Dadaism was an art movement predicated on shock a reaction to the civilized horrors of the First World War and an explosive new approach to the irrational side of human nature. At the center of the movement was Emmanuel Rudnitsky (18901976), better known as Man Ray, a Russian-born Philadelphian who hoped to invent a machine that could photograph his dreams. When I Þrst saw Man Ray's photographs in the Philadelphia Museum of Art as a teenager, I realized for the Þrst time that photography could induce radically altered states of consciousness. His images of superimposed nudes printed in stark black-and-white reversal were an intimation that the camera could be a portal to what e. e. cummings called "A hell of a good universe next door."
Man Ray Fautographe is a CD-ROM that brings much of the visionary artist's oeuvre into sharp focus. The disc includes more than 600 images of the artist's work in Þlm, painting, sculpture, book art, and photography. A narrated slide show offers an overview of the artist's career, explaining his use of experimental techniques such as creating photographs with lab chemicals and light.
The good news? The soundtrack is intelligently presented, and the images are extraordinarily high-resolution.
The bad news? The designers of Fautographe have a dadaist love of the irrational, as exempliÞed by the program's inane organization. Images of artworks are grouped into nine categories, several of which seem meaningless. Films are reduced to puzzling stills that reveal nothing about the dadaist attack on logical narrative. And instructions on how to use this CD-ROM are vague and elliptical.
Despite these failings, Fautographe enchants. What other CD-ROM can light up my monitor with images of naked bodies radiating electrical waves as if they were Tesla coils? What other artist painted lips þoating like a blimp over a pastoral countryside? Who else, decades before pop art, hammered tacks into the þat plate of an iron, creating the perfect tool for the Marquis de Sade's "ironing day"? Man Ray Fautographe turns your computer into the ultimate dream machine.
May Ray Fautographe CD for Mac, PC or Cd-i: US$39.95. D&D Computers: (800) 816 6848, fax +1 (305) 220 3368.
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