participation of the viewer, as part of an intentionally open-ended process.
Virtual reality has made possible the creation of simulated environments of remarkable veracity and programs like Photoshop have made digitally altered photographs the norm, rather than the exception. The real is therefore made illusory.
Lawrence Rinder, the Whitney Museum of American Art’s Curator of Contemporary Art, writes in his essay Art in the Digital Age (BitStreams): "Digital technology has become the ultimate tool for capturing the nuances of the unreal. Artists have taken advantage of their unprecedented control over sensation and information to produce works that challenge our everyday perceptions of color, form, sound, space and time… Digital technologies are contributing to the sense that the boundaries between the organic and inorganic, the known and unknown, the real and unreal, are being blurred beyond recognition."
Today’s artists may be employing new technologies to reflect contemporary issues, but the purpose is the same as it has always been: to engage and, at the same time, transcend the social context in which they live. Quite simply, artists working with digital media are just utilizing another medium for expression while observing our contemporary context and the ramifications that the increasing digitization of day-to-day life has on our society.
Rinder of the Whitney notes: "Artists can now create seamless chimeras that resonate with contemporary anxieties about the instability of perception and even life itself in this age of virtual reality and genetic engineering. ‘BitStreams’ (Whitney Museum of American Art, 22 March — 10 June 2001) explored the Digital Age not as something external to us, residing solely in technological objects or in a kind of ‘techno’ style, but rather as a constellation of physical, emotional and cognitive phenomena that has transformed aspects of human experience."
Eduardo Kac is an artist and writer who in the 1990s created Biotelematics, an art in which a biological process is intrinsically connected to digital networks. As an artist, Kac has always employed innovative technology as a means of philosophical inquiry and social intervention. "I am interested in technology, not because of its visual effects, but because of its social implications. Technological innovations only interest me in as much as they create new relationships or destabilize previously existing ones. In other words, when they stimulate enquiry, criticism, and imagination. I find that working with technology I can intervene in larger social contexts directly. Reflective of the current conflation of biology and information technologies, my work, Genesis, is a transgenic artwork exploring the intricate relationship between biology, belief systems, information technology, dialogical interaction, ethics, and the Internet."
Through their common use of digital software, photography, film, video, installation, sculpture, and sound, have developed closer connections, inspiring fascinating crossovers among the media. According to the Whitney’s Rinder: "Previously distinct media such as photography, video, and film are merging as artists from diverse disciplines turn to digital media to extend the boundaries of their work. This is a watershed moment in the entire field of contemporary art, one which will bring new, previously unimagined forms of artistic expression as well as new possibilities for more established forms."
